Thanks for posting that. I work in the statistical field and you usually hear that stupid old say 'there's lies, damn lies and statistics', which is usually the retort to somebody that is proven wrong statistically
I had a CEO that I worked with that was like that. He came from the product buying side of the business and when the company was tanking he just blame it on the marketing department and their inability to send market to the product to the right people. But statistics clearly showed the products were the problem...old products were too much of an old standby and not as popular anymore and the new products were doing terribly. Then came the 'there's lies, damn lies' routine.
The problems they'll have here is that they admittedly had glitches and errors in their early days. Like a boss, PGA Tour players don't like errors. Accuracy is the lifeblood of statistics. It's one thing to have an event have that goes against the odds, but when the actual data is wrong, then it's worthless and leads to erroneous decisions. So I can see why Glover doesn't like ShotLink...nobody likes to get burned on inaccurate statistical data.
Moneyball for baseball has its holes. Particulary taking On Base and Slugging Percetage over a lesser OPS but a better fielder. What was ironic is that the year the Red Sox won the World Series they had hired consultant and 'Moneyball's' driving force Bill James as a consultant. They actually struggled that year for a good bit as a team that was straight Moneyball design...all high OPS guys and they used multiple different closers (they don't believe that a closer is that important either). It wasn't until they traded away Garciaparra (a high OPS guy, but a poor fielder) and went with a more traditional baseball method of getting a good field shortstop in Orlando Cabrera a good fielding firstbaseman in Doug Mientkiewicz, added a closer and a good pinch runner in Dave Roberts that things turned around and the scumbags won the WS.
And the team the book 'Moneyball' is about, the A's, have never won a WS under the Moneyball strategy.
But, unless the statistic is at a 100% correlation, statistics are not about certainty, but probability. I think in something like baseball, even though it's very individually based, there's likely to be some factors you can't quite count on because it's still a team sport. So in golf, I think the 'Moneygolf' method would probably be even more effective than the Moneyball method is in baseball.
3JACK
