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Resident Evil: How the wicked game of golf has ruined analysis

Randy C. Hice

Courtesy of Lotus Head, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Golf is a miserable game.

Analytical types make the worse golfers, in many cases, because they over-think and overanalyze every stinking flaw. Of course, I'm talking about myself here, and every time I have analyzed my own game, my diagnoses had nothing to do with the actual problems.

I have had a fair amount of success in different sports, but golf isn't one of them. My goal of being a low single-digit handicap golfer has been, er, elusive. Of course, my penchant for power and speed has worked against me in golf. I have had several lessons from the venerable Craig Shankland, a frequent cover boy on Golf and Golf Digest magazines, and certainly one of the top 10 golf coaches in the country. A great, enthusiastic, and very pleasant man, Craig has you hitting like Tiger Woods when he's standing there with you but, after leaving the range, your swing quickly reverts to something resembling a badger with his leg in a trap…think Charles Barkley after six shots of Stoly.

There are two pieces of advice that, when I follow them, transform my game.

Tip #1: Slow down your swing, and you'll learn to live with the extra distance.

Tip #2: Your trailing hand must maintain a slight angle at impact.

As far as #1, I tend to throw that out the window, preferring to swing hard enough to launch a new DirecTV satellite. I have had some impressive results. One time, in Wisconsin, I out-drove my wife's cousin, a scratch golfer with a 335 yard blast that settled my ball on the green of a short par 4. (I three putted for par). Another time, on a par 5 at the La Paloma resort in Tucson, my drive sailed a good 320 right down the middle of the fairway. I then slammed a career 3-wood (ah 3 metal), 250 yards, onto the green, right in the middle of a surprised threesome in the process of putting out, and my ball missed the hole by inches for a rare (much rarer than a hole-in-1) double eagle.¹ (I made the eagle putt).

I expected trouble when I caught up with the foursome, but they stood and greeted me with an ovation befitting Neil Armstrong. Instead of chewing me out, they invited me to play with them, sure they would see many such miraculous shots, rather than the shameful exhibition of worm burners and sky balls that I actually provided.

Another time, I played a course in Florida that has been closed by nearby fires, and the only other human on the course was former major league pitcher, and celebrity golf star, Rick Rhoden. I waved as we passed each other in our carts, both of us coughing in the dense smoke, but willing to play through it. I pulled up to a par 4 dogleg with a huge risk-reward shot facing me. I could play it safe and lay up after navigating the dogleg and, with a quality pitch, par the hole, or do what I did, which was crank a driver straight at the hole and swing hard enough to loosen my fillings. The crack when I hit the ball was a frightening, violent explosion, sending lazy alligators scrambling for safe haven. The shot carried 320 yards over water; had it carried 319.5 yards, I would have been in the water, but it didn't, and I wasn't. With my ball nestled on an 18-inch-wide piece of turf, I chipped in for an eagle, and absolutely no one was within a mile to see it.

The last one I'll mention occurred in Atlanta. I was playing with my (now retired) orthodontist, a wild man named Peter — a Harvard man who sent me pictures a few months ago of him bungee jumping off a bridge in New Zealand…at the age of 73. I fondly recall Peter referring me to his business attorney in town who said to me a few moments into the meeting, "I don't know why Peter sent you to me, I've been giving him advice for 30 years, and he's never taken any of it."

After landing on the green in two shots on a 600 yard par 5, I had Peter's attention. A few holes later, I was facing 195 yards uphill on a par 4. It was cart path only that day due to recent rains, and my ball was on the opposite site of the fairway. I realized when I got to my ball that I had my 7 iron, rather than my 5. As my round was, for the most part, a disaster and rather than walk all the way back to the cart, I just thought, "to hell with it", and swung that 7 iron like I was trying to decapitate a rhinoceros. Now, a 7 iron is a 150 yard club for many people, so an uphill 195 yard poke is ludicrous, and Peter was ridiculing my choice. That was before the ball sailed past the flag to the far end of the green (3 putted again).

Of course, it's easy for me to remember those stellar shots because there have been so few. Most of the time, I make huge mistakes, and they result in legends still whispered in closed circles at golf bars everywhere.

One time, on a par 4, I hit what may have been the hardest ball I ever struck. I was only100 yards from the house in Tampa shared by NFL players Rhonde and Tiki Barber. I can't say how far the ball traveled, but it may have been well over 350 yards. Of course, the flight path was at a 45-degree angle to the green, and my ball sailed not just out of bounds, but over the houses backing up to the fairway, over the street in front of those houses, over the houses across the street from those houses, onto a main road in the subdivision, and the ball bounced in an astonishing series of hogback hops right down the middle of the road with a mind of its own, missing at least six cars en route to a final resting place in an intersection several blocks away. In all, the ball probably ended up 600 yards from the tee. Though this was a "stroke and distance" situation, I decided to run out in traffic after my friends held up the cars, and I smashed the ball mightily back into a residential lawn, taking the bottom 1/8th of an inch of metal off my club, then another blast back to the fairway, taking a crisp 9 on the hole.

