Build a golf ball wacking machine, put it in a field, hit a ball. Make a hole wherever it lands. Hit a second ball. Will it land in the same spot? Betcha it won't.
Build a golf ball wacking machine, put it in a field, hit a ball. Make a hole wherever it lands. Hit a second ball. Will it land in the same spot? Betcha it won't.
Mostly skill.
I am a terrible golfer, I do not have enough skill to get it close enough to the hole for the luck to be a factor.
Jack Crowley wrote:
You are correct here, Flagpole. Always a chance for a lousy golfer to get a fluke hole in one, but the odds of a pro getting one are much higher.
Because there is less variability in their shot. If you try to hit a ball in a hole 200 yards straight ahead of you it will go 100 - 300 yards, +/- 45 degrees. If a pro attempts that same shot it will go 170 - 220 yards, +/- 20 degrees. That improves their chances. Now consider the # of opportunities they have, that gives them way more hole in ones that will be replayed on Sportscenter over and over.
Did you really need to ask this question?
If a hole in one was 100% skill then the golfer would be able to get a hole in one on a particular hole every single time with sufficient skill (or never at all if they were not skilled enough). Since this is not the case, there is clearly a great deal of luck involved (feel free to choose an alternative term).
At any rate, it is obviously not 100% skill. If it were, what happens the next time the golfer plays the same hole and does not get a hole in one? Did their skill level go down? Pretty absurd definition of "skill" would be needed to match such usage.
It's a lot like poker. The pros are obviously much, much better than just about anyone else, but winning a large tournament is always about luck. You can change how you play, but you can't choose to get the hole in one (or four Aces or whatever other probablistic event)
It's definitely 100% skill. You can't do something so hard by accident. You don't just get lucky and become awesome unless you're Charlie Sheen. Why can't someone will a skill score of 100 do it every time? Simple: It's not always the same. My common excuse is "The wind kicked up." The blades of grass are now smooshed where it lands and rolls so it's not the same. Unless I'm able to want the entire course before teeing off I can't guarantee anything. If I can, hole in one every time. That's what happens when your skill score is 100 points.
MR O-Town wrote:
You don't just get lucky and become awesome unless you're Charlie Sheen.
Post of the Day
Actually the Tiger Woods argument is the best exmaple here.
Tiger has hit many hole in 1s, I believe he has hit a few on the par 3 that's played before the masters.
He has also hit an Eagle off of a lilypad while standing in a lake.
Which one is luck and which one is skill?
You're arguing nothing but semantics with something like this, if a hole-in-one is skill dependent you'd see it more often, especially with Long Drivers and short par 4s
ukathleticscoach wrote:
Someone once placed a bet at long odds that one of the golfers at a major comp would get a hole in one, The bookies did not realise it happens quite regularly and had to pay out about a million
It didn't happen like that at all. He didn't win that much because a lot of the places he bet with didn't pay out because the odds that were offered were an error.
I played the Central Ave PuttPutt for years. 10 games a week . About half the time could not get it through the windmill on the first swing and trust me i tried very hard to figure the timing out. Yet with-in a month I learned that if the ball ran along the left rail of the troll bridge it ended up near or in the cup. That's were I hit it. I'd get a hole-in-one about 3 times a week.
Two holes two success rates.
o.o wrote:
You're arguing nothing but semantics with something like this, if a hole-in-one is skill dependent you'd see it more often, especially with Long Drivers and short par 4s
No, it is a skill dependent event of very low probability. That means that the absolute numbers needed to generate statistically valid samples are very large. Comparing one golfer, even Tiger Woods, to the average weekend player, or even a good club player, is not going to yield the very large numbers needed to filter out the statistical noise. That large amount of statistical noise is going to appear like luck.
If it were pure skill, then they would be able to do it more than once in a row.
Patty Sheehan wrote:
Two holes two success rates.
Story of my life...
Surprise! wrote:
If it were pure skill, then they would be able to do it more than once in a row.
Something can be a skill and still not be repeatable every time.
I think if it were pure skill then it would happen in a predictable range of attempts.
Say every three tournaments a professional normally gets at least one hole in one.
Tiger Woods has hit 18 in his lifetime.
His first when he was 6 years old.
The oldest person to do it was 101.
Odds are 1 in 40,000
This link mentions skill and luck.
http://www.kidzworld.com/article/4254-hole-in-one-facts-and-records
MR O-Town wrote:
It's definitely 100% skill. You can't do something so hard by accident. Why can't someone will a skill score of 100 do it every time? Simple: It's not always the same. My common excuse is "The wind kicked up." The blades of grass are now smooshed where it lands and rolls so it's not the same. Unless I'm able to want the entire course before teeing off I can't guarantee anything. If I can, hole in one every time. That's what happens when your skill score is 100 points.
If it is 100% skill how do you explain the hack that skulls a shot over the green bounces off a tree and into the hole? Your 100% theory means this hack planned to "mishit" the ball, calculated how it would bounce off the green and roll into the hole. You say you use blades of grass and wind as excuses for you. These things DO effect the shot. A pro does not account for a SUDDEN gust, but that gust can make a hole in happen (or prevent it). This is luck (or randomness). You also point to the inability to walk (I assume "want" was a typo) the course before teeing off preventing you from guaranteeing anything and then you state "If I can, hole in one every time". Let me be the first to call BULLSHIT. (Or first to be duped by your sarcasm.) I will give you a full day to study the easiest par 3 on any standard course, I will give you 100 shots and will bet you any amount of money I actually have that you can't get a hole in one. I'll make the same bet with any golfer you name, but only give him 10 shots. LUCK PLAYS A ROLE. What the fvck is a "skill score of 100 points"? Looks like you are just making stuff up.
toro wrote:
I think if it were pure skill then it would happen in a predictable range of attempts.
Say every three tournaments a professional normally gets at least one hole in one.
It does happen within a predictable range of attempts. Your own link (which I can't access the underlying article) mentions 1 in 40,000. Professionals don't play 40,000 holes (par 3s and a few driveable par 4s) every three tournaments.
Let's try a mental exercise. If, instead of a hole in one, we were measuring getting a ball on the green--say a 300 sq. ft. green from 220 yrds away (numbers picked just for convenience), would we see a difference between skilled professionals and weekend duffers? (of course global hole-in-one statistics do not generally differentiate for conditions and length either as all golf courses are not anywhere close to the same, so we would have to standardize the course in my example). Of course we would see a difference between pros and weekend players. Because hitting a green is a relatively high probability event we would see differentiation quickly between different levels of golfers, and even between individual golfers.
Now, say we dropped the green size by 1/2 and kept the other conditions the same. Would we still see differentiation? Of course we would even though both pros and weekend duffers would be hitting the green less often. We would need a slightly larger sample before we saw that differentiation. Now, imagine a green the size of a manhole cover, or large yard waste trash can. Would we still see differentiation? I would submit that we would, it would just take larger and larger samples as we shrunk down the size of the green.
If we substituted the word "hole" for the word "green" in the above example it would still make just as much sense. It is a skill based event. The low probability just means there is lots and lots of variability.
Exactly, especially when you have variables such as the difficulty of a course (the layout) and the weather. We are talking about golf, right?
If you want to talk just about "skills" then that is another topic.
Mr. Obvious wrote:
The low probability just means there is lots and lots of variability.
And some of that variability cannot be compensated by the skill of the golfer, hence, luck.