Golf Around the World

There have been lots of inspirational stories about over the last wee while that I wanted to share with you.

Last week's inspiration was definitely England's Oliver Wilson who jumped 636 places to 156th in the world rankings after his win in the Dunhill Cup. That’s huge!

This week, huge congrats to Jarod Lyle who finished at 5 under in the Fry's.com Open. This is his returning event on the PGA tour after overcoming leukaemia for a second time. Almost unbelievable and definitely a huge lesson to never give up.

Read this positive story here.

As for what’s been going on around the world - here’s my round-up.

European Tour - Portuguese Masters 

Frenchman Alexander Levy won the Portuguese Masters at Vilamoura by three shots from Nicolas Colsaerts (BEL).

PGA Tour Frys.com Open

Korean Sang-Moon Bae held on to win at Silverado, California this week by 2 shots from Steven Bowditch of Australia in this first tournament of the 2015 FedEx Cup series. Martin Laird of Scotland was one of 5 players who finished joint third alongside Bryce Molder (USA), Hideki Matsuyama (JAP), Retief Goosen (RSA), and Hunter Mahan (USA). Lee Westwood (ENG) tied 12th at 5 shots adrift.

A win for Sang-Moon Bae puts him firmly in the running to be part of the International President’s Cup team to be held in his home country of South Korea in 2015. Jay Haas (USA) and Nick Price (ZWE) are confirmed as captains of their teams.


European Ladies Tour

The next tournament for the European Ladies Tour starts on the 16th October (that’s this Thursday!) at Hibiscus Coast, South Africa. It’s the much anticipated Cell C South African Women's Open.

The current order of merit is 1st: Suzann Pettersen (NOR) on €315,867; 2nd: Shanshan Feng (CHN) on €236,277 and 3rd: Charley Hull (ENG) on €207,180.


LPGA Tour

The LPGA tour is currently in Asia. Last week’s tournament was the Sime Darby LPGA Malaysia at Kuala Lumpur. The winner was Shanshan Feng of China who shot a final round of 63 to win. She takes her LPGA Tour earnings for the year to over $1 million. (Is it just me or does everyone else have to say that figure in the voice of Dr Evil with the necessary pinky to the side of the mouth? Just me?) Stacy Lewis leads the money list with $2.3 million.


Champions Tour

The winner of the SAS Championship on the Champions Tour was Kirk Triplett (USA) by 3 shots from Tom Lehman (USA).

The tour leader, Bernard Langer (GER) was 4th while Colin Montgomerie of Scotland, who is 2nd in the tour rankings, was 19th.



One Asia Tour

The Nanshan China Masters was won by Li Haotong of China with an impressive 9 under score. At 19 years old, this win makes him the youngest winner of an Asia-Pacific OneAsia tournament even with the 40mph gusts of winds on the course. Very impressed.



Amateur Rankings

Scotland's Bradley Neil (18), from Blairgowrie is first in the European Amateur Rankings and 4th in the World Amateur Ranks. This is someone to watch out for - he’s good!

Ashley Chesters of England is 2nd in the European Rankings (15th in the world) with Gary Hurley of Ireland 4th. Another great slew of players coming through the ranks - Ryder Cup stars of the future, perhaps?

Oliver Schniederjans of the USA leads the World Rankings with Jan Rahman-Rodrigues (ESP) 2nd and Robby Shelton (USA) 3rd. Schniederjans deserves a special mention (not because he’ll likely have to spell out his surname to every. single. person. for the rest of his life) but because the boy young man has been a force to be reckoned with on the Amateur Golf Rankings over the last couple of years. This is one player to watch out for in the future.


World Pro Rankings

	Men	Ladies
1	Rory McIlroy (NIR)	Stacy Lewis (USA)
2	Adam Scott (AUS)	Inbee Park (KOR)
3	Sergio Garcia (ESP)	Lydia Ko (NZL)
4	Jim Furyk (USA)	Suzann Pettersen (SWE)
5	Henrik Stenson (SWE)	Shanshan Feng (CHN)
6	Justin Rose (ENG)	Karrie Webb (AUS)
7	Bubba Watson (USA)	So Yeon Ryu (KOR)
8	Jason Day (AUS)	Michelle Wie (USA)
9	Matt Kuchar (USA)	Lexi Thompson (USA)
10	Rickie Fowler (USA)	Hyo-Joo Kim (KOR)

Top Scots: Stephen Gallagher (35) Catriona Matthew (26)

Quote of the Week

The Golf Courses are Finished!!

In a task that I expected to take one week, two at the most, I have now been sitting documenting all the golf courses across Scotland for over a month now.