Once, at a course not far from Corona, CA, in a breach of golf etiquette, a foursome in two carts sailed past my partner and me, without asking, and sat in their carts waiting for the next tee to clear. The tee was considerably ahead of us, to the right, and I thought I was clear to unleash a furious 6 iron toward a par 3. But I got under the ball, and it quickly gained altitude, and started on a ballistic arc towards the offending foursome as though it was laser-guided. When it became obvious that the ball was closing on them like a Tomahawk missile, we started yelling "Fore! Fore!" as loud as we could. Problem was, no one in the foursome spoke English, and apparently "fore" is not a universal golf term for "get the hell out of the way." Now, with the ball closing at terminal velocity, we sat and awaited the result. The ball crashed down on the top of one of the carts with a sound of an unbridled AK-47 in a shower room. The occupants may not have understood English, but they understood incoming ordinance, and both dove into the soft muddy grass on either side of the cart in a scene that would have been cut from Caddyshack for lack of believability.

So, my crippling injuries from last year that scuttled mountain biking season for me also hosed any chance of golf last summer, it has now been almost two years since my last game, and insurance rates for the homes bordering the course where I play have declined. That will all change when I take to the driving range this week as soon as the snow clears.

Self analysis
So, self-analysis in golf works no better than self-analysis in the informatics universe. Time and time again, companies repeat the same fundamental mistake when undertaking a new informatics project. Often, internal resources are utilized in the interest of saving time and money and in combination with the odd phenomenon I call the "neurosurgeon syndrome."

Say you were running a fly pattern in touch football with the kids and, caught up in the moment, failed to see that flag post in the end zone. So, after denting the post with your skull, your double vision seemed not to be dissipating a few days later, and you relay the embarrassing episode to a friend.

"Susan Smythe is a brilliant neurosurgeon, go see her."

"Really? You've had neurosurgery?"

"No, but I spoke to her at a cocktail party, and she sure knew a lot about it."

"How do you know she knew a lot?"

"Because she knew more than me."

Ok, so you get the point? It is extremely common for people to be thrust into a role based on insufficient information or a total lack of appreciation for the task at hand. Look anywhere on the Internet whether it be consulting company marketing pages, newsletters, blogs, magazines or forums and you will see the admonition "you need to develop a good user requirements specification."

Okay, this isn't like the inane things you read like "when it gets hot outside, you should drink plenty of water." It is really, really important. Nonetheless, a great many companies throw resources at mission-critical tasks with little regard to what the task is, let alone what skills are required.

It is important to understand that you can use the best tools money can buy, kick the best systems analysts into the volcano of user requirements development, and produce a stunning document resembling the drivel normally reserved for the $350/hr Big Six consulting firms, and end up with nothing of value.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Ragtime. The late Jimmy Cagney, in failing health, played a part in one of the most chilling scenes in any movie without even rising from his chair. As Chief of Police Rheinlander Waldo, he confronts the unapologetic racist fire chief, Willie Conklin, portrayed by the remarkable character actor, Kenneth McMillan.

It's a long story, but the line I love is, "Willie, people tell me you're a worthless piece of slime."

Imagine paraphrasing that line when asked "What do you think of our requirements document?"

"Well, I think it's a worthless piece of slime."

Don't laugh. Over the years I've been asked to review requirements documents, and some would have to be reworked for hours just to attain the stature of "a worthless piece of slime."

My all-time favorite was a successful pharmaceutical company who asked me to review their "requirements document" and comment. I was handed a single page of paper with single spaced line items on it.

"Okay, your outline looks a bit scant, but let's have a look at the full document, and I'll help you with it."

"Ah, that's it."

"That's what?"

"That is the full document."

Oops. I hadn't eaten my foot that badly since, on the way back from a masters swim meet around 1985, the lady I was giving a lift to said she worked at Upjohn. To demonstrate my acute understanding of that company, I decided to share my brilliant opinion of the company's president.

"Yeah, I understand the only reason he got the job is because he has an M.D. in back of his name."

"Randy, I should tell you that's my father."

I don't know about you, folks, but recovering from that gaff was beyond my pay grade and, every time I go the dental hygienist, they still remove chunks of my foot from my mouth. At least I didn't have to worry about holding up my end of the conversation for the remainder of the ride home.

So, back to the problem.

If you're a business analyst or systems analyst for a company, especially one that's been downsizing in these tough days, you'd probably not want to turn down the assignment of conducting an analysis for fear you'd end up on the street as a soulless, vacuous shell of a being that we used to call zombies in the old days, but now are referred to as consultants.

But, even if you can't say, "boss, sorry, no can do, you need to shop this out," you can find plenty of templates online to at least get you started.

Note to management: Do you really know what you are asking your people to do, and do you want to light a fuse of an M-80 that will blow your fingers off six-18 months down the road when you might be walking amongst the undead yourself?

If it sounds too good to be true…the notion that someone in-house recommended so-and-so as the best business analyst you've seen…it probably is. You should be suspicious.

I have notes and a few voicemails I haven't deleted yet from a local man here in Denver who wanted to invest some large sums of our money…in the stock market, no less, and was promising stunning returns.

Well, despite the fact that we had just spent some serious time unwinding securities investments when the market was still 11,500, and had no intention of throwing cash in a market that was dropping 200 points a day, his claims were simply too good to not be misguided…or worse.

Evidentially, the Feds agreed with me, because the guy has been in the papers as having bilked a number of people out of 20 million in a Ponzi scheme, and soon will be managing the assets of inmates trying to parlay their license plate stamping money into Mars Bars.

Well, it's break time. If you are holding any stock in Denver area home insurance companies, you need to sell it no matter what the loss is. When I hit the driving range, the sound of shattering glass is the sound of another insurer going belly up.

Reference
Internet source give the odds for a hole-in-1 at 13,000:1 while double eagles are listed as 1,000,000:1.

Randy Hice is Director, Strategic Consulting at STARLIMS. He may be reached at editor@ScientificComputing.com.