A GENDER BENDER?

In a recent article in Golf Digest, the case was made that female LPGA pros don’t putt as well as male PGA pros.

Here are a few of the more interesting quotes:

"I've seen only a couple of women who were as good as the bottom male tour player," "The skill set just isn't there." short-game teacher Stan Utley.

Dave Stockton a former tour player: "Emotionally, I think the women are smarter and more honest, but they're also more fragile … "Women remember."

Former USGA Technical Director Frank Thomas "You're just looking at two populations with different skill sets, and one is more skilled than the other… The women have to catch up, and I think they will, soon."

"There are a lot more jobs for men.. .Women almost can't afford to put in the same effort, because the industry doesn't afford them the time it takes to try that hard."    Stan Utley

 "The caliber of instruction out on the LPGA isn't as good because it can't be. It's just that the average PGA Tour player can have his choice of teachers and fly him around week to week if he wants."  ----Hank Haney

Pia Nilsson, a female teacher: “If the women tour players were able to putt consistently on the quality of surfaces the men play on, their stats would look very similar".  (Pia -- actually as greens get faster, putting is more difficult) 

One explanation not considered in the article is the scientific research in the field of man/women differences. Professor Doreen Kimura of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario outlined her research as follows:

“A very large advantage for men is found on tasks that require hitting a target with a missile, or intercepting a moving target. This advantage does not appear to depend simply on men’s greater strength, nor on their more active sports history. It appears to depend on the accurate co-ordination of spatial targets with large-amplitude aiming movements.. [Sex Hormones Influence Human Cognitive Pattern Neuroendocrinology Letters 2002.   Doreen Kimura]   

Other sources agree that gender is involved:

 “…a women’s cognitive abilities and motor skills fluctuate in a reciprocal fashion across the menstrual cycle” says the Encyclopedia of women and gender: sex similarities and differences ..., Volume 1by Judith Worell  

The Takeaway:

   

Much of the science suggests that women have higher skills sets then men in other areas but not in hitting targets. It also is very clear that the results describe gender generalizations and can not be used to predict any particular individual’s performance [man or women]. 

In an opinion driven presentation such as the golf article cited above, to leave out the possibility that the differences are gender related does an injustice to the topic. Unless you’re into hype or political correctness, you don’t leave out the research on gravity when you are searching for clues as to why objects fall to earth --- or into a cup.

On a final note:  Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics says that "Men are hard wired to want to win any competition there is."  "Golf is evolutionarily novel, but it tricks men's minds in a deep seated way.  Throughout evolutionary history, women have been attracted to winners of competitions.  A man believes that if he wins, he's going to get laid."

What do you think?

FINDING THE PERFECT SWING!

CHECK OUT THE OCTOBER ISSUED OF GOLF MAGAZINE FOR MY ARTICLE ON

"FINDING THE PERFECT SWING"  I THINK YOU WILL ENJOY IT.

TJ

Mathematics for Golfers

There are two things about Stephen Leacock a Canadian economist, writer and humorist. [1] he has a sense of humor and [2] he has played golf with the same guy [Jones] that you and I have. Leacock chronicles his golfing experiences in a piece titled “Mathematics for Golfers.” Here are some excepts. 

  

“It is only quite recently that I have taken up golf. In fact, I have played for only three or four years, and seldom more than ten games in a week, or at most four in a day. I have had a proper golf vest for only two years. I bought a "spoon" only this year, and I am not going to get Scottish socks till next year.
In short, I am still a beginner…
Now an ordinary player… wonders whether it will ever be his fate to do all the nine holes of the course in bogey [par]. .. The thing is a simple instance of what is called the mathematical theory of probability… a players… chance of making any one particular hole in par, is one in nine… When he makes it, his chance of doing the same with the next hole is [for ease of calculation] one in ten; therefore, taken from the start, his chance of making the two holes successively in par is one tenth of a tenth chance. In other words, it is one in a hundred.
The reader sees already how encouraging the calculation is. Here is at last something definite about his progress… His chance of making three holes in par, one after the other will be one in 1,000, his chance of four, one in 10,000, and his chance of making the whole round in par will be exactly one in 1,000,000,000--that is, one in a billion games. In other words, all he has to do is to keep right on. But how long will it take to play a billion, playing the ordinary number of games in a month,? Will it take several years? Yes, it will.
… Reckoning four games to the week, and allowing for leap years and solar eclipses, it comes to about once in 2,930,000 years. And from watching Jones play I think that this is about right.
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Stephen Leacock concludes his essay on golf with a description of his playing partner Amphibious Jones:

