Biggest gap between professional & enthusiast?
Discussion
blueg33 said:
I think all we achieved here is to recognise that there is a huge gulf between most enthusiasts and professional sports people, and the golf is only a sport to those who care 
If it helps the golfers arguments though, Bridge was included as a demonstration sport at a recent winter olympics
Bridge, like chess, is not a sport. If you can play it on a computer, or via electrodes planted in your temporal lobes, or if you're purely a brain in a jar, it's not a sport.If it helps the golfers arguments though, Bridge was included as a demonstration sport at a recent winter olympics
Dubai said:
Cheib said:
AS far as golf is concerned your playing off 28 which is I think the highest handicap a bloke can have ? A single digit player wouldn't expect to hit a green every time...but he would 80% of the time....but on the occasion he missed he'd expect to get up and down 70% of the time....a 14 handicap golfer has to get up and down 50% of the time to play to his handicap. Still in % terms the difference between a pro is not that big.....say a pro goes round a par 70 in 68 and a handciap golfer goes round in a 88.....that's maybe a 30% difference. It's just not that big a difference.
Considering the average tour pro on the PGA tour only hits 66% of greens in regulation there is simply no way a single digit golfer hits 80%. I'd say closer to 30-40%.The difference between a scratch golfer and an 18 h'cap is amazing, on top of that, the difference between a scratch golfer and a top 50 golfer is probably more staggering than the 0-18 golfer.
What the pros do is play the other bits of the round in 30 shots, where the normal golfer takes at least 60.
Reducing those 60 shots into 30 is so huge a task that only a few hundred out of millions of golfers worldwide have managed to do it. Even with multi-million dollar incentives, still almost nobody can do it.
Happy82 said:
Derek Chevalier said:
Do you think there is/was performance enhancing drug use going on at the top level?
I've mentioned before that I had a friend who left our club to play for a Premiership side and came back looking like a bodybuilder a year later. Our fitness coach was pretty clued up on what can and cannot be achieved and reckoned he was put on something to gain so much bulk in a short time.
Without wishing to read every post; either golf (difference between amateur and pro is staggering) or NFL: The level between the college game and the pro's is unbelievable.
Guesstimate (32 teams; 50 on roster) 1600 active professionals at anyone time out of a pool of hundreds of thousands. Admittedly I'm aware that a lot of college players have no intention of ever trying out for the NFL as they know they aren't good enough but there are a lot of former football (soccer) players which were signed up as schoolboys that find themselves playing semi pro when cast aside who can then make it into the coca colas at some point. This generally doesn't happen in US footy though (Kurt Warner aside) and is getting rarer imo.
Guesstimate (32 teams; 50 on roster) 1600 active professionals at anyone time out of a pool of hundreds of thousands. Admittedly I'm aware that a lot of college players have no intention of ever trying out for the NFL as they know they aren't good enough but there are a lot of former football (soccer) players which were signed up as schoolboys that find themselves playing semi pro when cast aside who can then make it into the coca colas at some point. This generally doesn't happen in US footy though (Kurt Warner aside) and is getting rarer imo.
BarnatosGhost said:
Dubai said:
Cheib said:
AS far as golf is concerned your playing off 28 which is I think the highest handicap a bloke can have ? A single digit player wouldn't expect to hit a green every time...but he would 80% of the time....but on the occasion he missed he'd expect to get up and down 70% of the time....a 14 handicap golfer has to get up and down 50% of the time to play to his handicap. Still in % terms the difference between a pro is not that big.....say a pro goes round a par 70 in 68 and a handciap golfer goes round in a 88.....that's maybe a 30% difference. It's just not that big a difference.
Considering the average tour pro on the PGA tour only hits 66% of greens in regulation there is simply no way a single digit golfer hits 80%. I'd say closer to 30-40%.The difference between a scratch golfer and an 18 h'cap is amazing, on top of that, the difference between a scratch golfer and a top 50 golfer is probably more staggering than the 0-18 golfer.
What the pros do is play the other bits of the round in 30 shots, where the normal golfer takes at least 60.
Reducing those 60 shots into 30 is so huge a task that only a few hundred out of millions of golfers worldwide have managed to do it. Even with multi-million dollar incentives, still almost nobody can do it.
The thing is though that's not the way the game is played....it's about getting round a course in a total number of shots rather than a base case.
If you applied the same logic to marathon running it just makes a marathon runner look even better in comparison to an enthusiast. Is we say the absiolute best time you can run a marathon is two hours and that they normally run 2hrs 15 min that's 15 mins worse than is humanly possible but an enthusiast runs it in fours hours so 120 mins worse than is humanly possible.....
So a pro is marathon runner is eight times better than an enthusaist but a golder is only three times better.
You can't reduce it to such basic maths!
Marathon runners, like elite sprinters or your average NBA centre or NFL offensive lineman are freaks who are simply built differently.
A skinny man shouldn't be able to run that fast for that long, nor should a 20-plus stone lump be able to move so quickly or be so nimble, but they are genetically gifted people who have trained hard and well for a very long time to get where they are.
