I’m pretty sure I just coined a new word…statted. I sit here watching Tasman dismantle Auckland. A 100,000 person population base vs. a 1.4million population base. How does this happen? Good to see…don’t know the answer, and am not going to try to answer.
I’ve just read an article about the golf swing, moreover the acceleration through the ball of the club. SNORE. I have been in and viewed arguments regarding the science of the golf swing and how this group is wrong and that group is dumb and that group is insane. The people who are getting the coaching or the ‘benefit’ of this knowledge seem to be fantastic ball strikers and ratshit players. 2014 scoring average leader, Rory McIlroy has a stroke average of 68.96. In 1990 Greg Norman led the scoring average with 69.10. That’s 0.14 of a stroke difference. Technology is better, courses are better, players are better paid, stronger and yet the scoring average is not even a quarter of a shot different than it was 24 years ago? But I thought we had science Brian Manzella??
As I digest that shit, I was listening to Tony Veitch last week who was interviewing a referee of the ITM Cup who is new to the set up this year. He said he has access to every area of his performance via a computer program so he can, and i paraphrase, analyse the bejesus out of his game. And, one wonders, his assessors can too.
I was looking at ESPN the other day and wondering to myself (there is an awful lot of spare room up there) why we need even half of the stats offered by those sports. To find out how many touchdowns a player has in the last 1/809th of a game while wearing his mouth-guard wrong and wearing shiny boots is probably irrelevant.
My point is, do you think that we are over-analysing sports and sports people. Imagine, if you will, teaching a child prodigy the ins-and-outs of pendulum theory and throwing Sir Issac’s laws at him or her all to get them to hit a bloody golf shot. I’m reminded of a situation a few years back playing golf with the great Stuart Jones. The Emperor, was humming and harring about his ball which was in a divot. he was taking various clubs out and placing them behind the ball. One of playing partners asked him what he was up to. He said he was trying figure out what club had made the divot so he could better get his club on the ball. The moral (I think) is that there is no substitute for actually playing the game and experiencing the game as a whole. Let’s not complicate our great games – all of them – with shit we don’t need. Sure there is a place for technology and science and stats but not at the expense of the game.
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