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Post by Richie3Jack on Sept 23, 2014 18:46:52 GMT -5
The U.S. Ryder Cup team appears to be — based on popular opinion — the heavy underdog against the Europeans. The U.S. team lost some key members due to Dustin Johnson’s leave of absence and Jason Dufner’s injuries that kept him from qualifying. Also, while Tiger Woods has not been a historically great Ryder Cup player, he is one of the best players in the world and a golfer the U.S. counts on for stability and leadership. His well-documented injuries and poor play, however, leave him sidelined for this year’s Ryder Cup. On the opposing squad, the Europeans have had quite a strong year despite regressions in the play of two superstar players — Luke Donald (who did not make the team) and Lee Westwood. Despite the opinion that the Europeans will win, I believe that if the U.S. team pairs players that are more statistically favorable instead of the “these two players are good friends, so we will pair them together” strategy, they have a realistic chance at winning the Ryder Cup. While I do not recall Davis Love III using a statistically-based pairing system, his pairings in 2012 mostly fit in line with what the numbers showed, and the U.S. team had a 10-6 lead going into Sunday. So his pairings were not the reason why the U.S. did not win at Medinah. Rather, the players simply failed to close out the Europeans on Sunday’s single matches. For reference, here is a table of rankings for each member of the U.S. team in the key metrics for Ryder Cup play. The rankings are based out of 177 players: Read more at: www.golfwrx.com/241715/statistically-based-pairings-for-the-u-s-ryder-cup-team/comment-page-1/#07jlajRhF17PYM3e.99
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