Season Play Results

[Indy Anna Jones]

Hey all season players! I finished the Hyundai Tournament of Champions tonight, and just thought I'd post the results, as I'm wondering how the pros are performing in your tourneys. I won this one, as I got red hot in the first round (-15) and pretty much cruised the rest of the way to a -29 finish. Here's the rest of my top ten:

2. Ricky Fowler -22
3. Brendon de Jonge -19
4. Stewart Cink -18
T5. Jason Bohn -17
T5. David Duval -17
T5. David Toms -17
T5. D. J. Trahan -17

Six players were tied for 9th at -16.

Gotta go spend my $1100000 prize check now before anyone realizes it's forged!

[sandwedge]

Indy,
Love the players set but I was wondering - where's Anthony Kim? My best finish in the tournaments I've played so far is -18, good enough for 2nd place. I'm doing a little better than I thought - no one to laugh at me when I mishit I guess.

At any rate it inspired us to produce an ATG list for the men (180 players with normalized stats) to conduct some team match play events - me and Weiskopf versus my oldest daughter and Couples etc. In order to qualify for the list a player has to have either: 10 wins on the PGA tour or European tours, 30 wins on the Australian or Japanese tours, or at least 2 majors. It has made playing the game more interesting and more level for our abillities. Only trouble is the AI is horrible at getting around trees and putting - we did like you suggested and dropped the putting number and that has helped. We are working on the women's ATG set now - girls want Se Ri Pak especially as playing with the men kind of defeats the purpose of beating up on dad I guess. Thanks for the list and the inspiration - I've got a pretend house to sell if you want to transfer some of those pretend winnings my way

[Indy Anna Jones]

Kim was 24th on the money list, but there were NO stats available for him, possibly because he only participated in 14 events. Two other top 125 winners didn't have stats either: #50 Graeme McDowell (10 events) and #58 Arjun Atwal (13 events.) The fewest rounds played and having stats was #36 Ian Poulter (15.) Hmm, I really don't understand why these guys didn't have stats listed.

Of course you can feel free to look up Kim's stats and make your own player.

[SteveHorn]

Indy! The next time you make a players list and want all or most info may I recommend
PGAtour.com. It has everything you need as far as stats. Once you enter that site click players near the top of the screen. In that window scan down to active players and you see the alphabit A thru Z last name. Next click the letter you want to search and a players list will be directly below starting with whatever letter you choose. This I found easier to do then a basic player search which is also avalible.
Click on the players name your interested in and info on that player and pictures will appear. This is your ( at a glance ) window. If you go down a little you will see stats like wins top tens and so forth. If you go down further you will see a list of key stats. The darker blue bar is the players current stats ( currently 2010 final ) and the lighter blue bar is all players avg. for whatever stat your looking at. The only 2 stats not their in that window is birdie avg. and sand save pct. You can get that info by going back up the page and clicking on stats summery which is located just below the player picture.
You can also go to Europeantour.com and get stats for players there. The only stats you need to estimate from this site is scramble and I think birdie avg. Just make sure after you click on players you click full players list A to Z because you'll miss alot in there basic search window. Hope this helps anyone interested in creating a player.

[Indy Anna Jones]

Steve, I did get my info from Pgatour.com. However, if you check the individual players you'll find that their page only includes the most basic stats.

I went to the 2010 statistics page and found exactly what I was looking for and a whole lot more. I think they keep statistics on just about everything, including esoteric stuff like missing the green to the left after missing the fairway to the right and landing in a trap between 250-275 yards in a 17 mph wind blowing from the players front left. It's wild!

Anyway, in statistics I found the following:
2010 PGA Tour Money Leaders (my starting page; I selected the top 125)
[All these sorted by the ranking:]
Driving distance
Hit fairway percentages
Putting average [fudged these down 0.2% because AI putting stinks]
Sand save percentage*
Scrambling*
GIR percentage
Birdie average
Scoring average [fudged these down 2 points; the mean was 70.48 for 2010]

Then it was just a matter of entering the data into a spread sheet and sorting by name, then entering that into the game.

Okay, I was bored over the holidays. What can I say?

*I've never been able to find these explicitively recorded and have always had to do some fudging

[SteveHorn]

Indy ! Scrambling pct. and sand save pct stats are avalible on PGAtour.com Are you sure your not on PGA.com instead of PGAtour.com ?

[Indy Anna Jones]

Heck I don't know Steve. All I know is that I got what I needed and got the job done. The last player list I did (2007?) I did use individual sites but at that times sand saves and scrambling weren't available. Or at least the site I used; heck I've slept since then so I have no idea what it was!

[SteveHorn]

Indy! I fill like I rubbed you the wrong way. I meant no malice and apoligize for any hurt feelings. Sometimes I say to much.

[Indy Anna Jones]

Yeh, I did get a little testy. Sorry Steve.
I probably should have researched those 3 T-125 players a little harder when I discovered their stats missing, but after 5 hours of research, collating and posting, I was getting pretty tired. I'm pretty satisfied with the results I got and I'm hoping others are using the player list and it wasn't a wasted effort.

It's not for me anyway, lol. I finished the second tourney last night (Sony Open in Hawaii at Ogilvie2's [Boris] Waialae CC.) God that course gives me nightmares; I finished dead last with +7 and missed the cut, obviously. My top 10:
1. Ryuji Imada -15
T2. Paul Goydos -14
T2. Paul Casey -14
T2. Michael Sim -14
T5. Troy Merritt -13
T5. Rory McIlroy -13
T5. Pat Perez -13
T8. Brendon de Jonge -12
T8. Brandt Snedeker -12
T8. Fredrick Jacobsen -12

de Jonge is my only player so far to have two T-10 finishes. It's always funny to me how players perform well on 1 course then poorly on the next, but they do it for real also.

(Btw, I love the course, really, but it has some of the wickedest greens on dry I've ever played.)

[Indy Anna Jones]

Sandwedge, for some reason I missed the second half of your post... sorry.

A couple of suggestions for your AI players (besides tweaking their stats.)
First, make sure that "computer learning" is checked.
Second, set them up in a foursome on an easy course with totally benign conditions and let them play 18 holes "live." This apparently "seasons" them and afterwards they seem to perform more realistically. But the putting is pretty absurd at times. It's so common to see them make a 60 foot snaky putt then miss a 3' tap-in. I guess AI wasn't a high priority for the design team. I actually played a round with a comp player a couple of days ago and he shot -5, which is a pretty rare performance. I usually call being teamed up with me in the first and second round the "kiss of death" for the poor computer player(s).

Speaking of: Tourney 3, The Bob Hope Classic at The PGA West-Stadium Course was a washout for me. I just couldn't stay out of the water on those long shots with gusty winds. #17, an island green slayed me. In 2 rounds I was in the water 3 [blanking] times. But I did manage to finish the second round dead last at +7; considering the number of 3 and 4 bogeys, I did have a number of birds and an eagle.

Top 10 Finishers:
1. Hunter Mahan -21 ($997,751)
T2. John Senden, Matt Kuchar -19
4. K. J. Choi -18
T5. Charles Howell III, Kevin Streelman -17
T7. Stewart Cink, Joe Durant, Ricky Barnes, Marc Leishman, Jim Furyk -16