Surely you could apply that to most sports? Golfers having naturally great hand-eye co-ordination or racing drivers having lightning-fast reflexes? Skill can be taught, but natural talent means you start much farther along than Mr Average...
Marathon runners, like elite sprinters or your average NBA centre or NFL offensive lineman are freaks who are simply built differently.
A skinny man shouldn't be able to run that fast for that long, nor should a 20-plus stone lump be able to move so quickly or be so nimble, but they are genetically gifted people who have trained hard and well for a very long time to get where they are.
Surely you could apply that to most sports? Golfers having naturally great hand-eye co-ordination or racing drivers having lightning-fast reflexes? Skill can be taught, but natural talent means you start much farther along than Mr Average...
Cheib said:
BarnatosGhost said:
Dubai said:
Cheib said:
AS far as golf is concerned your playing off 28 which is I think the highest handicap a bloke can have ? A single digit player wouldn't expect to hit a green every time...but he would 80% of the time....but on the occasion he missed he'd expect to get up and down 70% of the time....a 14 handicap golfer has to get up and down 50% of the time to play to his handicap. Still in % terms the difference between a pro is not that big.....say a pro goes round a par 70 in 68 and a handciap golfer goes round in a 88.....that's maybe a 30% difference. It's just not that big a difference.
Considering the average tour pro on the PGA tour only hits 66% of greens in regulation there is simply no way a single digit golfer hits 80%. I'd say closer to 30-40%.The difference between a scratch golfer and an 18 h'cap is amazing, on top of that, the difference between a scratch golfer and a top 50 golfer is probably more staggering than the 0-18 golfer.
What the pros do is play the other bits of the round in 30 shots, where the normal golfer takes at least 60.
Reducing those 60 shots into 30 is so huge a task that only a few hundred out of millions of golfers worldwide have managed to do it. Even with multi-million dollar incentives, still almost nobody can do it.
The thing is though that's not the way the game is played....it's about getting round a course in a total number of shots rather than a base case.
If you applied the same logic to marathon running it just makes a marathon runner look even better in comparison to an enthusiast. Is we say the absiolute best time you can run a marathon is two hours and that they normally run 2hrs 15 min that's 15 mins worse than is humanly possible but an enthusiast runs it in fours hours so 120 mins worse than is humanly possible.....
So a pro is marathon runner is eight times better than an enthusaist but a golder is only three times better.
The difference being that running a marathon is a single task with an infinitely variable measurement, and so making a tiny improvement of less than 0.1% is always within reasonable sight.
A round of golf is not a single task, it is 18 tasks. And the minimum improvement one can make is a whole shot. Which in reality means a whole extra birdie or extra eagle.
At the elite level, finding those shots is much harder, because you're talking about doing the task ( completing the hole) not 1% better, or 5% better, but 25% or 33% better, with no middle-ground available.
The way golf scoring works, incremental improvements are exponentially difficult to achieve. Playing every hole 1% better is worthless/impossible depending on your viewpoint. You need big jumps.
Yet a single mistake on just one of your tasks undoes all your hard work on the other 17.
BarnatosGhost said:
Cheib said:
BarnatosGhost said:
Dubai said:
Cheib said:
AS far as golf is concerned your playing off 28 which is I think the highest handicap a bloke can have ? A single digit player wouldn't expect to hit a green every time...but he would 80% of the time....but on the occasion he missed he'd expect to get up and down 70% of the time....a 14 handicap golfer has to get up and down 50% of the time to play to his handicap. Still in % terms the difference between a pro is not that big.....say a pro goes round a par 70 in 68 and a handciap golfer goes round in a 88.....that's maybe a 30% difference. It's just not that big a difference.
Considering the average tour pro on the PGA tour only hits 66% of greens in regulation there is simply no way a single digit golfer hits 80%. I'd say closer to 30-40%.The difference between a scratch golfer and an 18 h'cap is amazing, on top of that, the difference between a scratch golfer and a top 50 golfer is probably more staggering than the 0-18 golfer.
What the pros do is play the other bits of the round in 30 shots, where the normal golfer takes at least 60.
Reducing those 60 shots into 30 is so huge a task that only a few hundred out of millions of golfers worldwide have managed to do it. Even with multi-million dollar incentives, still almost nobody can do it.
The thing is though that's not the way the game is played....it's about getting round a course in a total number of shots rather than a base case.
If you applied the same logic to marathon running it just makes a marathon runner look even better in comparison to an enthusiast. Is we say the absiolute best time you can run a marathon is two hours and that they normally run 2hrs 15 min that's 15 mins worse than is humanly possible but an enthusiast runs it in fours hours so 120 mins worse than is humanly possible.....
So a pro is marathon runner is eight times better than an enthusaist but a golder is only three times better.
The difference being that running a marathon is a single task with an infinitely variable measurement, and so making a tiny improvement of less than 0.1% is always within reasonable sight.
A round of golf is not a single task, it is 18 tasks. And the minimum improvement one can make is a whole shot. Which in reality means a whole extra birdie or extra eagle.