But (and I need a drumroll for this, I feel…) I have finally finished!!

Woo hoo!

As you know, I love my stats, so I thought it would be fun to have some pointless facts about the golf courses in Scotland that I have grown to loathe over this last month!

Any excuse!

• The longest golf course in Scotland is the St Andrews Duke’s Course at 7512 yards.

• The shortest is 916 yards and is Foulford Inn in Crieff.

• There are 570 courses in Scotland.

• The courses with the most holes (27 for both) are Kilmarnock’s Barassie course and Rutherford Castle.

• The course with the highest par is Lochgreen in Troon. It has a par of 74.

• The highest standard scratch score across the country is 75. This is shared by Roxburghe, Carnoustie, St Andrews Duke’s and Royal Troon.

As much as I do love stats, this is all I could muster after having stared at my spreadsheet for so long. These are all according to my lists. Don’t get mad if there are any discrepancies - they are entirely my own!

The massive list has now been passed to the web-designer bloke who is tearing his hair out as he tries to incorporate them all into a readable, useable design that looks smart. We’re hoping to get the list up and running in segments (otherwise it might be 2015 before we get the whole thing done) so watch the website and we’ll let you know when it’s ready to use!

Smash Factor - Part I

If I had money for every time I’ve read about Smash Factor in the last few months then I’d have a fair bit of money yet, surprisingly, still be fairly in the dark about what it actually is. It’s definitely the kind of thing that you think you understand until you try to explain it…and then realise that you really don't have a clue.

It may have been around longer, but the term has definitely become more prominent in the past 10 or so years as a result of the growth of launch monitors and tracking systems.

But what is it???

Simply, smash factor is a measure of how effectively a player can transfer the speed of the club into the speed of the ball.

Okay, so it’s just how well you hit the ball?

Not quite. It’s not to be confused with launch angle, spin rate, shaft type, etc all of which can also affect the length and accuracy of a drive. (I will discuss these in later blogs so watch out for them!)

So how do you effectively transfer the speed of the club into the speed of the ball?

Are you ready? Here comes the science bit!

Smash factor is based on collision theory and the important factors for golfers are:

• The mass of the golf ball (fixed by regulation) 
• The mass of a “normal” driver (around 200g) 
• The face angle of the club (assume a 10º face) 
• The coefficient of restitution (COR) (maximum 0.83 set by R&A and USGA)
• The miss - the distance that the miss the sweet spot by (in inches) 

[Just to keep things straight - one thing at a time - COR is a number between 0.1 and 1 that shows how much things bounce when they hit each other. If 2 objects just stop on impact the COR would be 0. The COR relates to the collision and is the relative speed after collision divided by the relative speed before collision.]

I feel like I should suggest taking a breather here - I really want this to be as simple as possible but with all the calculations and fancy words it’s not easy!

So, what I’ll do is break this into a number of posts and then do a nice summing up at the end of it all.

The only thing you need to remember from this post is:

Smash factor is a measure of how effectively a player can transfer the speed of the club into the speed of the ball.

What happened at the Dunhill Links?

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to head up to the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship last weekend. Sucks when life gets in the way of a good game of golf.

And by all accounts it was a good game of golf.

After four days of golf at three of Scotland's most famous golf courses - Kingsbarns (Fife), Carnoustie (Angus) and The Old Course, St Andrews (Fife) - a most deserved winner emerged.

Oliver Wilson of England finished at 17 under par with Tommy Fleetwood (ENG), Richie Ramsay (SCO) and Rory McIlroy (NIR) just one shot behind at 16 under par. 

Of the players who made the cut, only three started the week with a lower world ranking than Oliver’s 792nd place. Nick Dougherty (ENG) was 1532th, Niclas Fasth (SWE) was 810th and Garrick Porteous (ENG) 846th.

Wilson, who attended Augusta State University, won 3 US college events in 2003 before making the Walker Cup team in that year. In 2008 he qualified for Europe’s Ryder Cup team. (Yep, that would be that Ryder Cup where Europe had a useless leader!)

Since turning professional in 2003, Wilson has started 228 times on the European Tour and this is his first win despite coming close on a number of occasions. If my sums are correct, he’s been in the runner up spot on the tour on 9 different occasions in his career, including a second place at the Dunhill Links in 2009 - losing out to Simon Dyson by 3 strokes.

Overall, Wilson has had a good career, one which many golfers would aspire to emulate. He has, however, never had that elusive win - until now! Hopefully this will be the start of a great winning streak and of lots more wins on the tour.

