The sand shot on 15 was unreal
The sand shot on 15 was unreal
Tennis is a different sport though. You only have to beat 5 or 6 guys to win the championship. In Golf, you have to literally beat the entire field, all 100 and something. You cant just be better than the guy you are playing. You have to better than everybody that is playing.
Not sure about Nicklaus era of golf, he was great obviously. Not sure on the amount of competition. Finishing top ten all the time is great, but if there were only 40 in a tournament, not that astounding. Maybe someone of that generation can enlighten us on that.
What happens if they are still tied after the 18 hole playoff?
So by that argument, teams like the 1990's chicago bulls could never be considered *that* dominant. In the finals, they only played 4 different teams... Would they be more dominant if they had a round robin tournament or something?
Due to the type of sport, you play fewer people at each contest, but that's how it works with tournaments. You can't dismiss the dominance of Federer because of the sport he plays...
BTW - That was one hell of a contest today. Sudden death it is!
Great Open. Best golf I've seen.
It does make a difference when you start talking about odds. You used the fact that Federer is a heavier vegas fav at his tournaments, but golf odds and tennis odds are two different things for the reasons I stated above. Maybe you are getting more at the point with the Bulls comment. These things are impossible to compare because of the nature of the sports.
There are no other sports that can mimic golf competition. You have to beat the entire field to win. It would be like a sprinter having to take on all 100 opponents at once instead of running in 8 man heats. Chances are that one guy will have a great race in the race with 100 than if you let the field dwindle down to 8 through many heats. It is a statistical difference.
But in tennis those 5-6 guys can actively affect your results. Your opponents (by playing against you defensively) actually determine what happens to you. In golf you can say he is taking on all 100 opponents (or 40, or 9 million, or 3) but nothing they do has anything to do with him (directly that is; obviously the pressure to shoot the best score or "catch" the guy ahead of you could get in your head, but that is on you, not anything they are doing).
And even using the sprinting analogy, I think it would be harder to win several heats than one big 100 person race. That is, the winner of several heats would be more likely to be the "better" sprinter and not just someone who had one good race. I'm not sure how that is all that different from golf, though with several "cuts" in each tournament.
The OPEN is next month...
But yes, that is probably the best major I've seen -
It was better than the 1999 US Open which was probably the one I liked the best -
Maybe not as moving as the 86 Masters with Jack, but the fact that it was basically 37 holes of knock-down drag out golf over the past 24 hours may have pushed it over the top -
''Don't be a bad dagh..."
I think it's the best major I've ever seen. Can't wait till the Open next month...
Think of it statistically (numbers made up for those involved). Statiscally, Tiger woods could beat the bottom 78 guys 99.9% of the time. The middle 25 95% of the time and the top 25 90% of the time. Say he had to do match play with these guys and it was a tournament, he would face a bottom one hundred guy the first two rounds, middle 25 guy the next two rounds and a top 25 guy the last two rounds possibly. So, the stats would go .999^2 X .95^2 X .9 ^2, giving him a 73% chance of winning. say he has to beat all of them, then it is .999^78 X .95^25 X .90^25, giving him a 2 percent chance to win. It probably isnt that much disparity but you get my drift. If you face 6 guys individually that you have a good chance of beating over 100 guys have a good chance of beating individually, you obviously have a better chance with the 6 guys. This analogy holds true on the sprinter portion too, but with less disparity.
Tiger has a good shot at winning 3 straight US Open's...next year is at Bethpage where he won in 2002 and the following year is at Pebble Beach where he destroyed the field in 2000....I will say that this is the best open since Phil and the late Payne Stewart went back and forth at Pinehurst...
i don't think you are doing the statistics right, but i am not going to take the time to figure it out accurately. the difference that you are not considering is the fact that in a single elimination tournament, you have to play well EVERY round. you can't afford to have a bad round and make it up later. plus, like inudesu said, you have to play AGAINST other players in tennis. in golf, there is no such thing as unfavorable matchups with other players (maybe with courses, but the players don't factor in).
i will agree, though, that tiger is rediculously dominant. so is federer.
the question that comes to mind with both of them is just how good are the other players compared to previous generations? what if federer had to face agassi and sampras? what if tiger had to face nicholas? i don't follow golf, but there were some great players in the agassi/sampras era. it doesn't seem like there are that many now, but it could be because federer is just that good. i truly don't know.