Annika

[shemp]

I lost money(overall) betting against Annika. I'm thrilled for her. 64 putts in two days isn't gonna get it done, but her 71 with 33 putts, was an absolutely fantastic round. She would just need to compete at the higher level to develop the skills she needs to be a favorite to make the cut. Her distance is an obstacle, but she can play within herself and hit it straight -- the number of greens she hit (small greens) is remarkable, add to that the clubs she was hitting into the greens. She has a lot of the skills that the men of similar length have, and her distance doesn't fall off as dramatically with the irons as I suspected. My hat is off. In retrospect, 3.5 to one against her making the cut was a decent price, but not by as much as I thought.

One thing that I knew going in but I saw confirmed, is that the distance stats are phony. Not that she isn't long, she is, but these averages (on both tours) are just nonsense -- they reflect perfect driving conditions + nutted drives, not typical drives under typical conditions.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

The driving distance stats on the PGA tour are compiled using one specific hole in each tournament. The hole is chosen because it's relatively straight and long enough that everybody would use driver. Since most touring pros don't "swing for the fences" in a tour event, you can be relatively certain that the driving distance stats understate how far they actually can hit the ball. I'm sure you can say the same of the LPGA.

[Roy Munson]

To compute the average driving distance on PGA Tour they use two holes per round.