ATA Handicapping System

Only 9 shooters have won the Grand American Handicap event from the 27 yard line since it's inception in 1955 to 2018. This means that 86 percent of the Grand American winners shot from less than 27 yards. Wouldn't that suggest that at least at the Grand American Handicap, the handicapping system is working pretty good to level the playing field ?

 

I would be interested in knowing how many (or how few) of the GAH winners shot all the events at the Grand.
It would seem that a bunch of the "big-name" shooters may be burned/tired out from shooting all the events going for HOA and All Around wins. Maybe some/all of those shorter yardage shooters only shot a few events and were fresher for the big handicap.
If you figure out how many targets that, say Harlan Campbell shot (including a bunch of shoot-off targets), he was probably EXHAUSTED by that last day!
Most shooters are also not "poster-boys" for cardio health, either!
Opinions?
Paul in Virginia

 

True, but all of those shooting the Grand American Handicap event by year are subject to these conditions, whether shooting from 18 to 27 yards. It's a fact that the majority of the Grand American Handicap winners have won from 24 yards or less, which seems to indicate to me that the handicapping system is working pretty good.

 

I think we have enough information in my original post to reasonably conclude, that the current handicapping system is working pretty good or is not as broken as some think. I agree that it's not perfect, but I am pretty sure there will never be a perfect handicapping system. I am just glad to see there is a distribution of winners by yardage. This distribution favors mid to short yardage shooters. Maybe too much so. In a perfect system, each whole yardage group would have approximately 7 winners each during the last 55 years.

 

NO Garry....there is a chart on the site. I cannot find it. It shows distribution of monies to be the opposite.

 

Davidson, my post is about the distribution of Grand American Handicap winners and not about the distribution of money. If you can find and post the distribution of the Grand American Handicap money by yardage during the last 55 years, I would certainly be interested to see if and what the correlation looks like.

 

I think this is it. I was looking too.



27 dominates (discounting occupy 27 yarders)

 

Stan, thanks for re-posting this chart. It would be interesting to see this chart for the last 55 years to see how 2018 compared to previous years. Notice that only 4 of the 18 winners, or 22 percent have a Yes in the More Concrete needed column.

 

I have no idea what that gibberish meant. Someone else decipher. Only 4 of 14 evens were one by a yardage other than 27.

 

This simply means that whoever filled in the Yes and No in the More Concrete needed column thinks that these 4 shooters should be shooting at a yardage greater than 27 yards because of their 27 yard average.

 

"IF" that was the "only" option to make targets more difficult. But it isn't.

 

No, it's not the only option to make targets more difficult. But what evidence is there that making targets more difficult the best answer for growing the ATA membership and targets thrown or the sport in general ?

 

Interesting, since the same 9 events were listed twice it should be 2 of 9 events were won by non 27 yrders.

 

Good catch. The percentages remain the same.