Tiger, Scott, Paddy and the urns Way back I rabbited on at some length about the essential statistical nature of golf, punditry to the contrary. The standard line on Tiger was that he "willed" putts in, chipped in out of sheer superior "clutch" performance etc.. Nonsense. He was just a lot better than everyone else so he won more. Two things have started to happen over the last three years: the bell curve is catching up and he's no longer so much better. Going back to my traditional statistical illustration, Tiger used to get his ball in the last urn an overwhelming proportion of the time. Say there are usually ten balls in that urn - i.e. ten contenders. Everyone has a 1/10 chance of winning. I haven't gone exhaustively through his career but I'd be surprised if he did much better than 15% over his first 100 tournaments. But I think he did do a little better than chance; now he's doing a little worse than chance so his distribution of wins is tending to the Bell curve. He's also not getting his ball in the last day urn as much. He is going to win, just not as often and his chances in the majors are dropping because, by definition, the fields are stronger and there are more rivals for the last urn. Regarding the recent British Open at wonderful Lytham I believe Scott that nerves didn't do him in. Even under pressure all the top pros have certain circular error probability distance for each shot (e.g. 50% of 9 irons will land in a circle of ten yard diameter). Scott just had a bad run of shots that were at the bad end of the distributions. Padraig Harrington let the cat out of the bag when he won at Carnoustie (that Sergio would have won if his putt on the 72nd hadn't lipped out): winning didn't seem any different than losing - it was just his turn on that day.

City edge into the EPL lead As is invariably the case, I watched a different game than the pundits who rabbit on about City being “superior in every position”. It was a good and close game and it could have gone either way. It was decided by a header from a corner that was just random luck. Commentators get corners all wrong. At the EPL level of play goals from corners are a random event. It’s not because Kompany “wanted it more” or Smalling made a positional error. You hit 100 balls into the six yard line and 4 or 5 will end up in the net. City pulled the ball marked “goal” out of the urn. It could just as easily have been United. But the result was fair; United barely created anything. Once again, Rooney was underwhelming in a big game. I don’t understand what Sralex sees in Welbeck. I would still like to see United take the championship but I’m flummoxed over his treatment of Berbatov. Berbatov is the only world-class striker on the squad – EPL top scorer last year to boot – and has the class to have created something against a top team like City but something has rubbed Ferguson up the wrong way and he’s already said that the superb Bulgarian will be on his bike this Summer. On an unrelated matter, there’s a lot of nonsense talked about how “golf needs Tiger”. For the future of golf look to the Lady’s game. Golf is a world game now and its future is in the East. No doubt the USPGA will not like its gradual eclipse by the Asian tours and the dominance of Asian golfers on the USPGA tour; US audiences will likely decline but worldwide the game will get bigger.

Kudos to Chelsea and Bayern Back in September I would have given a Chelsea-Bayern Champions League Final north of 100:1 odds. So congratulations to both teams. Some thoughts. It’s now become a trope to talk of Barca’s “carousel” and to laud Iniesta, Xavi and, of course, Messi. What is truly outstanding about Barca being able to keep possession for more than twice their opposition is that this requires high skill on the part of all ten outplayers. This is not to diminish the big 3, who are wonderful players, but to praise the whole team and Guardiola’s approach that they embody. As much as I’m happy to see someone beat them it’s very hard to work up any kind of dislike for them. They play football the way it should be played and as individuals most, if not all, seem admirable, including Guardiola. John Terry’s sending-off was a true headshaker. What he was thinking is hard to fathom. A completely unnecessary act. I’ve long been of the opinion that Zidane’s moment of madness was partly due to drugs. I wonder if that was the case here, too. Aterwards Terry went on incoherently about “being confused”. I’ve also been thinking some more about the balls they now use. While not an obvious factor in the semifinals I’ve seen some goals lately that show how strangely the balls behave: notable Meireles’ goal in the second leg vs Napoli and a goal by Tevez. The balls that were used in the 60s through 80s would never do that. One dead giveaway is that you never see anyone try to bend the ball with the outside of the foot. Hitting it with the inside of the foot imparts overspin whereas with the outside you get slice or underspin which makes the ball balloon over the bar. With the older balls no-one could hit the ball hard enough with the inside of the foot to beat the goalies but now they’re so light and bouncy that you can. While this undoubtedly contributes to more goals and more excitement – no-one used to come back from 2 goals or more down but it happens frequently now – it distorts individual scoring exploits. Like I’ve said before, Puskas would have scored at least once every game with these balls. Nevertheless, it’s still true that the EPL is the hardest league in which to score. Ronaldo and Messi ain,t scoring no 50 goals in the EPL. (Ronaldo’s best –a phenomenal year by EPL standards – saw him get 31. A final thought. Several sports have been transformed to a greater or lesser degree by technological change of which the ball is one example. Golf clubs and balls are far superior now. Ditto tennis. Some have been changed considerably by rule changes , e.g. basketball and ice hockey. Two sports that have hardly changed are baseball and cricket. The Don rules supreme.