    “I take the case of Amphibius Jones. There are certain days when he is, as he admits himself, "put off his game" by not having on his proper golf vest. On other days the light puts him off his game; at other times the dark; so, to, the heat, or again the cold. He is often put off his game because he has been up late the night before; or similarly because he has been to bed too early the night before; the barking of a dog always puts him off his game; so do children, or adults, or women. Bad news disturbs his game; so does good; so also does the absence of news… All of this may be expressed mathematically by a very simple application of the theory of permutations and probability..”

     However there is no need for the Leacock formula -- I showed a friend this essay and jokingly asked him if he “knew Jones?” Know Jones”, he said “I am Jones.” All golfers have a little bit of Jones in them.

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 "Trying to go back to that would be a huge mistake"

Shawn Foley on the idea of Tiger going back to the Tiger-2000 Butch Harmon swing-type that led the tour in almost every category.

Hey after his association with Tiger, Hank Haney now charges $25,000 for a playing lesson which ranks him right up there on Americas Most Over-paid list just ahead of the Pentagons $435 hammer and Oprah’s billion dollar’s worth of stealth-talent. $25,000? I can hear the contractor now: “Gentlemen if Hank Haney can get $25,000 for a playing lesson, we can get $400 for our hammer.”

But wait on here – Haney taught the best player in the world for six years so he must be worth it, right? Here is Shawn Foley again on Woods's form under Hank Haney's watch "Let’s be honest about this, it’s not like he was flushing it with Hank." Foley is just a youngster who hasn’t been in the limelight enough to handle the press questions– he needs to copy Tigers style where he talks but says practically nothing. Rule number one is never start a sentence with "Let's be honest about this."

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GIS: As in “he led in greens in speculation”

A derogatory play on words [Greens in Regulation] used to describe a golfer who exaggerates his golfing prowess.

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Miller is on the Case   

  

One of the reasons why Johnny Miller is such a good announcer is that he's not afraid to tell it like it is. With Paul Casey leading the BMW Championship by three shots, the other announcers were bemoaning the fact that Paul Casey was not chosen as a captain's pick for the European Ryder Cup team. Miller went against the flow:  “There is a reason why he has only won 1 time in the US, and we are going to see if it is manifested in the next hour.” Casey ended up frittering the tournament away just as JM predicted.

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Who is the most dis-liked athlete?

That’s easy -- according to the Q “likeability” [or dislikeability] measurement rating system it’s Mike Vick, who served time in prison after he was caught torturing and killing helpless dogs. But in a somewhat surprising # 2 ranking is Tiger Woods who even though he had some personal problems, never broke the law and left millionaires in his wake. To name a few -- his caddies, Fluff,  and Steve Williams, his manager, his lawyers, Nike and his ex-wife who is reported to have received $100 million to $500 million after their six year marriage ended.

 But with tabloids screaming ‘bad Tiger’ for months it easy to forget all the good he has done via his foundation for kids. Since its inception in 1996 by Tiger and his father, Earl, the Tiger Woods Foundation “has reached millions of young people by delivering unique experiences and innovative educational opportunities for youth worldwide.”

I think we [the golf world] lost more than we realized when Earl Woods passed away.

The Takeaway: I wouldn’t be surprised if Tiger loses his number one world ranking in golf but I’d be really surprised if ever again he was Q rated anywhere close to Michael Vick.    

 

Does Your Weight Transfer In Stack and Tilt?

In the previous blog I wrote an answer to a readers question about Stack & Tilt.  Below is the rest of my answer.

“I read an article in the NYT about the Stack and Tilt. Is there anything to this? I see the ads of all the tour players’ switching.” 

