Luck

[Adam Clayman]

Bob, That last line got me. Equitable? Penal gca isn't based on
 equity. It is the opposite. Penalizing a poor shot is compounding.
Penal dictates the proper shot. Strategic leaves it up to me to "hit'em where I can make'em.

Sully, I never considered you a target. Heck, there are even some touring pro's who have the congenial perspective of accepting what fate has wrought.

[JESII]

Adam,

I was thinking of Mucci...imagine Mucci telling someone THEY are too good to understand the plight of the lesser golfer...too much!

[BCrosby]

Sean -

Nobody claims that luck can be eliminated. But many people have viewed the quality of a course as a function of how much the course allows luck to be involved in outcomes. The less luck involved, the better the course will test pure golfing skills. It's the old argument against "fluke".

At heart, it's what the USGA's "proportionate penalties" is really about.

It's a powerful argument, not to be dismissed casually. It probably has (and always has had) more adherents than the strategic stuff we like to support around here.

Bob

[Lloyd_Cole]

No matter the conditions they are still calculable.

Sean

Nonesense. Take the wind at the 12th at Augusta. Experts have been studying it for 50 years. They still can't figuire it out. It's educated guesswork.

[BCrosby]

Adam -

The principal goal of penal architecture is to assure that good shots are properly awarded and bad shot properly punished. It is, at base, about immediate rewards/punishment that are commensurate with the quality of the shot hit.

For example, a "penologist" might object to fw's bunkered only on one side because misses to the other side would go unpunished. Such a fw would fail to "control" misses properly. Two people could miss a shot equally badly, but only one would be punished. The fix? Put bunkers on both sides of the fw.

Bob

 

[Rich Goodale]

I would reply, but I am prohibited from doing so as I (like every poster so far, except for JESII, who speaks only in the theoretical) think that luck is very big part of the game.  Adam, please answer JakaB's question.  In my 7 years on this site I have never seen anybody seriously stating that luck is not part of the game.  Have you?  If not, this is a meaningless thread.

[Adam Clayman]

Rihc, I did answer his question.
I'm sure your reading comprehension is better than mine, but if you really think that noone has ever reffered to luck with disdain as it relates to design, you must be eat'in too much haggas.

[Adam Clayman]

Many people have promoted the elimination of luck, from J. Crane to J.H. Taylor to the USGA in its set-up philosophies.

Not on this board but good enough for media.

[Rich Goodale]

Adam (and Bob)

You were talking and we are talking about guys on this this board, not two old dead guys.  As far as I can see, you are still taking the Fifth.  Is Crosby your attorney?

Hcir

[JESII]

Theoretical???

I'd say it's "theoretical" to suggest two different shots that get two different results has anything to do with luck...

You bring "LUCK" into the equation when you pick a winning number at the roulette wheel and try the same number the next spin...

[Rich Goodale]

JESII

I'm thinking of demoting you to JESI.XCVII

The chance of there ever being a completely identical golf shot are greater than the number of atoms in the universe (or the chance that OJ Simpson is not guilty, take your pick).  To me, that's theory.....

RFGI

[JESII]

RFG,

I'd hate to believe you skipped right from that first post of mine all the way to your own didllings...

Read reply #22...

[BCrosby]

Jeebus. Tough crowd. Somebody skip on their meds?

Bob

[Kirk Gill]

Of course, I would say there is no such thing as "eliminating luck" because luck doesn't play a part in golf.  

Of course there is luck in golf. Perhaps it is just the word you hate, so maybe it would be better if I said "Of course there are things out of the golfer's control that cannot be anticipated or accounted for that have an effect on the golfer's score, for good or for ill."

Better?

Needless to say, some courses have more of these things than others. I played TOC with a member of the Royal and Ancient along with a couple of his buddies. On one blind drive (forgive me for not remembering which hole, it was almost 20 years ago), The member and one of his friends both hit what appeared to be good, straight drives - but as soon as the friend hit his, the member said "bad luck on that one. You're in the bunker." Which, in fact, he was. The member's drive lay some 10 yards outside the bunker. Was that luck? Not really, that result was due either to a lack of knowledge of that bunker's location (likely) or poor execution (a bit less likely).

Later in the same round, I hit a tee shot on 17 that brutally sliced into the Hotel grounds, hit the metal shed, and bounded high in the air back to the middle of the fairway. An horrific shot, unduly rewarded. Something I'll never forget.

Lucky? Well, duh.

[Rich Goodale]

JESII

I did read your post #22, but that was before you edited it.

As you may remember (or wish to forget), the original unedited post said, in it's entirety:

"Plastics."

Now that I've read the edited post, never mind.....

Bob

You are excused, too.

