Cookie Manager Added to Golf Predictor

In order to comply with EU GDPR regulations, I have added a cookie manager to Golf Predictor. This should pop up when you next visit the site and give you the option of using non-essential cookies on the site. You won't be able to block essential (necessary) cookies as they are obviously needed for the site to function. However, you can choose to block all other cookies, which pertain to website analytics and social media sites (see below for more details).

 

The cookie manager scans the site and actually revealed several cookies I wasn't aware of! These were used by the Twitter widget and mostly by the embedded YouTube video. This video is the little animation on the top of the About Golf Predictor page and it actually used many cookies. I was able to reduce the number by switching to the "nocookie" version of YouTube. However, despite its name, it doesn't actually get rid of all YouTube cookies, just some of them!

 

You can edit your cookie preferences at any time from the Privacy/Cookies page. The Cookies section of this page has been updated to show the results of the cookie scan and allow you to change your preferences. I have tested the new cookie manager on the site and everything appears to work as expected. If you notice any issues, please let me know via the Contact GP page.

Region Change Accommodated on Golf Predictor

Due to The Players Championship moving back to March and thus into the Florida Swing, I have had to accommodate this on Golf Predictor. This is because the Florida Swing is one of the "logical" regions on Golf Predictor (along with the West Coast Swing) and is distinct from tournaments held in Florida at other times of the year (such as The Players Championship in previous seasons on Golf Predictor).

This means that from 2019 on (and while it remains it March), The Players Championship will be deemed to be in the Florida Swing, rather than the Florida US region. However, when viewing stats in the system for The Players Championship in seasons before 2019, the event will remain in the original Florida US region. In addition, when computing region stats for the Florida Swing, The Players Championship will only be included from 2019 on (and while it remains it March).

The updating of the system to allow for a region change will make it easy in the future to add any other similar changes to the system. This latest update means Golf Predictor now deals with changes in course par, tournament name, tournament format, season structure, course region and player names. Besides that, there are are no complications in the system!

2018 GP Scores Updated on Golf Predictor

Due to a small error in the prediction engine, I have had to recalculate the GP Score (and hence the GP Rank which is based on it) on Golf Predictor. This small error seems to have been introduced after week one of the 2018 season, i.e. the week of the Sony Open/South African Open. The error did not affect any of the golfer stats (e.g. average/best/worst finish etc.) produced for these tournaments, but it may have slightly affected the GP Ranks of the golfers participating in them.

This error has now been fixed and all the affected tournaments have been updated. To see the corrected GP Ranks/GP Scores for this year's tournaments, you may have to refresh any pages that might be in your browser cache (press F5 on Windows). I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Personal Information Changes on Golf Predictor

Registration page now with "Year of Birth" field (highlighted)

I have made changes to the personal information stored about members on Golf Predictor. The date of birth fields (day/month/year) on the Golf Predictor Registration page have been replaced with a single, much less specific year of birth. This can be seen in the screenshot of the updated Registration page above. The Profile page for each member has also been updated just to show this year of birth. These changes were implemented mainly due to the impending General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), set to be introduced next month (May 25th, 2018) by the European Union.

As I don't need to know the exact date of birth of a user, I thought it best to stop storing it altogether. This will obviously prevent any chance of this sensitive information getting into the wrong hands in the worst care scenario of a data breach. I would still like to know the approximate age of Golf Predictor users, hence the retention of the year of birth.

Some notes on this change:

1. All new users will be given a default day and month of birth of the first of January in the background as the system still expects a date, not just a year. 
2. I have updated the date of birth of all existing members to be the first of January of whatever year they said they were born. Existing members will also now only see their year of birth on their Profile page.
3. I have taken further steps to secure the personal information on database backups. I have deleted all server based backups and all other ones have always been encrypted for maximum security on a password protected hard drive.

I trust you will find this change to your satisfaction. I want to assure all Golf Predictor users that I take user privacy very seriously and I will continue to do my utmost to keep the limited personal information supplied as secure as I can.

