You know you're in the presence of a real eclectic when he makes you interested in a subject about which you are cosmically indifferent. Steven Johnson - author of Emergence - has blogged about his experiences on the golf course, titled When Is A Golf Course Unfair?. Apparently they've been complaining in golf land, at the highest levels (see Tiger Woods), that certain golf courses are too difficult and random - allowing non-top-flight players a shot at victory. And counter-intuitively, Steven sides with the pros:
In my mind, the debate shouldn't be about unfairness. It should be about randomness. There is a certain point of difficulty where the course stops distinguishing between good shots and bad shots, and thus fails to reward players who are performing well relative to their peers. Imagine a course set up like a pinball machine, where balls land in the fairway and then bounce fifty feet in the air in random directions. Winning in those conditions would be a matter of pure luck -- the score would simply be a register of who got the luckiest bounces.
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