Further to this post of a few months back, the concept of a GP Season has been added to Golf Predictor. To recap, this GP season has had to be introduced to the site due to the completely new schedule for the US PGA Tour from next year. The 2013 season in the US will be a short one, from January to September 2013, culminating in The Tour Championship at East Lake. From then on, there will be a full season once again, but starting in October (with what was previously The Fall Series) and running through to the following September (once again to The Tour Championship).
While it may make sense for the US PGA Tour to finish the season with The Tour Championship, it raises all sorts of problems for Golf Predictor! As noted in the previous post on this issue, it raises the possibility of a player playing one week on the 2014 (it may be called 2013/14) US Tour and the next on the 2013 European Tour (or vice versa) as there will be a significant three month overlap. There are other anomalies also, such as the WGC - HSBC Champions event in China now being in two different seasons - the 2013 European Tour and the 2014 US Tour!
There is really no other way to deal with these issues on Golf Predictor other than to use a calendar year to arrange tournaments chronologically. This is exactly what the GP Season will do from this year (2012) on. Since the European Tour has further complicated things by once again starting their new season (2013) in the preceding calendar year (they had finally just reverted to a calendar year for the 2012 season!), I have been forced to introduce the GP Season sooner than anticipated. This is so that the two opening events of the 2013 European Tour season that are being held in December 2012 can be incorporated into the 2012 GP Season. Therefore, from 2012 on, the GP Season will run from January to December and include all tournaments held on both major tours in that calendar year. There has been a new field added to the system that will show the actual season the tournament is in, but from a statistics perspective, everything will be based on the calendar year i.e. the GP Season. For all years prior to 2012 on the system, the GP Season will still refer to the actual season the tournament was held in.
As well as solving the issues outlined above, using the calendar year has other advantages, including:
This solution allows the Golf Predictor to continue to generate accurate statistics, despite this major impending scheduling change on the US PGA Tour. The relevant pages in the member section have been updated to refer to the GP Season and link to this explanatory blog post. So, sign up today and continue to get the most out of Golf Predictor, the premier US and European PGA Tour statistics site.
Note: you may have to refresh pages to see the changes.
While it may make sense for the US PGA Tour to finish the season with The Tour Championship, it raises all sorts of problems for Golf Predictor! As noted in the previous post on this issue, it raises the possibility of a player playing one week on the 2014 (it may be called 2013/14) US Tour and the next on the 2013 European Tour (or vice versa) as there will be a significant three month overlap. There are other anomalies also, such as the WGC - HSBC Champions event in China now being in two different seasons - the 2013 European Tour and the 2014 US Tour!
There is really no other way to deal with these issues on Golf Predictor other than to use a calendar year to arrange tournaments chronologically. This is exactly what the GP Season will do from this year (2012) on. Since the European Tour has further complicated things by once again starting their new season (2013) in the preceding calendar year (they had finally just reverted to a calendar year for the 2012 season!), I have been forced to introduce the GP Season sooner than anticipated. This is so that the two opening events of the 2013 European Tour season that are being held in December 2012 can be incorporated into the 2012 GP Season. Therefore, from 2012 on, the GP Season will run from January to December and include all tournaments held on both major tours in that calendar year. There has been a new field added to the system that will show the actual season the tournament is in, but from a statistics perspective, everything will be based on the calendar year i.e. the GP Season. For all years prior to 2012 on the system, the GP Season will still refer to the actual season the tournament was held in.
As well as solving the issues outlined above, using the calendar year has other advantages, including:
- Almost all golfers take their longest break (usually in the region of six weeks) around Christmas and will continue to do so. Therefore, it makes more sense to have season form starting in January and ending in December.
- As a corollary to the above point, a player could finish his 2013 US PGA Tour season with The Tour Championship in September and play the following week on the 2013 European Tour. With the GP Season, his form since January will still be counted and thus give a more accurate picture of his chances.
- The Season Stats generated for each golfer after each season will show the stats for the calendar year (i.e. between long Christmas breaks) from 2012 on. This is more or less how it has always has been, with the exception of the European seasons which started in December of the previous calendar year. However, if one was to follow the new season schedules, it would be impossible to generate meaningful stats with the US Tour season overlapping two European Tour seasons (e.g. The 2014 US season will overlap the latter three months of the 2013 European season and the first nine months of the 2014 European season.
- Using the GP Season will allow for more relevant historical results to be factored in for the US events that are at the beginning of the 2014 season (held in October/November 2013). Since these events are not in the shortened 2013 US PGA Tour season, a year (2008) would be left out by the Golf Predictor prediction algorithm if they were designated as 2014 season events (the blank 2013 would be counted instead).
This solution allows the Golf Predictor to continue to generate accurate statistics, despite this major impending scheduling change on the US PGA Tour. The relevant pages in the member section have been updated to refer to the GP Season and link to this explanatory blog post. So, sign up today and continue to get the most out of Golf Predictor, the premier US and European PGA Tour statistics site.
Note: you may have to refresh pages to see the changes.
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