I’m a sports number cruncher from way back (I used to be a statistician/bookkeeper for a division I university) and so I have appreciated MJ On Golf’s analysis of the top players in golf.
MJ’s statistic—Earnings Per Start—is an interesting way of assessing a player’s skills. It’s much better than the overall money list because it compensates for the fact that some players (like Mr. Woods) play in relatively few tournaments, while others crawl up the list by nickel and dimeing it (relatively speaking) in every tournament that can get into.
Theoretically speaking, a nickel and dimer could appear near the top of the money list without ever having finished in the top ten of a tournament.
MJ says that the idea came from his father’s system of rating thoroughbreds. I get a chuckle out of thinking of the guys on the PGA tour as horses. Think of Barbara Walters interviewing Tiger Woods: “If you were a horse, what kind of a horse would you be?”
But I digress.
Much to my delight, MJ has made his current EPS statistics available to other golf bloggers via a feed from his site. I’ve got the stats in the sidebar.
Thanks MJ.
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Yeah, and more information is available at two URLs:
http://thesandtrap.com/archives/site_news/earnings_per_start.php
http://www.mjongolf.com/archives/2005/03/12/helping-spread-the-data/
Thanks for the great article and endorsement. I am somewhat amazed that I haven’t seen this common sense stat before. By the way, if I was a horse I would simply want to be put out to stud.