My first Blog – maybe also my last – will be about lane statistics! I do this, because I love lane statistics. They are often useful and sometimes underestimated in perspective of giving a very good insight to a competition. From time to time you find surprises, like the team statistics for EC2013 men´s teams:
We all know the results with another impressing win of Uppsala. Hardenberg end up 2nd with the same margin to Uppsala than to the 3rd place team of Tempo Praha (13 shots). Another 22 shots back MC Olten and followed by Tantogarden with 2 more and Vergiate with 14 more. First impression is a not very exciting tournament and beside the bad starting rounds of Vergiate and Tanto and a devasting (looks like tournament losing round of Hardenberg in Round 4) everything followed the a big picture with the well known ending.
But was the Round 4 really the key for Hardenberg to lose against Uppsalla? Yeah, they lost 16 shots and have been 13 behind in the end. But if we look at the team statistics you´ll find something amazing:
The difference is per round and player only 0,23 strokes. And if we have a look at http://vysledky.minigolfnews.cz/ec2013/teamstat.htm (thanks to Bangolf Arena an easy opp. to do this – still more and better stats are wishable ;-) )
We can see that more or less 15 lanes are quite similar.
But No.10-Net and No.14-Sloped lane with hole Uppsala did win 0,35 average to Hardenberg. So actually more than they are ahead. While 14 is something that I would say: Could happen due to the difficult level and only both Swedish teams were really better there, I would not give too much on that. But losing 0,21 on Net is for Hardenberg also maybe losing the complete EC there. Actually it was not only the poor play of the Germans, because also the 3rd best team there just managed 1,17 on the Net. But Uppsala made something special there to be the best team with 1,05. Due to the fact that it was a net to play with a jump, but the tee area did not offer any possibility to let the ball jump, Uppsala made something special. The right handed players of Uppsala took the left handed coaches putter and played with the more lofted non-rubber side of this club to enforce a jump.
Just WOW. Cool stuff. I have seen a lot of stuff during past years, and this belongs to the Top10 efforts I have ever seen.
But if you think now that Uppsala is just the better team when it comes to those kind of things, I have to say no:
Look at Lane 7 Passage. If they would have lost Gold, the reason would have been this lane: Losing incredible 0,33 to Hardenberg there. Also to other 8 teams they lost there, simple due to the fact they did not use the wall shot option there. A big mistake with no further consequences.
So the match between those teams was mostly on 3 out of 18 lanes. If you compare it to the high level of professionalism of these competitors this is quite amazing, and shows the importance of choosing balls and playing options. And therefore also the importance of statistics….. J
Other notable stuff of the competition:
· Tempo Praha was incredible good on No. 2-Salto with -0,2 to the second best team!
· MGC Oirschot showed that coaches lanes are not only something for usually best teams. They were the best team with 1,1 on No.4-Truncated Cones. Congrats!
· Olten with an incredible good score of 1,1 on No.8-Kidney beat the hell out of their direct opponents for place 4 (Tantogarden 1,37).
· Tempo Praha again but now on the lower side with 1,29 on No.9-Angle. Again Olten there the best with 1,02!!!
· Vergiate would wish to get a second chance on No.11-Bridge with being the worst team with 1,62
Did you like my little findings? If you want to have more please react on that Blog. Otherwise I keep my little “public” secrets …
;-)
Disclaimer:
Who will be first in finding something to my inaccurate blog? (There is in minimum one ….)