ARE YOU LUCKY????

On Luck

 When the average golfer hits one into trouble they usually pay dearly but it seems like every time Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods hits the ball in the bushes they have a shot – a little opening and a good lie in the midst of trouble all around. Are the pros really this lucky or does it just appear that way?

According to research by Robert A. Connolly and Richard J. Rendleman, Jr., Univ. of NC at Chapel Hill not only are the pros lucky but their luck is a key element of winning the tournament. In fact there are only a few players such as Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods skillful enough to win with only a little luck.

Of course when great players get a break they are skillful enough to convert the advantage. Too often the average player catches the one over-hanging tree limb and bounces back deeper into the forest while the tour pros can thread it through an opening the width of a cheerleader then bend it to the green and stop it dead. Basically it doesn’t do you much good if you’re lucky without the skill to convert the luck to a lower score.

The researchers found that during the years they studied the PGA Tour winners they attributed 9.6 strokes to good luck. The No. Carolina team put it this way:

‘We find that mean skill alone is insufficient to win a golf tournament; a little luck (i.e., unusually favorable outcomes and/or skilled play) is required for the most highly skilled players such as Tiger Woods, and lots of luck is required for more average players to win.”

What kind of luck are the experts talking about? It’s lucky when the golf course fits your game so that pin positions, tees and lines of play support your game. It’s lucky when they hold the tournament at the golf course you are familiar with, which may be why rookies have such difficulty in winning on the PGA Tour -- the courses are all new to them. Celtic Manor was very familiar to the European Ryder Cup team but not to the Americans and simply knowing where to miss can be a key to the amount of luck you have. As Gary Player said “the harder you work, the luckier you get!”

It’s lucky having a starting time when the weather is nice versus four hours later when the winds are up and the rain is pelting. And of course the more traditional concept of luck -- good bounces, landing on a sprinkler head and ending up next to the flag, hitting the pin and going in the hole, a perfect lie in deep rough and a free drop because of some sort of interference, are all examples of good luck. Ernie Els hooked it 50 yards into the left woods on the 11^th hole at the Masters one year, so deep that the maintenance staff though it safe to pile some bushes there. Els legally dropped it so he had a narrow opening back to the fairway and pulled off the shot. In the most incredible bit of luck I have ever seen, Tiger Woods hit his ball onto the roof of the clubhouse and received a free drop next to the green – it was so far out of bounds that the tournament staff neglected to mark it OB – Tiger sheepishly made par and shrugged his shoulders as if to say – ‘hey I’m not only great but I’m lucky, which makes me really great!”

These are all a matter of luck but its part of a player’s skill package how they respond to both bad and good breaks. The takeaway is that your game must be good enough so that luck becomes the deciding factor – then the key is to hang in there until your turn comes!!