Golf Predictor - PlayON Partnership

I am delighted to announce the beginning of a partnership between Golf Predictor and fellow Irish operation PlayON. It is a natural fit for a partnership, given that Golf Predictor is a premium supplier of statistics for European and US PGA Tour events and PlayON is a premier Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) company!

As part of this new relationship, Golf Predictor will soon be supporting line-ups for PlayON, the Official Daily Fantasy Partner of the European Tour. There may also be some reciprocal marketing arrangements and other link ups in the near future, so stay tuned for further developments.

If you want to try PlayON, sign up through this link and you'll receive a free £22 entry with a deposit of £20. I have played several PlayON contests and I find their golf contests both easy and enjoyable to use.Therefore, I have no hesitation in recommending them for your DFS needs.

Site Code Upgrade Complete & Other Tweaks

Further to this recent post, I am finally finished updating the code on all the pages in the member section of Golf Predictor. Including the menu pages, data pages, chart pages and other miscellaneous pages, this amounted to appropriately 150 different pages on the site.

In addition, I have also made the following changes to increase the performance of the site:

1. I have consolidated the number of style sheets used in the public facing and member sections of the site. This should increase performance by reducing the number of HTTP requests to display pages.
2. I have replaced some JavaScript files with the minimised versions to optimise loading times.
3. Where possible, I have moved the loading of JavaScript files to the bottom of pages to minimise the impact on page loading.
4. I have removed the AddThis social media functionality from the site home page, due to the surprisingly large size of the JavaScript file that it downloads from the AddThis website. The links to the Golf Predictor social media remain as simple links, but there are currently no "Like" buttons. These impact on the time taken to load the home page, no matter how they are implemented, so they are unlikely to return.

All these changes modernise the mark up used on the site and will make the site perform better, particularly for first time visitors (files/pages should be cached thereafter!). I have tested the pages as they were being updated and after the style sheet consolidation, but please contact me immediately if you experience any layout problems on the site. Just another way to make Golf Predictor even better!

Member Section Page Code Getting Updated on Golf Predictor

I have begun the process of updating the HTML mark up used in the Member section of  Golf Predictor. I have been avoiding this large task for quite some time, but have finally started to bite the bullet! The pages should look the same as before, but the code used to achieve this is being updated.

The mark up used to lay out these pages has been in place since 2007 and even then using tables for this purpose was frowned upon! At long last, I have begun the process of replacing the tables used for page layout with divs. I am also replacing most of the line break tags originally used to space things out with padding to modernise the page mark up.

These updates will make the modification of the page mark up easier in the future. It will also help if I make the Member section responsive, like the public facing section of the site. I am planning to update the pages in tranches over the next few weeks. I am testing the pages as they are replaced, but it is possible that there are issues in certain circumstances e.g. changing to a different GP Season with no matching records. Please contact me immediately if you experience any layout problems on the site.

GP Hosting Issue

Unfortunately, there is a connection issue with Golf Predictor at the moment. This is a problem with the hosting service, not Golf Predictor itself. They are aware of the issue and are working on it, but the system may be down for a while. I apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue, which is beyond my control and I ask for your patience at this time.


 [Update 3.30pm]
 I am pleased to report that the site appears to be back again. Thanks for your patience during this time.

Golf Predictor YouTube Channel Now Available!

Sample video tutorial (Performance Likelihood)

I am pleased to announce a new Golf Predictor YouTube Channel. This can be accessed by clicking on the following link:

Golf Predictor YouTube Channel

This channel will be used initially for video tutorials to help existing users get the most out of the site and show potential users what great features are available on Golf Predictor! These tutorial videos are in the form of screencasts, where I go through various great features for fantasy golf, DFS golf and golf betting on Golf Predictor. I have uploaded a number of videos to get going and I hope to add more in due course. The launch list covers the following topics:

