Change in Historical Statistics

We have decided here at Golf Predictor to tweak the way historical tournaments (events held on the same course/at the same tournament) affect future tournament predictions. Henceforth, there will be a sliding 5 year window of historical data used (i.e. the previous five years) rather than the complete historical data in the database. This was done for 2 main reasons:

1. The further back you go, the less relevant results are. To give an extreme example, 3 time champion, the 72 year old Gary Player still plays at the Masters, but he hasn't a prayer of winning again! We reckon 5 years is a good cut off point.
2. Leading on from above, as the years go by, the processing demands will increase and Golf Predictor would possibly have to buy a Cray supercomputer to sift through the ever less relevant data!

The changes will have no effect on this year's predictions as our records begin in 2003. From next year though, the 5 year historical window will begin in 2004 and so on for future years.