Round Scores & Field Strength Tables Enhanced on Tournament Page

New pop-up showing who had the highest fourth rounds in the 2013 Volvo Golf Champions

New pop-up showing who had the highest world ranking in the 2013 Volvo Golf Champions

The Round Scores and Field Strength tables on each tournament page has been updated on Golf Predictor. As shown in the first screenshot above (for the recent Volvo Golf Champions), when you hover over any lowest or highest round score, a pop-up showing who got that score is displayed. In the case of multiple golfers, each golfer is shown on a separate line. This is shown for the highest fourth round in the first screenshot above, where Kruger and Olazabal shared that dubious honour (75)! This makes it much more convenient to identify the low/high scorers for each round. Previously, one had to sort the results table by each round column twice and possibly use paging to find all this information.

Similarly, you can now see who has the highest and lowest world rankings in the field. The second screenshot above shows the Field Strength table for the same event. Hovering over the relevant value will show the person with that world ranking. This is shown above for the highest world ranking (6) in the field, which corresponded to Louis Oosthuizen. Previously, this information was not available on the tournament page: one had to go to the prediction ranking page, select that tournament and sort by the world ranking column. Note that occasionally there are ties in the rankings and everybody outside the top 1000 in the world is assigned 1050 by default. Therefore, there could be a lot of matches at the lower end for some tournaments*.

Overall, these enhancements make the Tournament page even more useful. Just another way to make Golf Predictor a little better!


*For example, The Joburg Open generally has many competitors outside the top 1000 of the world rankings.

2013 - Week 5 Predictions/Statistics Online

The predictions and statistics for this week, the Omega Dubai Desert Classic (European PGA Tour) and the Waste Management Phoenix Open (US PGA Tour) are now available on Golf Predictor. It's the last week of the Desert Swing on the European PGA Tour and it marks the season début of Lee Westwood. It will be interesting to see how he performs after his long lay-off.

2013 - Week 4 Winners

Chris Wood (ranked 43rd by Golf Predictor) won the Commercialbank Qatar Masters on the European PGA Tour. The 25 year old Englishman finally broke his duck on the European Tour, securing his maiden title by one shot with an impressive eagle on the last. Our top ranked player, Louis Oosthuizen, finished tied 34th but we had nine of the top sixteen (9/21) in total.

Tiger Woods (ranked 1st by Golf Predictor) won the Farmers Insurance Open on the US PGA Tour. The 37 year old American won for the eight time at Torrey Pines and the seventh in this event. Woods finished the fog delayed event in stuttering fashion, having lost patience with the excruciating slow play ahead of him. He eventually finishing four shots clear of the field, despite leaking four shots in the last five holes. Including the winner, we had nine of the top fifteen plus ties (9/20)*.


*Bubba Watson was a late withdrawal, thus promoting Robert Garrigus into the top twenty of the GP Rankings.

2013 - Week 5 Predictions Delayed

Due to the fog delay and the subsequent Monday night finish (Irish time) of the Farmers Insurance, the predictions for this week (the Omega Dubai Desert Classic and the Waste Management Phoenix Open) will be late.

Of course, the results will be inputted into Golf Predictor as soon as possible. However, the predictions for next week can not be generated until this happens and the latest world rankings arising out of them become available. I will endeavour to produce the predictions as soon as possible, but given the time difference, it is looking like tomorrow (Tuesday) at the earliest.

FREE Fantasy Golf Contest - $300 in cash prizes

 *** Promotion now over as tournament has started ***

I am delighted to announce that Golf Predictor has teamed up with the fantasy sports specialists DraftStreet.com for a FREE cash competition for this week's Farmers Insurance Open. For those of you unfamiliar with their offerings, DraftStreet.com provide a new way to play fantasy golf that turns the season long grind into simple one tournament leagues. You draft golfers for one tournament and get paid out as soon as the tournament ends. DraftStreet.com is at the forefront of this new trend in the fantasy world and is giving us a great promotion: a FREE fantasy golf league with $300 in prizes exclusively for Golf Predictor members, Twitter followers, Facebook friends and blog readers based in the US and Canada*.

This free contest will be salary-cap style drafting where everyone tries to assemble the best team out of the available players. You will have a $100,000 budget to build a team of 6 golfers. Each golfer has been assigned a price based on their expected fantasy performance. 

You can adjust your roster up until the contest starts on Thursday January 24th at which time your rosters will lock and the Live Scoreboard will be available. Your chosen golfers get points for pars or better and lose points for bogeys or worse. The player with the most points from his/her six golfers at the end of the final round will be deemed the winner.

