>Golf is essentially a single player game that you play against yourself. With modern golf, yes. This is only because of the advent of television. Match-play used to dominate the game, and is still advocated my many (myself included), which allows direct competition, and introduces risk-reward strategy depending on how the other player plays.
Well, even match-play is about as interactive as running a race. Very different from the direct interaction you have in a game like Baseball.
It's really not. You can absolutely change your strategy based on what the other player is doing.
I play golf. I write about golf. I genuinely love golf. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly broken the game of golf by allowing incremental technological advancements -- just like this -- that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot. I am sending a grave warning to baseball fans here from the future that you will arrive at by following this road. Golf used to be…
Don’t you already want to hit the baseball as hard as you can at every opportunity? Just with the caveat that you need to develop skill with using a one-size-fits-all bat? Is bunting and going for balls that big of a deal currently, that a player who could rock one into left field would decide not to? Surely any strategy around loading up bases to stack the deck for your strongest hitter remains, it seems like this l…
> Don’t you already want to hit the baseball as hard as you can at every opportunity?
Not at all! Always swinging for home runs is a recipe for a lot of strike outs. Singles and doubles win games.
I play golf. I write about golf. I genuinely love golf. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly broken the game of golf by allowing incremental technological advancements -- just like this -- that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot. I am sending a grave warning to baseball fans here from the future that you will arrive at by following this road. Golf used to be…
Golf is essentially a single player game that you play against yourself. If you don't like a particular thing in golf, then don't use that particular thing. And if it destroys the entertainment value, then don't watch that. This is very similar to how speedruns for video games have multiple categories with different rulesets, and you pick whichever one you like best.
> Golf is essentially a single player game that you play against yourself.
That is not at all how tournament/competitive golf works. And that's what sets the tone for the whole sport.
Love this! I helped make wooden oars, that were used by competitors in international rowing competitions, that had blades designed by someone at MIT, back in the day, on a computer(golley gee), but we made them by hand, and as they were, only wood, they were legal for use, and all the champions used them. we also made oars for "bostan bay bantry boat rigs" that won while crewed by inner city kids, we cheated a bit, a…
Rowing family here : what’s the current state of the art in oars?
what we were building was radical @ the time, and may still be.
The design of the blades was essentialy flat on one side, and had a more complicated profile on the back
the shaft was an I beam made from strait grained spruce, capped with ash, and then capped again in beach through the oar locks, and we snuck carbon fibre between the spruce and ash.
the longest oars were 18', and it was possible to put a handle under the bench, and a shop stand under the oar lock and go out and bounce up and down on the blades 15' out from the shop stand
we also made many oars for the international dorry races, which is regulated to "what could have been
built useing traditional materials and methods"
which ours were, cept for the cfd bieng done at mit
we also made paddles, and handles, but paddles do better now, in strait carbon, but oars need flex, and work as a spring
we had a couple of raceing skiffs at the shop and those sure are a hoot
Why not invent say "Field Golf" or "Lolz Golf" or whatever you fancy calling it? Set the rules and equipment to around your ideal time. Get some mates together to give it a go and refine it. I think the toughest part will be equipment - golf bats cost a fair bit to make but perhaps a price limit might help fix that. You could define club classes akin to how sailing has standard class boats. You could even require tha…
There are plenty of associations who do this: https://worldhickoryopen.com/ I still play with my grandfather's persimmon clubs about 25% of the time. It's just a coordination problem... but once the dominant professional association the game changes forever, because the vast majority of people just want to emulate the pros, because they grew up dreaming of becoming pro. Golf is finally trying to do something about th…
I am not a golfist at all and unfortunately I feel that I must instinctively hate the game - that is really my problem and not golf's. Golf is a decent sport and not deserving of my opprobrium.
So why do I feel the need to dislike golf? I'm a white skinned, middle aged male and my job title is Managing Director. Obviously I should be a passionate small white ball smacker. No I'm not.
I love the idea of golf but hate the ... environment. That is still on me. Our wedding ding dong was held in a hotel that majored in golf (Woodbury/Devon/UK - Nigel Mansell's place), 19 years ago.
I think that golf needs to go back say 300 years. A bloke sporting a kilt would slyly whip out a hidden club on a Sunday (shock, horror) and whack a ball/stone away. Just for the absolute hell of it.
Golf needs to find its joy again. If it does, then I'll join in.
He never said why it's bad, just that players he thinks suck should continue to suck and he doesn't like that they don't suck anymore. He briefly alluded to a valid point but went no where with it about how it may affect little league and college with less money, but that is completely separate from MLB teams using millions of dollars for custom bats.
>> He never said why it's bad, just that players he thinks suck should continue to suck and he doesn't like that they don't suck anymore. Bad players should continue to suck unless they put in the effort to be better. If you're a batter and can't hit the ball with the right part of the bat (especially experienced guys like Chilsolm) you're simply bad at your job. This is like getting a crappy NBA player and putting s…
Because baseball bats must all have only one size and shape? Or just not this shape?
I've always wondered what the technological development of F1 would look like in other sports. This feels pretty close.
There are stories like this in marathon running shoes (something like 3D printed to the athlete's exact gait and basically last just a single race) and swimming (the michael phelps olympics dolphin suit). I'm sure cycling and golf have been doing things like this since forever.
Rowing had the sliding rigger boat which was banned in international competition within a year of first being used.
(In a normal racing rowing boat, the athlete sits on a sliding seat, while their shoes and the rigger with the oarlock are fixed to the boat. In the 1980s, boats were developed that had the shoes and rigger as a unit that slid, while the seat was fixed, which was more efficient as it meant that the boat hull and the athlete's mass moved together.)
On the other hand, first carbon-fibre oar shafts and later asymmetrical "hatchet" oar blades were adopted near-universally within a few years of their invention.
I think it's quite cool (disclaimer: I am indeed a dirty Yankees fan) Hitting is really hard. If you feel up to it, and can find a public batting cage near you that has a fast pitch machine (usually maxes out 75-85mph which is 20+ mph less than your typical MLB fastball), give it a shot. When you hit the ball away from the sweet spot, especially on the parts closer to your hands, it really freaking hurts and throws o…
I play golf. I write about golf. I genuinely love golf. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly broken the game of golf by allowing incremental technological advancements -- just like this -- that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot. I am sending a grave warning to baseball fans here from the future that you will arrive at by following this road. Golf used to be…
If we’re drawing parallels to other sports, I greatly prefer formula 1 to NASCAR…
As a kid, my all-time favorite Christmas present was a Gen-1x baseball bat. It was my first -3 bat, and promised a new metal alloy that would help me hit harder. Talk about sparking the imagination!
Without question, one of the high points of childhood was going out and trying to make that bat pop.
A lot of long-term baseball fans “get it” when it comes to creative tech in the game and it’s fun to see something new with bats.
The only thing I want to point out is that baseball (and all big sports) have always been a technological arms race and always will be. It’s just part of it.
I play golf. I write about golf. I genuinely love golf. Over the last 50 years, we have slowly broken the game of golf by allowing incremental technological advancements -- just like this -- that make it easier to do something that is hard, that is making it easier to hit the sweet spot. I am sending a grave warning to baseball fans here from the future that you will arrive at by following this road. Golf used to be…
If we’re drawing parallels to other sports, I greatly prefer formula 1 to NASCAR…
I prefer local dirt track racing to either one of those. It's like watching an olympics with local atheletes. A ton more variance instead of micro optimizations.