[John Kirk]

Good morning,

I am following the US Women's Mid-Am at Stonewall from afar this week.  Three local players from Portland made it into match play.  Today the quarterfinals are being played.  Here is the website that follows the scoring:

https://championships.usga.org/uswomensmidamateur/2023/scoring.html

Note the amazing consistency of the seeds.  The following seeds are in the quarters today:

2-9-10-11-12-13-14-16


It's uncanny how that works out.  You wonder whether there's something statistically significant about this result.  The top two seeds were eliminated in the round of 64.  Could it be that the best match players avoid getting too excited about stroke play, and methodically play well enough to insure a spot in the matches.  Then they turn it on a bit, while conserving the emotional energy needed to play eight rounds in six days.

Anyway, a very cool stat in my opinion.


 

[Matt_Cohn]

Just random chance. Last year was 1-5-14-20-24-26-27-63. The year before was 2-7-12-20-27-40-51-64.


Looking at this year's seeds, I hypothesized that the remaining seeds reflected on the understandable lack of depth compared to the men's fields—that even amongst the 64 who made match play, there was still a significant gap in ability between high and low seeds (and I still think that's the case). But considering the two previous years as well, it mostly seems to show that a lot can happen in 18 holes of match play!

[JohnVDB]

The Women’ Mid-Am has the smallest number of entrants and along with the Senior Women’s Am have the least depth of any USGA championships.  Because of this, the majority of the good players end up in the upper half of the match play bracket and upsets in the first round are significantly less common than in the other championships.


There is always a lot of talk about how medalists get knocked out early. My theory on that is that the medalist has often played two very good rounds and it is hard for them and most playersto play theee in a row, while the 64th is frequently a good player who struggled for one round and is due a to have a good round.


Regarding John’s theory about the best players not being too concerned about stroke play, I agree.  Many good players realize there is one player who “wins” the stroke play while 63 tie for second.

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