It couldn't be simpler**. You can see where you stand on the Live Scoreboard after each round and how many points your golfers have garnered for you. Of course, Golf Predictor subscribers have a huge edge for such competitions, so consider signing up. Compared to the prizes you can win on DraftStreet.com, a Golf Predictor subscription is a fantastic investment! Good luck to all who enter and I only wish that I lived in North America myself!

CLICK HERE or the image above to sign up for free and join the Golf Predictor $300 Freeroll on DraftStreet.com.

*Draftstreet.com plan to extend their service outside of North America in the future. I can't wait as it's a great way to leverage the stats produced by Golf Predictor!

**Although I'm based in Ireland, I played a couple of free competitions on Draftstreet.com in advance of this special promotion. I really enjoyed it and finished top of one (admittedly small) league and did well in a much bigger league (even though one of my picks unfortunately didn't start).

2013 - Week 4 Predictions/Statistics Online

The predictions and statistics for this week, the Commercialbank Qatar Masters (European PGA Tour) and the Farmers Insurance Open (US PGA Tour) are now available on Golf Predictor. Tiger Woods is making his US PGA Tour season début this week and I'm sure he'll have been studying the rules of golf on the long journey from the Middle East! At least he has had a few more days than expected to combat jet lag as he suffered a rare missed cut in Abu Dhabi. The European Tour stays in the Arabian Gulf this week, where the in-form Louis Oosthuizen and Justin Rose are headlining the field.

2013 - Week 3 Winners

Jamie Donaldson (ranked 9th by Golf Predictor) won the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship on the European PGA Tour. The 37 year old Welshman held off a strong field, including the top two in the world, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, to secure his second tour title. It was an anxious finish for Donaldson, who bogeyed the last and had to wait while Justin Rose and Thorbjorn Olesen narrowly missed their birdie chances to force a play-off. The aforementioned two Nike clad big guns both missed the cut in their season débuts in different fashion. Rory misfired with his new clubs, shooting a brace of 75s (+3), but at least he was consistent! Tiger suffered a two shot penalty for an incorrect drop; that undid his fine finish and left him the wrong side of the cut line. Still, they head home with a large wad of appearance cash to console themselves with! McIlroy was our top ranked player, but we had eleven of the top seventeen (11/20) in total.

Brian Gay (ranked 24th by Golf Predictor) won the Humana Challenge in pship with the Clinton Foundation on the US PGA Tour. The 41 year old American won on the second hole of a three man play-off with Charles Howell III and rookie David Lingmerth. Third round leader Scott Stallings let an overnight five shot lead slip and bogeyed the last to just miss the play-off. Our top ranked player, Matt Kuchar, finished in tied 16th, but it was a great event for the bookies! Most of the bigger names didn't perform and we had only five of the top twenty three plus ties (5/26).
 

Details added to the 'About GP' Page

For those of you who might be interested, I have updated the content to the About GP page on Golf Predictor. I have added some information about me (the developer) and the genesis of Golf Predictor. There used to be somewhat similar information on that page before, but I took it down once I wound up the small IT consulting firm that I used to run. However, in the interests of transparency, I have finally gotten around to updating the text and reinstating that section to the bottom of the page.

This new spiel includes some personal information, despite my aversion to putting it on the web! More interestingly, it includes some background on how I came up with the idea and why I put it into practice. Maybe if I had known the amount of work that was going to be involved, I might never have started! Of course, I'm glad I went ahead and made Golf Predictor the brilliant site it is today!!

Golf Cake Complete with Edible Clubs!

Bespoke Golf Cake

This doesn't have anything to do with Golf Predictor, but I thought I'd share this picture anyway! My amazingly talented sister-in-law made this birthday cake for my brother. It includes two of his main interests in life: golf and Guinness!!! I believe he's one of the few people to have eaten a set of golf clubs and a golf bag!

By the way,  if you live in the London area, she can make a personalised cake for you! Check out her Facebook page here with all her colourful creations! You can also see another of her golf themed cakes on this blog here.

Previous Winners Table Updated on Tournament Page

Previous Winners table for the 2013 Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship showing new 'Total' column.

The previous winners table on each tournament page has been updated on Golf Predictor. As shown in the screenshot above for this week's Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship, the previous winner's total number of strokes for the tournament is now shown in a column on the table. Previously, this total was displayed if you hovered over an individual previous winner's name. As it is now in a column, it has the advantages of been available at a glance for all winners at the same time and it is fully sortable, so you can see who were the most/least impressive winners! Simply click on the column header to toggle sort direction. This new Total column is also colour coded like the other scoring columns, so that light red denotes an under par total, light blue an over par total and light yellow a par total.