At the elite level, finding those shots is much harder, because you're talking about doing the task ( completing the hole) not 1% better, or 5% better, but 25% or 33% better, with no middle-ground available.
The way golf scoring works, incremental improvements are exponentially difficult to achieve. Playing every hole 1% better is worthless/impossible depending on your viewpoint. You need big jumps.
Yet a single mistake on just one of your tasks undoes all your hard work on the other 17.
The key skill in golf is consistency and not making any mistakes.
Take any two golfers who are say 5 shots on their handicap apart (i.e. 5 and 10 or 18 and 23)....it'll be hard to tell them apart from how they strike the ball but the lower handicap player will be more consistant.
It's a fact that if you sink a 10 foot putt you are performing that task as well as a pro...the difference is that the pro will sink that putt 50% of the time....an 18 handicapper maybe 20%.
BarnatosGhost said:
steve2 said:
So is diving a sport or rifle/ pistol shooting ?
not much sweating doing these
Both sports. Divers are very brave folks. Respect.not much sweating doing these
Cheib said:
A round of golf is one task....not 18 tasks. You can split it down if you want to into by hole or by analyse it by compartments i.e. putting,chipping, driving etc but it remains there is only one score that counts.
The key skill in golf is consistency and not making any mistakes.
Take any two golfers who are say 5 shots on their handicap apart (i.e. 5 and 10 or 18 and 23)....it'll be hard to tell them apart from how they strike the ball but the lower handicap player will be more consistant.
It's a fact that if you sink a 10 foot putt you are performing that task as well as a pro...the difference is that the pro will sink that putt 50% of the time....an 18 handicapper maybe 20%.
I'm sorry but you're talking absolute crap. The key skill in golf is consistency and not making any mistakes.
Take any two golfers who are say 5 shots on their handicap apart (i.e. 5 and 10 or 18 and 23)....it'll be hard to tell them apart from how they strike the ball but the lower handicap player will be more consistant.
It's a fact that if you sink a 10 foot putt you are performing that task as well as a pro...the difference is that the pro will sink that putt 50% of the time....an 18 handicapper maybe 20%.
You've already proven you have no grasp of the real stats and those % above are so far out it's not even true.
I guarantee any keen golfer can spot the difference from a 5 to 10 h'cap from 1 shot.
Tiggsy said:
Zaxxon said:
samwilliams said:
Does motorracing go in the same category too?
I was thinking the same, perhaps these twerps should see how fit James Toseland was and what training he did when he was racing."My off season training regime is varied and consists of running, road cycling, mountain biking, motocross riding, ski paddling and beach training we call “ins and outs”.
The schedule varies, but it can be up to 5 hours a day for 6 days of the week and 1 rest day, but even that involves a 20 minute jog and some stretching.
In a normal week, I cycle 120kms, run 60kms, paddle my ski about the same distance and mountain bike ride for about 3 hours. When I ride the motocross bikes, I usually do a couple 45min race simulations in an afternoon session.
Rob Crick; At this point his heart rate hit about 175 beats per minute, however by the end of the main straight it had dropped again to around 150 bpm. To perform at this pace for 45 minutes you have to be extremely fit."
So just what does it take to be an 'elite athlete'?
The thing with the golf comparisons is that they are misleading. Take an 18 handicapper. He won't ever play off the championship tees, so he's likely to be playing a 6,000-6,500 yard course. The pros regularly play 7,000 plus yards. On courses that have been toughened up for the pros. Put an 18 handicapper off the championship tees at Bethpage Black in US Open conditions and he'd struggle to break 120.
vetrof said:
You serious? From Chris Vermulen's website.
"My off season training regime is varied and consists of running, road cycling, mountain biking, motocross riding, ski paddling and beach training we call “ins and outs”.
The schedule varies, but it can be up to 5 hours a day for 6 days of the week and 1 rest day, but even that involves a 20 minute jog and some stretching.
In a normal week, I cycle 120kms, run 60kms, paddle my ski about the same distance and mountain bike ride for about 3 hours. When I ride the motocross bikes, I usually do a couple 45min race simulations in an afternoon session.
Rob Crick; At this point his heart rate hit about 175 beats per minute, however by the end of the main straight it had dropped again to around 150 bpm. To perform at this pace for 45 minutes you have to be extremely fit."
So just what does it take to be an 'elite athlete'?
Thanks Vetrof, you have saved me the trouble of explaining. Some people don't have a clue."My off season training regime is varied and consists of running, road cycling, mountain biking, motocross riding, ski paddling and beach training we call “ins and outs”.
The schedule varies, but it can be up to 5 hours a day for 6 days of the week and 1 rest day, but even that involves a 20 minute jog and some stretching.
In a normal week, I cycle 120kms, run 60kms, paddle my ski about the same distance and mountain bike ride for about 3 hours. When I ride the motocross bikes, I usually do a couple 45min race simulations in an afternoon session.
Rob Crick; At this point his heart rate hit about 175 beats per minute, however by the end of the main straight it had dropped again to around 150 bpm. To perform at this pace for 45 minutes you have to be extremely fit."
So just what does it take to be an 'elite athlete'?
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