Rich

[JESII]

That's worthy of another pint when I finally pay off...priceless!

[Mark Pearce]

Of course, I would say there is no such thing as "eliminating luck" because luck doesn't play a part in golf.  

Of course there is luck in golf. Perhaps it is just the word you hate, so maybe it would be better if I said "Of course there are things out of the golfer's control that cannot be anticipated or accounted for that have an effect on the golfer's score, for good or for ill."

Better?

Needless to say, some courses have more of these things than others. I played TOC with a member of the Royal and Ancient along with a couple of his buddies. On one blind drive (forgive me for not remembering which hole, it was almost 20 years ago), The member and one of his friends both hit what appeared to be good, straight drives - but as soon as the friend hit his, the member said "bad luck on that one. You're in the bunker." Which, in fact, he was. The member's drive lay some 10 yards outside the bunker. Was that luck? Not really, that result was due either to a lack of knowledge of that bunker's location (likely) or poor execution (a bit less likely).

Later in the same round, I hit a tee shot on 17 that brutally sliced into the Hotel grounds, hit the metal shed, and bounded high in the air back to the middle of the fairway. An horrific shot, unduly rewarded. Something I'll never forget.

Lucky? Well, duh.

I've played the Old Course once, as a 17 handicapper.  Having made my 4 with a tap-in at 17 (my chip hit the pin and stopped 6 inches from the cup) I proceeded to hitdriver 5 iron at 18 because I was stupid enough not to believe the yardage chart.  I flew my second into the car park/road behind the green, where it hit the bonnet (hood) of a parked car, flew almost vertically upwards, hit another car and bounced back off the tarmac onto the green, stopping 20 feet from the hole, from where I two-putted for par to the astonishment and entertainment of the handful of onlookers.  I'm willing to believe that luck (or a degree of randomisation which is, for allintents and purposes luck) plays a part in golf and I'm willing to admit to enjoying that element.

[Mark Pearce]

Kirk and Mark

To bring the discussion back where we started, exactly how did the archie design/plan for these so called lucky elements you write of?

Ciao

Oh Sean!  Since God designed TOC I'm sure he was smart enough to allow for the invention of the internal combustion engine, the design of Vauxhall Cavaliers and the building of a road/car park behind the 18th green.  Of course, since the early '90s there have been changes behind the 18th green - there's now a seating area and parking is no longer allowed.  I call for a full and complete restoration.

In reality, "luck" depends on small local features.  If a fairway has a continuous incline on one side and a ball bounces off it that isn't "luck".  If a fairway has, say rig and furrows running along it then a ball bouncing on one side can be returned towards the centre of the fairway whilst one bouncing a yard or two inside it may bounce into rough, or worse.  Those little micro-indentations you love at Kington can produce very different effects on two balls with identical trajectories landing only inches apart.  That is as close to luck as anything can be.  So architects can design for luck by including features with dimensions smaller than the standard deviation of a strong golfer's accuracy on the shot being played.  

It isn't bad luck if a player misses his intended target by 10 yards.  It may fairly be described as bad luck if a golfer gets a bad bounce when a balllanding within a yard or so of where that ball lands would have got a good or neutral bounce.  

Now I like that element of randomness.  I loved Kington and its micro-undualtions.  I loved the rig and furrow fairways at Alwoodley just as I love them at The Northumberland.  You may not like the word luck and you may be correct that a perfectly good physical reason can be given for any of these effects but whatever you want to call it the result of some of these features is what most people would recognise as luck.

[Matthew Hunt]

There's not a lot of luck involved when a course is set up and maintained like Royal Montreal (or Royal Melbourne, as Johnny managed to call it once) for the President's Cup.  Soft fairways, soft greens, target golf at the highest level.  Luck is not a factor, skill is everything.

Contrast this with a hard, fast links with rumpled fairways and fairway bunkers that are actually part of the fairway.  Steep, irregular slopes in those fairways that can funnel one tee ball into a fairway bunker and another into the garden spot.  Luck is a factor at all times.  The greens are hard.  Sometimes you get a lucky bounce, sometimes you don't.

Which would you prefer to play?  

The second one, it sounds like a fun course. Is it public or pravite

Dealing with good and bad luck is a skill of the sport.

[Kirk Gill]

I agree that the smaller the feature, the harder it is to predict what will happen.  That isn't luck though.  We say its luck, but in reality we aren't nearly precise enough most of the time with our shotmaking so these apparently odd bounces appear to be random.  The same physics for large features are in place for small features.  

