Some statistics in organized sports are a whole lot easier to figure out than others. Hit more home runs than anyone else and you are the home run king. The best hitter in baseball is the player with the highest batting average. The same ease in statistical analysis exists with items of interest such as earned run average, the strikeout king, on-base percentage, and on and on.
Statistics are a lot more difficult to comprehend in other areas. A degree in quantitative analysis would be helpful in determining football”s quarterback rating. The same is true for whatever concocted formula is used for determining college football and its BCS rankings.
And then there is golf. You know there”s something wrong with the PGA Tour”s Fed Ex Cup standings when Bill Haas is the winner and yet he didn”t know that he was until his wife told him so mere moments before the awards ceremony. The same is true when it comes to figuring out the World Golf Rankings or the standings for the Presidents Cup team. Some geeks are making a fortune on this stuff while real sports fans are totally left in the dark.
Yet throughout its history, golf has always had one quantifiable statistic that makes perfect sense, even to the most casual of fans. We”re talking about the money list. What makes the money list such a viable statistic is that higher-grade tournaments pay out more in prize money. For instance, Rory McIlroy pocketed $1.44 million when he won the U.S. Open whereas Scott Piercy made $540,000 when he finished first at the Reno-Tahoe Open. The majors and the world golf events pay out more than regular tour events. The regular tournaments pay out more than the Fall Series tourneys or those events such as Reno-Tahoe that are held concurrent to a major or a world event.
So, if you do as the Watergate reporters did and just follow the money, you get some pretty valid golf statistics. For instance, from 1938 through 1950, the game”s leading money winners were Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Jimmy Demaret. In the 23 years from 1958 through 1980, those atop the money list were Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Billy Casper, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson, except for two occasions. Frank Beard was the leading money winner in 1969 when Palmer was aging and Nicklaus was slumping, and Johnny Miller was the top cash cow in 1974 when he won a bunch of early-season starts on the West Coast and in the desert. There aren”t a lot of fluke winners atop the season-long money list.
Looking at more recent times, you can tell by following the money that Curtis Strange and Greg Norman were the top players from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, that Nick Price was the game”s top gun in 1993 and 1994, and that Tiger Woods dominated the game for more than a decade, with a two-year Vijay Singh run in 2003 and 2004.
In the overall history of the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods has nine money titles to his credit while Jack Nicklaus has eight, Ben Hogan and Tom Watson have five each, and Arnold Palmer has four. That”s pretty much the top five golfers of the post-World War II era.
With all this in mind, it was certainly refreshing to see Webb Simpson and Luke Donald tee it up last week in the final Fall Series tourney at Disney World in Orlando. The total purse of $4.7 million was $3.3 million less than a major purse and $1.6 million less than the prize fund of the AT&T at Pebble Beach. The first-place payoff of $846,000 is $500,000 less than what Donald won when he prevailed at the World Match Play.
Donald and Simpson, who were paired together all four rounds last week, were playing for bragging rights in an effort to become the leading money winner for 2011. There was no bonus pool at stake nor was there a trophy or a crystal piece for the winner. In an era of callous multi-millionaire linksters who blow off whole portions of the season, it was refreshing to see two of the game”s better players tee it up for pride and prestige. Both Donald and Simpson wanted to have their name on a listing that dates back to 1934.
When all was said and done, Englishman Luke Donald prevailed. The world”s No. 1-ranked golfer shot a final-round 64, at one point running off six birdies in a row from the 10th through 15th holes. Donald won at Disney World, Simpson shot a final-round 69 and fell to sixth place, and the financial accounting determined that Donald, who played college golf at Northwestern University, was the leading money winner for 2011 with $6.683 million to Simpson”s $6.347 million in earnings.
Donald and Simpson fighting it out for the money title was good for the game. Luke Donald and Webb Simpson deserve a tip of the golfing cap for bringing some amount of interest to the PGA Tour during its Fall Series in the heart of the college football and NFL season.
On a more local level, former Middletown High School golfer Lisa Copeland has had a brilliant start to her sophomore campaign at California State University San Marcos. In mid-September, Copeland shot 72-75 for a 3-over-par 147 total at Wigwam Golf Course in Phoenix, leading to a fourth-place finish at the Grand Canyon University Invitational. Copeland built upon that success and turned it up a notch while shooting 73-76-72 for a 5-over-par 221 total to win the Emery Riddle Fall Invitational at Talking Rock Golf Course in Prescott, Arizona.
Another Middletown alum, Doug Quinones, who plays for Kansas University, finished 11th in The Invitational at Kiawah Island in South Carolina, the site of next year”s PGA Championship. Quinones, who was 5-over-par after five holes on day one, ran off five birdies over the next 13 holes and shot 73-72 for a very impressive 1-over-par 145 total on one of the world”s most punitive courses. If you doubt my analysis of Kiawah, just check out how Mark Calcavecchia handled it during the 1991 Ryder Cup when he crashed and burned against Colin Montgomerie.
Nice job Lisa and Doug.