1. An overview of the Golf Predictor menus in the member section
2. The Prediction Rankings page and GP Score.
3. The Prediction Data page for each golfer
4. The Form pages (last five form page)
5. The Performance Likelihood metric and Winners Form page
6. The Courses pages, stats and charts
7. The Tournament pages, stats and charts
8. The Results by GP Season, Results By Round Rank and Golfer Result pages
9. The Tournament Stats and Tournament Stats (Rounds) pages

This launch list includes a tutorial on at least one option from every Golf Predictor data menu. I have embedded the video on the Performance Likelihood above as a sample of what is available. Some notes on these new videos:

1. I have new found respect for any one who does this sort of thing. At the beginning at least, it is very time consuming and certainly much harder than it looks! If you think some of the videos are ropey, you should have seen/heard the first ten takes of each one!
2. In order to get the videos made at all, I had to divide most of them into segments. These then had to be then edited and combined. I'm no Martin Scorsese, so some of the joins are not as smooth as I'd like. There is one such join near the end of the above video!
3. I tried to speak at about 40% of normal speed in order that my Irish accent would be understandable by the widest possible audience! It does result occasionally in a slight drone, so apologies for that! I hope to improve as my recording career progresses!
4. It is enough to inflict my voice on you. Mercifully, my face does not appear in the videos!
5. I am now really sick of the actual sound of my voice, as opposed to the sound of my voice I hear normally through my skull!
6. I had some microphone issues and coupled with the lack of recording facilities, the sound quality isn't what I would have liked on these initial videos. I may look to sourcing a new microphone for future recordings. The YouTube uploading process doesn't seem to have helped either. Good quality speakers or headphones will help with the audio quality (but not my accent!) however.
7. I had considerable trouble sourcing the screencasting software. There were problems with each one that I tried. The software that I settled on allowed the capture of the mouse (most of the time!) or the display of the dropdown box options with different settings, but not with the same setting! This put restrictions on what could be shown in some videos. 
8. The videos have all been recorded in 720p HD which I found after experimentation was the best compromise between quality and file size.
9. I was able to fix a few minor issues and improve some functionality on Golf Predictor as a direct result of making these videos, so they were useful for something! 
10. The videos are numbered with 1xx representing general topics, 2xx representing topics from the first menu item (Predictions), 3xx representing topics from the second menu item (Form) and so on. In general, it would be best to view them in order, but I have left gaps in the numbers in case future videos have to be added logically between two existing ones.
11. I have created a "Golf Predictor Tutorials" playlist with the suggested order of videos. Of course, you can watch them in any order you wish, but some build on others, so you might like to follow this playlist.
12. Rather than re-record  (yet again!) some otherwise good segments, I have corrected/noted some boo-boos and slightly garbled speech with annotations to the videos. I also use these annotations to impart extra information not mentioned in the videos, so watch out for those!
13. I have linked to this new YouTube channel from the site home page, About GP page and member home page.

I trust you will find these new video tutorials useful and please subscribe to this new channel. Any feedback (via comments on this article or email) would be most welcome. Hopefully, this YouTube channel will help you reap the full benefits of Golf Predictor, the premium professional golf statistics site.

Prediction Data Page (General Panel) - Slight Change

New arrangement of stats on the General panel (for Bubba Watson - 2015 Travelers Championship)

Some minor changes have been made to the General panel on the prediction page on Golf Predictor. As can be seen in the screenshot above for Bubba Watson for last week's Travelers Championship, some of the stats have been moved around for logical reasons. The following changes were made:

1. Cut streak and winless streak have been moved to the bottom of the panel, so they are directly above the details for the last missed cut and last win.
2. Field Rank (WR) has been moved down under the other world ranking data and this now leads on to the average field rank, which has been moved to the right hand side of this row.
3. The GP score row has been moved up to underneath the prediction rank. Since the latter is bases on the former, this makes sense.
4. The performance likelihood has been moved up to the prediction rank row, where it now resides along with the other GP generated metrics (rank, GP score and fair odds).

No new information was added, but I believe this improves the digestibility of the information. Hopefully, after a short period of acclimatisation, you will agree. Just another way to make Golf Predictor a little better!