My point is the vast majority of what we call luck ain't luck.  I would say even Kirk's event off the wall is predictable and at least hoped for (as expected for would take a serious amount academic study for which I hope our government never bankrolls, but probably already has) for those who are experienced enough in that sort of shot on that hole. These events are on the whole, overwhelmingly predictable and calculable happenings if we are clever enough and experienced enough - in theory.  I would go so far as to say the number of true luck happenings which occur on a golf course is so rare that its statistically nonexistant.  These events certainly cannot be designed for.  Just the fact that someone would be designing for luck rules out that luck was actually in play.  The whole idea of luck is that events are out of our control.  

Maybe there are a lot more people out there who are out of control than I realized!  

Ciao  

Guilty as charged.


There are those who hold to the theory that anything that is possible, is inevitable. That the mere existence of a potentiality is proof that it will happen. If it never happens then, for whatever reason, it was impossible.

There are others who just say sh*t happens.

I would just say that the amount of "luck" present in any situation increases as the number of variables in a particular situation increase.

A flat, soft fairway introduces fewer variables than a firm'n'fast, bumpy one does (anyone here a physicist who wants to help me out here?). An unraked, natural bunker introduces more variables than a perfectly coiffed one does. A course that gets more  play likely has more divot holes than another one might. Yet another variable. Would you seriously try to tell me that a golfer's skill has anything to do with whether or not their shot lands in a divot? Increased competency at the game of golf reduces the total number of variables in any particular golf shot, yes, but competency cannot remove all uncontrollable variables from every shot, especially when an architect has attempted to create/leave in place as many of these variable characteristics as possible.

Of course, for you determinists out there, God may have fated all of this from the start, and I may be missing the mark completely.

[Lloyd_Cole]

The whole idea of luck is that events are out of our control.  
 

Sean

Wrong again.
Take this very simple example.
I misread a putt, I then make a bad stroke and fail to start the ball on the line I intended. It goes in.
How is that not luck? and yet all the events were within my control.

It's guesswork out there. Wind is not a constant, it gusts. Some become very skilled at predicting the outcome of events that they set in motion. But it's about probabilities, it's statistics, not maths.

[Adam Clayman]

Barry Greenstein had an interesting perspective on luck. He said that some people are more lucky than others. Corollating it to bell a shaped curve, where most peole are in the middle and have equal shares of good and bad luck. "Mush" in "Bronx Tales" is the epitome of who you don't want to be.

My feelings are that on any quality medium for the sport, luck plays a role. Luck could be lurking out there and will identify which side of the bell shaped curve any golfer is on, that particular day.
On less inspiring canvas, luck seldom plays a role because there is no outlet for the unpredictable.

[Mark Pearce]

Sean,

I think we're saying the same thing, in a way, but I think you over-estimate the predictability of shots and are unwilling to accept as random (lucky) things that, to all intents and purposes are.  Let me put it this way.  Put a ball on a tee at Kington (say the 7th tee) and have Iron Byron hit driver.  The ball may well land in a micro-undulation and take a deviating bounce.  You appear to argue that if Iron Byron hits another ball from the exact same tee, with exact same impact parameters and the "exact" same wind you'll get the same result.  The fact is, you won't.  That wind is turbulent and un-modelable on a micro scale.  The two balls will, inevitably, meet different conditions as they pass through that turbulence and may land, say 12 inches apart (in fact I suspect the dispersal due to turbulence could be significantly more than 12 inches, I'd be happy to believe yards).  Even that 12 inches can make a very big difference to where that ball ends up.

I know you don't want to describe that as luck but I'm afraid that the very, very best prediction that physics can make for where a ball ends up will have a probabilistic (sp?) element to it and I'm happy to call that luck.  

I think that's a good thing on a golf course, by the way.

Of course these effects have much less impact on the eventual resting position of a ball on dull golf courses without small dimensioned obstacles.

Regards,

Mark

[Mark Pearce]

Sean,

You're wrong in your premise that the information is available.  The turbulence in the wind cannot be accurately predicted on the micro-scale required to predict how it will affect a golf ball in flight.  To all intents and purposes turbulence demonnstrates random behaviour.  Therefore we can't predict the outcome of a shot with the accuracy you believe and we are not in control.

Regards,

Mark

[Lloyd_Cole]

My last post.
Mark is correct but is not going far enough. Wind is not the only unpredictable variable. Ground conditions cannot be 100% accurately known in advance of settting the ball in motion. Take the example of dew in the morning - all it takes is a cloud or two to prevent one area drying at the same rate as it's neighbor.
Greg Norman and Johnny Miller in their prime were supposed to have been able to work to half yards, such was their skill/feel for distance control. That's 18 inches. I would argue that any closer to the hole would simply be the result of luck. Just as when a 'logically thought out and perfectly executed' shot finishes somewhere other than close to the hole. All it takes is a gust of wind, a a damp patch of fringe, a divot, a spike mark.
Over and out.