Note that this colour scheme might not work exactly right for tournaments held on multiple courses of differing pars (e.g. The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am). This rare situation is not catered for in Golf Predictor and would only be an issue if the winning total was near par. Note also that you may have to refresh the page to see the change. Just another way to make Golf Predictor a little better!

2013 - Week 3 Predictions/Statistics Online

The predictions and statistics for this week, the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship (European PGA Tour) and the Humana Challenge in pship with the Clinton Foundation (US PGA Tour) are now available on Golf Predictor. All eyes will be on Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods as they make their 2013 début in Abu Dhabi. I'm sure that the reputed appearance money helped them make that decision! The US PGA Tour makes its season début on the mainland at La Quinta with Phil Mickelson being possibly the biggest name blowing off the Christmas cobwebs!

Possible Golf Predictor Connection Issue

Depending on your location, all pages could be taking a long time to load on Golf Predictor at the moment. This is a hosting issue unfortunately and is beyond my control. It is not restricted to Golf Predictor: this issue is being experienced by many sites, according to the host company's support pages.

I have logged an issue and I believe the situation is being investigated. Apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this outage and I ask for your patience in this matter. I will post again when I have more information and/or everything appears to be back to normal.

2013 - Week 2 Winners

Louis Oosthuizen (ranked 1st by Golf Predictor) won the Volvo Golf Champions on the European PGA Tour. The home favourite reached a career high of fourth in the world rankings with his latest victory, coming from five back to overhaul Scott Jamieson with a fine closing 66 (-6). Including the top ranked player, unusually we had ten of the top nine plus ties (10/15) in the restricted field event.

In the first full field event of the 2013 US PGA Tour season, Russell Henley (ranked 55th by Golf Predictor) won the Sony Open in Hawaii. The 23 year old rookie won impressively on his tour début, firing three 63s and finishing with five straight birdies to set a tournament scoring record of -24. Our top ranked player, Dustin Johnson, unfortunately had to withdraw due to illness. Overall, like last year, it proved a bad week for the bigger names (and so a good week for bookies!). We had only five of the top fifteen plus ties (5/19).





 

2013 - Week 2 Predictions/Statistics Online

The predictions and statistics for this week, the Volvo Golf Champions (European PGA Tour) and the Sony Open in Hawaii (US PGA Tour) are now available on Golf Predictor. It's the first event of the New Year and the 2013 GP Season (but not of course the 2013 European season!) on the European Tour and another South African one! Like last year, the Volvo Golf Champions event has a restricted field, similar to last week's* season opener on the US Tour. Also like last week in Hawaii, the weather forecast is terrible, with high winds and rain forecast for the event in Durban. Meanwhile, the second leg of the Hawaiian swing is the first full field event on the 2013 US PGA Tour. More high winds promised there for Thursday and Friday, so that should make things interesting!

*Technically this week's event with all the weather delays!

2013 - Week 1 Winner

In the opening event of the 2013 US PGA Tour season, Dustin Johnson won the Hyundai Tournament of Champions (who bothered to show up!). The 28 year old American kept up his perfect record in 54 hole events by grabbing his third such title at the weather plagued season opener. Our top ranked player, Steve Stricker, battled through yet another injury to finish second and we had eight of the top eleven plus ties (8/12) in total.

2013 - Week 2 Predictions Delayed

Due to the originally planned Monday night finish (Irish time) of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions and the subsequent severe weather problems (high winds) in Hawaii, the predictions for this week (Sony Open and the Volvo Golf Champions) will be late. It now looks like the event will be finished tomorrow (Tuesday), making the Hyundai Tournament of Champions the latest finish since Golf Predictor started five years ago.

Of course, the results will be inputted into Golf Predictor as soon as possible. However, the predictions for next week can not be generated until this happens and the latest world rankings arising out of them become available. I will endeavour to produce the predictions as soon as possible, but given the time difference, it is looking like Wednesday at the moment. I ask for your patience in these exceptional circumstances.

Darren Clarke's (Cocked Up) Message to Me!

As part of my Christmas present, my better half thoughtfully queued up for two hours in a Dublin book shop to get a signed copy of 2011 Open Champion Darren Clarke's new autobiography "An Open Book: My Autobiography". Imagine my excitement in ripping off the paper to see the recent Northern Irish major champion praise my web site (via the carefully supplied text from me, not from personal experience, I must point out!).

