Hybrid-Heaven
Well-Known Member
- Oct 22, 2006
- 36
- 0
The Ryder Cup has always bothered me for some reason as not being a good way of testing who's the best players in the world.
Yesterday watching the Tiger...err Target World Challenge it hit me. OK, hear me out! All of the team events that I'm familiar with utilize stroke play, from High School golf to the World Golf Championships.
Look at yesterdays hypothetical results:
Team USA
-25:usflag:
Team Europe
-18
This is a team without Jim Furyk, Phil Mickelson, Stewart Cink, Joe Durrant, Brett Wetterich, Chad Campbell, Lucas Glover, Ben Crane, or Aaron Olberholser. All ranked in the top 50. Instead we had Fred Couples (62) and John Daly who shot 9 over and is the 142 ranked player in the world.
I counted the best 6 scores from Europe, even though they had seven playing (I didn't count Olazbal's +8). The six I counted were from the 8th, 9th, 12th, 14th, 15th and 17th ranked players in the world.
So for kicks I went back and just grabed another 4-day event where both top Americans and Euro's played, the WGC Am Ex Championship. Totalled lowest six scores like I did from the Target Challenge:
Team USA
-75:usflag:
Team Europe
-56
I found this interesting, so I went back and did all of the majors:
PGA
Team USA
-66:usflag:
Team Europe
-47
US Open
Team Europe
+48:ukflag:
Team USA
+50
Masters
Team USA
-21:usflag:
Team Europe
+14
So I did hypotheticals on 6 events, and Team USA was 5-1, and lost by only two strokes in the US Open, but won by 35 shots at the Masters!
So it begs the question: How can the Europeans be considered better golfers cause they win some weird 4 day event once every two years?
Yesterday watching the Tiger...err Target World Challenge it hit me. OK, hear me out! All of the team events that I'm familiar with utilize stroke play, from High School golf to the World Golf Championships.
Look at yesterdays hypothetical results:
Team USA
-25:usflag:
Team Europe
-18
This is a team without Jim Furyk, Phil Mickelson, Stewart Cink, Joe Durrant, Brett Wetterich, Chad Campbell, Lucas Glover, Ben Crane, or Aaron Olberholser. All ranked in the top 50. Instead we had Fred Couples (62) and John Daly who shot 9 over and is the 142 ranked player in the world.
I counted the best 6 scores from Europe, even though they had seven playing (I didn't count Olazbal's +8). The six I counted were from the 8th, 9th, 12th, 14th, 15th and 17th ranked players in the world.
So for kicks I went back and just grabed another 4-day event where both top Americans and Euro's played, the WGC Am Ex Championship. Totalled lowest six scores like I did from the Target Challenge:
Team USA
-75:usflag:
Team Europe
-56
I found this interesting, so I went back and did all of the majors:
PGA
Team USA
-66:usflag:
Team Europe
-47
US Open
Team Europe
+48:ukflag:
Team USA
+50
Masters
Team USA
-21:usflag:
Team Europe
+14
So I did hypotheticals on 6 events, and Team USA was 5-1, and lost by only two strokes in the US Open, but won by 35 shots at the Masters!
So it begs the question: How can the Europeans be considered better golfers cause they win some weird 4 day event once every two years?