Force plate recordings of Stack &Tilters who claim there is no weight transfer show just the opposite. Scientist Rob Neal who holds a Ph.D. in Bio Mechanics sums his heavily documented research on S&T: “… I hope that I have provided evidence to question the statements in the P&B [S&T] articles and at least awaken the consciousness of golf coaches. There is a large chasm between “feel” and “real”. Thus, while it might, for example, feel as though weight is not transferred, the real data show that not to be true.”

A Straw Golfer

S&T has created a bit of a straw man, claiming that traditional instruction teaches a lateral move away from the target.  I think the majority of teachers understand that it is possible to coil into your trail side without this big lateral sway.  Most of us teach coiling than “covering the golf ball” so the S&T bogie man RE the lateral slide is just not the problem. What is a problem, however, is a twenty handicapper trying to recover from what is basically a reverse weight shift by flinging the upper part of the body back away from the target and timing it perfectly in the mere ½ second from the top to impact.  They perform this stack, tilt and fling because they feel reduced power and are trying to make up for it.  Of course some golfers have a lateral sway -- what I am saying is that we do not teach the lateral sway.

Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

There are 26 million golfers who don’t have the time for “Perfect” i.e. a complicated method where everything must fit perfectly or it’s a disaster. As Baddeley said when asked why he switched away from the Stack and Tilt: “because it just got too mechanical and technical for me. Things got a little crowded in my head, and I lost my feel.”

If you devise a method that takes perfect coherence or it doesn’t work then in all practically ‘it doesn’t work.’

FOLEY CAN'T LOSE!!! ---- ARE YOU USING STACK AND TILT?

Right now Tigers new coach Sean Foley is in a perfect position just like Barack Obama was when he took over for George Bush. All bad news is Bushes fault – all good news is the current administrations doing. Doing it this way there is no line where the ‘Bush Stops Here.’ I see no mendacity in this purely human trait -- it is simply part of the Inheritance Syndrome [IS.]

How does it work in golf? Any time Woods plays badly it can be attributed to Hank Haney.  Anytime Woods hits good shots, it’s due to Sean Foley.  If Tiger never gets it back, it will be Hank Haney's fault -- if he does get it back it will be due to Sean Foley. 

Hence the rule about how to become a great teacher: teach great players who are currently down on their luck, but are a lock to recover their game independent of your teaching. Tiger is a lock to recover so get ready for the Sean Foley era.

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This is a question from a reader of my golf page Golf Insider, published nationally on a weekly basis.

Q: I read an article in the NYT about the Stack and Tilt. Is there anything to this? I see the ads of all the tour players’ switching.

A:  As you might imagine their ads don’t tell about the players switching out of Stack and Tilt like Aaron Baddeley and Mike Wier.

The NYT article quoted the founders of Stack and Tilt as follows: “…[Aaron] Baddeley was currently ranked 198th in the world and Weir 101st. At the end of 2008, Baddeley was ranked 37th, Weir 21st. …We don’t have to defend ourselves… Anybody who entered our system improved, and the players that left the system have gotten worse.”

This implies that the dismal rankings of these two stars are due to the fact that they left Stack and Tilt, but let’s put it in a more complete historical prospective. Prior to S&T Baddeley was one of the great young talents who won 2 Australian Opens before he was 24. And of course Mike Weir, one of the greatest players to ever come out of Canada, won the Masters in 2003 and was #5 in the world, before S&T. So another way to look at it is they took the number 5 player in the world and turned him into #21.

And changing Baddeley’s pure swing was like adding a scowl to the Mona Lisa.  He was young and against all advice he scrapped his Mercedes for a go-cart then sputtered all the way to #198 ranking.

So it could be argued that S&T’s former poster boys got much worse and are now struggling to recover from S&T. In general you walk a slippery slope when you base your methods’ effectiveness on a few tour players.  What are you going to say when they leave-- it’s the players fault?

I think the best answer to a player leaving a coach was how Butch Harmon answered Tiger Woods. Classy as always, Harmon had no public criticism of Woods while privately building rival Phil Michelson into a great player.