A Green Jacket for the Anti-Tiger
After two weeks of hype from the pundits that Tiger is back and the Masters was going to be a two-horse race between Tiger and Rory we were treated to a race down the back stretch between Bubba and Shrek. What a treat!
I found it hard to root against any of the 10 or so contenders over the back nine. Lee Westwood was desperately unlucky with a couple of putts and deserves to get the monkey off his back. Mickelson is a thoroughly engaging golfer. Hanson showed great grit. Kuchar seems to be a lovely guy. Harrington is similarly honest and well-balanced. Etc. I found Oosthuizen endearing when he won the British and, owner of the sweetest swing, he played really well Saturday and today.
Bubba was featured on Feherty this past week. I'm a big fan of Feherty's show and this was no exception. What Feherty's format allows is for the viewers to get a more rounded view of his guests. In Bubba's case what we could clearly see were the intelligence, humanity and clarity of values that lie behind the self-taught Bubba's "flaky" image, although clearly he's no stranger to fun, goodnatured fun. (The video with Rick Fowler, Hunter Mahan and Ben Crane is hilarious). I would also add he's a refreshing take on the "Christian" athlete. His commitment and love of family that shines through is patently of a piece with his religious beliefs which he does not force on his interviewers but expresses with grace and humility. My favorite part of the post-Green Jacket interviews was when he said that if he hadn't won, life would go on, he would have remembered a fun week and that he was honoured to wear the green jacket. Can't get much further from Tiger than that. It will be interesting what the media make of him and how he handles the new celebrity. I think he'll do fine and I think that this won't be his last major. (BTW Westwood will break through, Shrek will win another and Donald will have his day, too.)

The Messi Bandwagon
Anyone who follows these posts would know that I'm a Messi fan from wayback. He's now indubitably the best footballer on the planet and has been for at least three years. Yet claims about him being the "best ever" based on his recent scoring exploits get up my nose and go to the heart of the quest to determine if Don Bradman has any equal in any sport.
Messi is rolling up goals galore in the Spanish league. But then, so is Christiano Ronaldo. The era and the nature of the competition are key in making "best ever" comparisons.
The black mark against Messi is his record for Argentina which is nowhere near his Barcelona feats either in terms of goals or wins. The 2014 world cup will be key in setting Messi's place in the firmament. At this point my view is that he's the third best Argentine, behind di Stefano and Maradonna. The former scored more goals than Messi but never played in the World Cup due to a series of accidents and unfortunate FIFA rulings. He scored at almost a goal-a-game clip for Spain when he was past his prime. Look on Youtube at videos: he was a magician with the ball. Maradonna came up big for his country, perhaps more so than any player.
We're now in a high-scoring era - comparable to when di Stefano played - but a lot of it, in my view, is due to the modern ball. I suspect that di Stefano would have averaged more than a goal a game with the ball they use now. Paranthetically, di S's Real Madrid compadre, Puskas, I think, would have been ridiculous with the modern ball. The challenge would have been to keep him to a goal, not on the average, but per game.
Back to Bradman and, era or competition independent, he's incomparable.