Congratulations Oliver, your dedication, belief and never-give-up attitude should be an inspiration to everyone.

© Getty Images

© Getty Images

Quote of the Week

Ryder Cup Recap

Well, that’s the Ryder Cup over for another two years - and what a Ryder Cup it was! I’m not sure that I can think of adjectives enough to describe the roller coaster of emotions that fans went through over the weekend. Regardless of whether you were a fan of Europe or USA.

Anyway, along with all the post-mortems and he said-she said scandals, many statistics have been collected about this year’s Ryder Cup. And, as I’ve said before, I love me a good statistic!

Pre-tournament analysis put the teams pretty even and I suspected it would be the team that wanted to win the most that would be victorious. I believe I was correct on that score.

Still, it’s always fun to do a little post-tournament analysis so here we go…

Day One 

5 v 3 lead for Europe

Day Two

10 v 6 lead for Europe

Day Three

16.5 v 11.5 win for Europe

Yay for Europe. A resounding win.

Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images

That tells the overall story but let's look more carefully at the various chapters.

Day One - Morning (Fourballs)
USA won 2.5 v 1.5


Day One - Afternoon (Foursome)
Europe won 3.5 v 0.5

Mickelson on the 6th Green.
Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

Day Two - Morning (Fourballs)
USA won 2.5 v 1.5


Day Two - Afternoon (Foursome)
Europe won 3.5 v 0.5

Rose and Stenson leaving the first tee.
Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images

Day 3 (Singles)
Europe won by 6.5 v 5.5


If we just look at the Fourball matches USA had the upper-hand winning 5 v 3 over the two days.


The strategy seemed to be similar between the teams in the fourball matches with the two-player pairs consistent between day one morning and day two morning.

In total Europe were 39 under par and USA were 48 under. Interesting.

Keegan Bradley and his awesome jumper
Photo by Harry How/Getty Images

Rory in the bunker on the 9th.
Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images

In the foursome matches Europe trounced the USA 7 v 1.

Europe maintained stable pairings across the weekend with only Stenson being replaced by Kaymer (due to fitness issues, from what I’ve heard).


The USA had only one pairing the same across the weekend (Walker and Fowler) with two pairs changing partners and Speith and Reed being brought in for Mickelson and Bradley.


There seemed to be a little bit of a disconnect here since foursome golf depends on a good match of player's games. For example a player who normally hits approach shots with an 8 iron should not be left with a 5 iron shot due to mismatching players. There is also the psychological aspect of ensuring that the players get on well together.


In these matches Europe were 31 under par and the USA were 2 under par.


This is the chapter which went seriously wrong for the USA and very well for Europe. (7 v 1)

Useless? Hardly.
Image by sportpix.co.uk

GMac hits a beauty on the 2nd.
Photo by Harry How/Getty Images

Kaymer celebrates on the 16th.
Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images

The singles were reasonably even with Europe having a slight advantage (6.5 to 5.5).


Of these games 6 went the way of the world rankings (3 to each side). In the other 6 games Europe turned over the world rankings in 2 of the 3 games.

For the three halved matches, one went against Europe (Rose v Mahan) in terms of world rank and two went against the USA (Poulter v Simpson and Dubuisson v Johnson).

Poulter plays it cool.
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Bubba hypes up the crowd on the 1st tee.
Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images

In conclusion, my opinion is that team USA lost the Ryder Cup primarily in the foursome matches as the rest of the games were evenly matched.

I really don’t want to give more column inches to the (blown out of proportion, in my opinion) supposed tiff between Watson and Mickelson at the final press conference but I do think that Mickelson’s comments tally with my thoughts above. He made specific comments about the ‘pods’ that Azinger had implemented during the USA’s last win in 2008. I think that he particularly was referring to the well-matched and complimentary play between the teams of players that the USA had in Valhalla. Although this is simply supposition, I think that Mickelson felt that there wasn’t the same camaraderie or team feeling either between the foursomes or between the group as a whole. I personally don’t think he was criticising Watson’s leadership (although he certainly wasn’t agreeing with some of the choices made) but just stating what he thought needed to be done to bring the USA back to winning form. The fact that the media jumped on this as an attack on Watson and his leadership, is unfortunate as it takes away from what was a great Ryder Cup.

Stevie G lines up on the 8th.
Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images

Patrick Reed holes a blinder on the 11th.
Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images 

There was some phenomenal golf played at Gleneagles and I want to say a huge well done to all the players.

I’m looking forward to the Ryder Cup 2016 at Hazeltine National Golf Club, Chaska, Minnesota. It’s just a shame that we have to wait 2 whole years!

Donaldson plants one on McGinley
Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images