Upgraded Charts on Golf Predictor - Part 3

Further to the most recent post about the chart upgrade, I am pleased to announce that the last tranche of charts have been upgraded on Golf Predictor. These are the charts on the following pages:

1. Outstanding pages on Prediction menu (e.g. main prediction ranking page)
2. Outstanding pages on Form menu (e.g. season form page)
3. Pages on Information menu (e.g. golfers page)
4. Pages on Results menu (e.g. results by position - all page)
5. Pages on Other Stats menu (e.g. tournament stats page)

All the charts on these pages (and there are a lot of them!) are of the non-popup variety and are comprised of bar and pie charts. Some further notes on these new charts:

1. The pop-up text on bar charts with positive and negative values (e.g. average round score vs par charts) will not display consistently for negative values. You will have to hover over certain parts (anywhere outside the area in which the pop-up appears) of the negative bars to see the pop-up text.
2. All charts should be formatted properly. However, some charts may need further tweaking or have a label slightly truncated, depending on the data, e.g. a long name under the rightmost bar on a bar chart.

As ever, any feedback (via comments on this article or email) on these new charts would be most welcome. Barring any oversight on my behalf, this thankfully completes the somewhat tedious and repetitious conversion of all the charts on Golf Predictor to Flot!

Upgraded Charts on Golf Predictor - Part 2

Further to the recent post about the chart upgrade, I am pleased to announce that the second tranche of charts have been upgraded on Golf Predictor. These are the charts on the following pages:

1. Field Rankings
2. Field Rankings (Form)
3. Compare Field Rankings pages 
4. Compare Form pages
5. Compare Predictions pages

All the charts on these pages (and there are a lot of charts on some of them!) are pop-up charts and include multi-line, bar and bar stacked charts. Some further notes on these new charts:

1. Bar numbers are now not shown in bar charts with less than 4 bars. This is due to a formatting issue caused by the bar numbers in this situation.
2. The X-Axis title may be misaligned for some horizontal bar charts with bar numbers. This is again due to the bar numbers, which seem to cause more problems than they solve! In this case, they cause the x-axis label to be non-centred (more to the left). I couldn't find a solution to this, so I left it as is, since it's not a major issue and the display of the bar numbers outweighs it.

As ever, any feedback (via comments on this article or email) on these new charts would be most welcome. This completes the conversion of the pop-up charts to Flot on the site. I will be converting the non-pop up charts over the coming weeks and will post when the first tranche of these is complete.

Current Season Stats Now on Golf Predictor

The season stats for the current GP Season (the 2015 calendar year so far) have been added to Golf Predictor. This was done after a user request came in for this data ahead of The Masters. This information is very useful for picking players for a sweep ahead of the stats being available for the event on Golf Predictor.

Because Golf Predictor uses the most recent results and world rankings possible, the tournament stats can not be generated until the latest world rankings from the previous week's tournaments are available. This is generally the Monday of a tournament week. It is not convenient to extract field information from Golf Predictor before this happens, but these current season stats should make the task easier.

Season stats were hitherto now only available for completed GP seasons, but I will put a process in place to update the current season stats after every tournament week as the season goes on, so they can be used ahead of other tournaments. Note that like completed season stats, only players who have played at least five events in the current season will be shown. Just another way to make Golf Predictor a little better!

Upgraded Charts on Golf Predictor - Part 1

Original Flash Based Line Chart (FusionCharts)

New JavaScript Line Chart (Flot)

Further to the recent post about the chart upgrade, I am pleased to announce that the first tranche of charts have been upgraded on on Golf Predictor. These are the charts on the following pages:

1. Prediction Data page
2. Golfer Page
3. Season Stats page
4. Tournament page

All the charts on these pages are pop-up charts and include line, multi-line, bar, bar stacked and pie charts. A comparison of the old and new line charts can be seen in the screenshots above. Both charts show the same data, namely Rory McIlroy's performance in 2014. As you can see, the charts are very similar, but there are some subtle differences (more below). Some notes on these new charts:

1. The Flot charts handle some formatting situations differently, e.g. if chart data exceeds the maximum/minimum value assigned for the chart. I may have missed some of these issues, so please let me know if you spot a badly formatted chart.
2. Another Flot difference is that horizontal bar charts show the bars are in opposite order to FusionCharts. This is only relevant if you have changed chart orientation in your profile from the default (vertical).
3. Histogram type bar charts (e.g. round score distributions) are only visible in vertical orientation. This was the same with the original charting.
4. As can be seen in the second screenshot above, there is space to right of the Flot pop-up chart. This is to allow for the hover text for the last data point to be visible. Unlike FusionCharts, Flot doesn't handle this very well.
5. Tied positions are now indicated in line chart hover text, where relevant. This is shown in the second screenshot above where Rory finished T25th in the WGC - Cadillac Championship. 
6. As also shown above, the hover text can also be better formatted in Flot and span multiple lines.
7. Hovering over a slice on a pie chart will show details under the chart, rather than on the slice. Like the existing pie chart, the value will still be shown beside the slice, but you must hover over it to see the percentage of total for the slice below the chart.
8. The values are not shown on/over the bar for vertical (default) bar charts with rotated x-axis labels e.g. golfer comparison charts. These labels have to be rotated for legibility purposes, as the golfer names are too long. However, when the bar value is added, the rotated x-axis labels get misaligned pretty badly. I have therefore hidden the bar value on such charts, but you can hover over a bar to get its value or view it in the vertical orientation to see the bar values in place.
9. The bar values are hidden for the world ranking chart on the tournament page as they were affecting the position/legibility of the axis labels. Sometimes, combinations of Flot plug-ins do not play well together. You can still hover over a bar to get its value.
10. I have tested the charts on FireFox, IE7/8/11 and Chrome on Windows and also iOS and Android. Unlike the Flash based charts they replace, they render on all browser/devices.
11. The charts do render on IE7/8, but they do not look as well or the hover text doesn't work as well as they do on more modern browsers. In any event, if you are using these versions of IE, you should really be thinking about upgrading!
12. I fixed a few long standing errors that were on some of the the existing charts, such as incorrect axis labels.

Overall, I believe these new Flot charts are better than the Flash based charts they are replacing. As stated previously, they render quicker, are compatible with all devices, use the latest charting technology and most importantly, the look good. Any feedback (via comments on this article or email) on these new charts would be most welcome.

Just another way to make Golf Predictor a little better. I will be converting more charts over the coming weeks to Flot and will post when the next tranche is complete.

Charting Issue/Upgrade

There appears to be an issue with the charts on Golf Predictor. The latest buggy release of possibly the buggiest technology of all time, Adobe Flash, does not seem to render the charts at the correct size on Windows 8.1. However, the same charts appear to render properly on Windows 7 and Windows XP with the latest version of Flash. In addition, this latest version of Flash appears to crash a lot on Windows 8.1, even by its own low standards!

As it happens, I was just beginning the process of replacing the Flash based FusionCharts Free charts on Golf Predictor with a JavaScript alternative when I found this problem. As Flash is a dying technology, it seemed prudent to look into replacing it on the site even before this issue manifested itself. After a comprehensive review of the options available, I have decided to go with the excellent Flot charting library. This library offers the following advantages:

1. It will render on any modern browser/device, although some older versions of IE may have difficulties (surprise, surprise!). Flash does not work on many mobile devices, most famously Apple devices.
2. It doesn't require the Flash browser plug-in which is a renowned security risk (in addition to crashing a lot!).
3. The charts should render quicker.
4. The charts look very nice, with the possible exception of pie charts, which still look OK.
5. It's free, which is a definite bonus!

As I am planning to phase in this new charting technology for the 350 or so charts on Golf Predictor, Windows 8.1 users experiencing the charting issue mentioned above will have to hold on for the new charts. While Flot offers some great options, it may not be possible to reproduce all charts exactly as they are now, e.g. 3D bars/pies are not available. However, for the most part, they will look and behave very similar to the current charts.