As you can see in the image above, things didn't go exactly to plan! Imagine my disappointment that a version of Chinese Whispers resulted in a slight cock up! The transference of the simple desired spiel from me ("Great work on Golf PredictOR") through two intermediaries to Clarke himself resulted in the error. I don't know whose fault it was, but I have the original text message to prove it wasn't mine! I was hardly going to get it wrong anyway, after creating Golf Predictor and working on it for the last five years!

Anyway, no big deal - I know what he meant! Another thing to note from the inscription is the impressive handwriting and aptly extravagant signature of the man himself! Given that he must have signed at least several hundred books before mine, the fact that the text is legible at all is almost miraculous, never mind that it is so neatly ornate!

As for the book itself, I haven't read that much of it yet, but so far it's OK. The early chapters gloss over a lot of detail, but that's probably because the author couldn't remember it! I will update my opinion after I finish it.

Field Ranking Pages Enhanced - Similar Length Course Statistics

Snippet of Field Rankings page with new SLC average ranking

Snippet of Compare Field Rankings page with new SLC column

In addition to the changes made to the 'Prediction Data' and 'Prediction Rankings' page, the 'Field Rankings' and 'Compare Field Rankings' pages have also been enhanced with new similar length course (SLC) information. These pages are available on the 'Predictions' menu in the member section of Golf Predictor.

As shown on the first image above, the SLC average has been added to the 'Metric' dropdown list on the 'Field Ranking' page. There is also a new 'Best on Sim. Length Courses' chart along the top of the data table, which shows the SLC top performers graphically. As shown on the second image above, there is a new 'SLC' column on the 'Compare Field Rankings' page which shows the player's field ranking for that new metric. Due to space restrictions, this new SLC column replaces the golfer nationality column. The stacked chart along the top of the data table has also been updated to include the SLC ranking.

Note that this comparison information and chart is not available prior to this season (2013). You may have to refresh the page to see the changes. Just another way to make Golf Predictor even better!

Prediction Rankings Page Enhanced - Similar Length Course Statistics

Tournament Prediction page with new similar length course chart link and SLC column

In addition to the changes made to the 'Prediction Data' page for each golfer, the main 'Prediction Rankings' page* has also been enhanced with new similar length course (SLC) information. This page is is the first option on the 'Predictions' menu in the member section of Golf Predictor. As shown on the image** above, there is a new 'SLC' column, which shows each player's SLC performance over the previous five years to the course used for the current tournament. This new column is sortable, so you can easily find out who performs best/worst on SLCs by clicking on the column header. Due to space restrictions, the SLC column replaces the scoring average column. However, this latter column is still available on Season Form page, available from the 'Form' menu. There is also a new 'Best on Sim. Length Courses' chart along the top of the data table, which shows the SLC top performers graphically.

Note that this comparison information and chart is not available prior to this season (2013). You may have to refresh the page to see the changes. Just another way to make Golf Predictor even better!


*The Prediction Rankings (Odds) page has also been updated in a similar fashion.
**Only Steve Stricker's data is shown. You must be a subscribed member to see all the field!

Prediction Data Page Enhanced - Similar Length Course Statistics

Edited snippet of Prediction Data page for Steve Stricker at the 2013 Hyundai Tournament of Champions with the new similar length course history panel and start of tournament results list

The 'Prediction Data' page for each golfer participating in a tournament has been enhanced with new similar length course (SLC) information. This page is available from any of the options on the "Predictions" and "Form" menus in the member section of Golf Predictor. As shown on the image* above for Steve Stricker for this week's event, there is a new "Similar Length Course" panel, which shows the player's performance on similar length courses** over the previous five years to the course*** used for the current tournament. I would have liked to include more information in a more general similar course metric. However, it proved too difficult to source the necessary information reliably for the large number of courses used in the last five years.

New statistics for SLC history include the standard deviation of the results, the number of rounds played and the number of tournaments played. There is also a new data table at the bottom of the page showing the matching tournaments and the player results (also shown above). Both the new panel and the new data table feature a new chart, which shows the SLC results graphically. The field rank for SLC results has been added to the field ranking chart (available beside average field ranking for the golfer) and non-finishes are not counted. In addition, events played on multiple courses use the main course, which is the course also used for the final round. These new statistics should prove useful for picking good choices for a tournament and are not available prior to this season (2013). The 'Prediction Rankings' and two 'Field Rankings' pages have also been updated with this new statistic. Just another way to make Golf Predictor even better for the new season ahead!


*This image only shows a small subset of all the statistics available on the page. Most have been omitted for the sake of clarity (and quicker image download).

**The current course lengths are used, which may be a factor if a course has been redesigned significantly.

***For events held on multiple courses, the main course (on which the final round is also played) is used.