[damaniac]

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What a strange thread.

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No kidding. I kept rereading everything, trying to figure out how this related. Then I realized OP just asked completely unrelated questions.

As for Woods, if he died before going pro he'd be one of the great "What ifs", sort of like Phar Lapp (extra credit if anyone knows who that is).

Casey, meh. I'm sure walking for 4 hours in the sun is harder than riding and causes some fatigue, and that fatigue could indeed induce poorer play. But on that note, you're walking, not running, it's 4 hours so you can take breaks, sit down, drink lots of water, and the game itself is a series of very short discrete actions, so it's not like a marathon. No one tried to do a study to see how scores differed (even among amateurs) in this context? That'd be interesting info IMO, and probably should be dispositive if the methodology is correct.

But a lot of this is just bias from someone who runs 5 miles a day, often in mid-afternoon in the summer, and finds whining about walking a few miles over several hours unbelievably weak. Ok, it probably has an effect, I get it. I also think we should ban crowd noise at basketball games, as it clearly interferes with the concentration and self-esteem of the athletes.