March 28, 2008

Numbers prove Nelson is still King of the Wild : Maybe this is the one way to figure out who is best no matter when they played.

read story | posted by dbt302 to Golf at 11:57 AM CDT (7 comments total)

Someday (but not today) someone is going to come up with one of these systems that actually does what they all set out to - definitively state who was best. Then we can all go home and stop talking about sport, and won't that be a relief?

If I were designing a system, it would have to include a "how much flakey statistical debate did this player's abilities inspire?" factor. Tiger would score quite heavily on that.

Comment icon posted by JJ at 12:40 PM CDT on March 28

I would suspect that the international fields today are much stronger and more competitive than back in the '40s and '50s.

Comment icon posted by Landis at 1:21 PM CDT on March 28

Whatever.
Tiger Woods' video game kicks Byron Nelson's video game's ass. And Tiger's wife is hotter.

I'm no better at commenting on golf than I am at futbol. So sorry.

Comment icon posted by THX-1138 at 1:28 PM CDT on March 28

I think a group of MIT statistical scholars just came up with a very complicated program on a very powerful computer that proves, once and for all, without any shadow of a doubt, that in certain statistical fields apples are superior to oranges.

Comment icon posted by tahoemoj at 2:08 PM CDT on March 28

Cigarette smoking has been proven to be the leading cause of statistics. But can sports be far behind?

Comment icon posted by TheQatarian at 4:03 PM CDT on March 28

Footballs, baseball, bats, pucks, basketballs, all have remained pretty much the same over many years.

Golf equipment has not. Today's clubs and balls are much superior to what was used even 15 years ago. I don't feel any statistical machine can make any sort of accurate comparison from Nelson to Woods.

Comment icon posted by BoKnows at 4:24 PM CDT on March 28

What I take from all this is that Tiger's competition are not as close to his level as Nelson's (or Nicklaus') were to theirs. Earning points based on margin of victory is misleading at best. Tiger is very agressive to the end, while golfers in the not too distant past were know to become very conservative with a 8 shot lead with 5 holes to go.

Bo, totally agree that the equipment of today makes it difficult to compare Nelson and Woods, however, each was playing against competition using the same type of equipment as they were.

No statistical analysis is going to stop the debate...one of the great things about sports!

Comment icon posted by dviking at 4:32 PM CDT on March 28

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