Replacing all the charts on Golf Predictor is a large undertaking, but you should start to see the new charts appearing over the next few weeks. This roll out will probably start with the golfer prediction page and other data pages (e.g. tournament and player pages), before extended to the view pages (e.g. Prediction Rankings and Season Form pages). I will post again when this roll out commences with a comparison of the old and new charts.


[UPDATE 11 March 2015]
On further testing it appears that FireFox and Chrome are affected by this on Flash version 16.0.0.305. Unbelievably, something actually works on IE (IE 11 at any rate) that doesn't work on another major browser!

Golf Predictor SSL Issue Fixed

Further to the recent SSL issue with Golf Predictor (arising from the forced upgrade), you may not be able to register for or log into the site for a while over the weekend while the SSL settings are being updated. I'm told the process could take up to two days to take effect, but it should be fixed much sooner than that. At the moment, the process is not affecting logging in or registering, but this may change over the next few hours. Thank you for your continued patience during this time and I will update this post with any new information.

[Update Sat 24 Jan 11pm]
I am happy to announce that the SSL issue has finally been resolved. After a brief site outage a few minutes ago, the SSL certificate now appears to be working properly. This means that there are no more security warnings on browsers. This was the last outstanding issue, so Golf Predictor is back working properly after the server migration. Thank you once again for your continued patience during this process.

SSL Certificate Issue

Further to the recent server upgrade with Golf Predictor, it has been brought to my attention that the SSL certificate issue alluded to in that post gives a more serious warning in Chrome*. I am working towards a fix, but in the meantime, it should be safe to log in by clicking "Advanced" and then "Proceed to www.golfpredictor.com". On other browsers, select the option to continue on to the website.

The issue is caused by the recent server upgrade and not by an attack on the site. Apologies for any inconvenience caused in the meantime.

*This doesn't happen on all versions of Chrome


[Update 7.30pm]
As I suspected, I have to change a SSL setting which will make the site unavailable for up to another 24 hours. Therefore, I will again wait until the weekend, when the site is less useful. Until then, please follow the instructions above to continue on to the site.

Golf Predictor Upgrade

Further to the recent serious issue with Golf Predictor, the site may be down over the weekend while it is moved to a new and improved server. I'm told the process could take up to two days to take effect, but hopefully it will be back on-line much sooner than that. Thank you for your continued patience during this time.

[Update 11.30pm]
The process has gone well so far, except that I forgot about the sub-domain for the Golf Predictor blog! I've had to point the blog back to its original Blogger URL for the time being. The main Golf Predictor site has been successfully transferred to its new server. However, the SSL cert has had to be transferred and this takes some time (anything from 2 to 24 hours, I've been told).

Because this cert protects your sensitive data (e.g. password and registering information), I have disabled both logging in and registering until the process completes. In the interim, all pages that use the cert on Golf Predictor will not display anyway. I have temporarily disabled the SSL feature on the log in and registration pages, so that they display. However, I have removed the registration form and made the fields on the log in page read only for the moment. I will check the SSL status in the morning (Irish time) and throughout the next few days until the process completes.

[Update Jan 17 8am]
The SSL cert hasn't transferred over to the new server yet. Looking at the administration page for the cert, it says it could take up to 72 hours. This is longer than I was told over the phone, but hopefully it won't take that long.

[Update Jan 17 10am]
The sub-domain for the Golf Predictor blog (blog.golfpredictor.com) has been restored. The only outstanding issue now is the SSL cert

[Update Jan 17 5.30pm]
Still waiting on the SSL cert.

[Update Jan 17 11pm]
The SSL cert has been transferred successfully, so I have re-enabled the login and registration pages. The site appears to be working fine now, except for the missing captcha image on the registration page. As a result, I have removed the captcha for the time being. Note that you may have to add a security exemption to your browser when accessing a secure page (e.g. the log in page) on the site for the first time. Thank you for your patience while the site was down.

