Don't drop that notion.

Remember the old days of sport, when grizzled sportswriters added some level of expertise -- some knowing insight, just a feeling, something they saw that day in the paddock -- to their writing? They used the gut, had a feeling, risked an opinion, and saw it through.

Nowadays, I'm afraid easy statistics have made a monster of them all. Trivia freaks. Can spit you numbers from here to kingdom come, sorted in all kinds of categories. Pack a few together that support your angle, you've got copy.

Sportswriters are too much Mr. Predictor's for me these days. Bookie type advice -- like we're all betting on the outcomes. Gone too often is the knowledge passing. The intimate coverage of players or plays.

I watched John Madden Sunday night; he still has it. Taught me more over the years about the game of football than my own Dad could. Made it fun too. Madden offers the insider gut feeling, explaining what he saw and why, whether his immediate hunch was on or not. He's usually on though. It's more than just lumping some numbers together, and creating a pattern. Lock up the statistics cabinets, I'd say, sportswriters.

Things like this just seem wrong to me. Judging a player's future game on how much money she made in the past? That's just ... illogical. The numbers are with you probability-wise (how many times has Annika missed the cut?), but it's not correlated. We judge today's performance on its own merit.

If you're lucky, you work in a place where the highest paid are consistently the top performers. If not, you hope for some of those throwback teammates -- just picking up on a little something they noticed in the paddock.
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WEST PALM BEACH — Can't tell you who will win the LPGA's first million-dollar jackpot Sunday afternoon, but figuring out who won't is a cinch.

Ai Miyazato, Thursday's first-round leader at the ADT Championship with a sweet 68, she's toast. Same goes for Il Mi Chung and Julieta Granada, two more hard-chargers from the tour's international ranks, even though they barely missed grabbing the early lead themselves.
...
That's why Thursday's scores don't really mean that much.

Annika's 74 was an annoyance, nothing more. Don't worry about her making the cut to 16 players after today's second round. Sorenstam has won more than $20 million in her unmatched career. She doesn't make a habit of leaving money lying around for someone else to pick up.
...
Look out, though, for quotes like this one from Chung, who has five top-10 finishes on the LPGA tour and 34 missed cuts.

"I'm just happy to be here in this tournament," Chung said. "I always felt that every time I played in LPGA events, nobody knows who's going to win because there is such good talent."

Can't know who's going to win, but at this ADT, above all others, the ones who won't claim a career-making prize already are identified.

The ones who are just happy to be here.

Current Leaderboard

Miyazato on top, with Granada right behind.
Chung and Pressel hanging in there.
Annika went home early this time.
Still, he's right -- two more days of play.
Anybody up on how Webb's been looking lately?