Golf Central

Featuring such highlings as... quality will always out; there are people and things that lie – such as physicists – and some that don’t – and this includes certain statistics. And if you can quickly say a sentence that contains the words physicists and statistics, you obviously had a quieter weekend than we did.

1. Practice the things you’re bad at
Supporting Sergio Garcia must be the football fans equivalent of supporting Holland in the 1970s, when they were the best team by a mile but couldn’t lift a World Cup to save their lives. The young Spaniard (we forget he’s still only 28 because he’s been around so long) has been arguably the best player tee to green in the world for a couple of years now but watching him putt was in exercise in hope rather than expectation. So he’s been seeing specialist short game coach Stan Utley and the hard work of both has paid off with Sergio’s win at Sawgrass.

2. Once a journeyman…
It’s not quite true that journeymen pros never make the breakthrough to become regular winners – as Fred Funk demonstrates – but it’s a truism that holds up often enough that you’d be daft to bet against it. Paul Goydos, who has only one two minor events in a 16-year pro career, and who had never before slept on a 54 hole lead, did the expected thing and lost, even if it was a close call and he hung on well enough to force a playoff.

3. Lied, damned lies and statistics
Stats don’t always tell the story – the ‘best’ putters, for example, are often those who miss the most greens, and are therefore able to chip it close. But the one statistic that rarely lies, and is the most important in golf for amateurs and pros alike, is the greens in regulation category. Up your GIR figure and your score will come down. And if you need proof, Sergio was top of this particular heap at Sawgrass, which was the foundation for his splendid win.

4. Second is not always a bad place to be
Oliver Wilson has now finished second on six occasions (three of them this year) since he joined the European Tour in 2005 and must be wondering where his maiden win is coming from. But if he keeps kicking on the door it will eventually open and he should remember Padraig Harrington, who has more second places than he can remember, and Jack Nicklaus, who was runner-up in Majors more often than he won – and he won a heck of a lot.

5. Even when he’s not there, Tiger is the boss
All week at Sawgrass Tiger Woods was the ghost at the banquet. Because of the knee injury that is keeping him out of the game, everyone in America is trying to guess when he’ll be back, whether or not he’ll be fully fit for the US Open, and who stands the best chance of winning on any given week because he’s not in the field. To be the subject of almost endless speculation and debate when you’re sitting at home with your feet up is all the evidence we need of his absolute dominance.

6. Stats corner revisited
And while we’re here, such is Tiger’s supremacy that in 2007 he won enough world ranking points to have secured both first and second places in the official world rankings. Phil Mickelson may console himself with the thought that he’s world number two but actually he’s not – Tiger is, in addition to being world Number One.

7. The physicists lied to us
For years we have been told that golf balls fly further when both they, and the atmosphere through which they are travelling, are warmer. Yet despite the arrival of sunny days we’re still prodding our drives the usual 210 yards down the fairway and they still don’t reach the bunker on the corner of the dogleg. Physics Schmysics.