GP Hosting Issue

Unfortunately, there is a database connection issue with Golf Predictor at the moment. While you can see the site homepage and other front facing pages, you can not log into the member area at the moment. This is a problem with the hosting service, not Golf Predictor itself. I have raised the issue with my provider, but the system may be down for a while.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue, which is beyond my control and I ask for your patience at this time.


[UPDATE 9pm]
After a long and frustrating day, I'm afraid the situation is bleak for a quick fix. This inexplicable problem is a connection issue with the database which holds the member information, which is why no one can log in. All looks well on the hosting side, although there is one strange issue related to the database in question. While I can manually access the database content/structure as usual, the website has suddenly stopped being able to connect to it after about seven years. The host company have denied making any changes that could have caused this connection issue, so we're at a bit of an impasse. I've decided to take this opportunity while the site is down to upgrade the hosting account. This involves moving the site files and recreating the databases on the new set up. I hope to be able to restore the problem database, so there isn't any loss in data. When finished, the site performance should increase due to the upgrade, but it may take several days before all this is complete. Thank you for your continued patience. I will apply free subscription time in lieu of any downtime, so no one will lose out financially due to this outage.

[UPDATE Sun 11 Jan, 1pm] 
Still working on the problem. Not much progress made thus far today unfortunately, although not for the lack of trying!

[UPDATE Sun 11 Jan, 8.45pm] 
I have managed to transfer most of the site to the new hosting account. Only the problematic database remains to be done, along with some necessary reconfiguration.

[UPDATE Mon 12 Jan, 12.45pm] 
I have managed to recreate the site on the new server. More testing is needed, so I'm not sure that everything is working just yet. If all proves to be well, the site will have to be pointed to its new home which I'm told could take a day or two to take effect. I may be able to point the old site to the new databases and get the system back up in time for this week's events. I would then do the full changeover this coming weekend. Note that the late Monday finish (Irish time) to the Hawaiian event means that no predictions would be available until Tuesday evening at the earliest, regardless of the state of the system. That's some useful breathing space for me, given the circumstances!
 
[UPDATE Mon 12 Jan, 9pm] 
I have managed to get the site working again by pointing the existing site to the databases on the new server. These had exactly the same content as the ones on the existing server, but without the inexplicable error on the membership database. I hope to complete the changeover to the new server at the weekend, once this week's tournaments have started and Golf Predictor isn't quite as useful! Thank you for your continued patience during this very difficult time. Now, I'm off to bed!

2014 GP Season Stats Available

Following the conclusion of the last event of 2014 on both major tours in South Africa yesterday, the statistics for the 2014 GP season are now available on Golf Predictor (Other Stats menu, Season Stats options). The numbers have been crunched for all 498 golfers who played at least five tournaments (excluding non-finishes) on the European/US PGA Tour during the course of the GP season (2014 calendar year).

Unsurprisingly, Rory McIlroy is the top golfer when the average finishing position for the season is used as the primary ranking statistic. The Northern Irish world number one had a very impressive 4 wins and 16 top tens in 23 events in 2014. Surprisingly and somewhat disappointingly, McIlroy's worst performance was at his home open, where his missed cut really hurt his average finishing position. I hope I didn't put him off when I was on duty following his group that week in Cork! Despite not coming in first over the year, Adam Scott had a very similar average to McIlroy, albeit with just 1 win and 10 top tens from 18 starts. However, he didn't miss any cuts and that gave him an impressive level of consistency for the year.

Rory had the most wins and the most top tens of any golfer in 2014. His winning percentage was 17.4% and his top ten percentage was an impressive 69.8%. Other somewhat interesting statistics include Bill Haas' 29 events in 2014 without missing a single cut. An honourable mention to Jim Furyk, who played 21 events while always making the weekend. On the other extreme, John Parry had the unenviable record of 23 missed cuts in 29 events. Finally, Brendon de Jonge was once again the hardest working golfer, playing an impressive 33 weeks of the year. This was two less events than last year and this slacking off allowed Chris Doak and Nicholas Thompson to tie him for tournaments played in 2014!

See these and many more interesting 2014 GP season statistics on Golf Predictor!