Re: Can too much practice kill your game?

Martin Levac wrote:
"Joe" <Joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:46639a75$0$1370$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Martin Levac wrote:
"Joe" <Joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:46638632$0$19508$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Martin Levac wrote:
"
I'll give you a tip for free:

If you don't send the ball to within 5 yards and/or within 1 degree offline of your target, it's a bad shot.

At the risk of starting another debate, I would suggest that anyone who achieves the above, exclusive of the wedges (for the aforementioned reason) or putter, has done so purely by chance. Refer to Dave Pelz.

Joe

Then I would suggest that Moe was lucky every shot he made. Refer to Moe Norman.
"At one exhibition, Moe hit 1,540 drives in just under seven hours. All went longer than 225 yards, all landed inside a marked 30-yard-wide landing zone."
http://www.naturalgolf.com/MoeStory.aspx
Natural Golf

Norman was very good but sorry Martin, even he could not keep it inside of +/- 1 degree error. He had a distribution and sometimes, by chance, it was inside 1 degree. If you have data showing otherwise, point it out.

Joe

Did you do the math? I did and his landing zone in that case gave him a margin of error of +/- 1.9 degree. Oh my, he was +/- 0.9 degree lucky. That means he was +/- 1 degree accurate. In other words, he was inaccurate no more than +/- 1.9 degree.

Nitpicking indeed.

Mostly, he was dead on target every time. One story tells of Fred Couples who asked Moe if he ever hit a bad shot. Moe thought for a moment and said "Yes once. In 1962."

Have you ever hit a bad shot?

No wait. Since we are all hackers, the appropriate question is:

Have you ever hit a good shot?


Martin,
I am not impugning Moe Norman's accomplishments but you have not shown that he could keep all his shots inside a 1 degree left / right band. Pelz demonstrates conclusively that golfers, using the long clubs, tend to be very close to a fixed distance with a full swing, but err right and left in what he called a "bra pattern". Basically it is a bi-modal distribution of the shots, with a left side and right side distribution, all caused by the most minor variations in each swing that any individual takes.

Yes I did the math and his landing zone provides a +/- 3.8 Deg. Just to keep it in context, he was probably close to twice as accurate as Lee Travino who was the best that Pelz found. My larger point that you miss is that to hit the target dead on as you imply is largely luck. The skill is keeping things close enough that luck is in your favor more often.

Joe
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