StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Golf Science, with Geoff Ogilvy and Neil deGrasse Tyson

Episode Date: October 12, 2017

Aerodynamics, Doppler radar, laser tracking, and big data! Gary and Chuck find out how science has guided the evolution of golf, from why balls have dimples to how clubs are designed, with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and, from the PGA Tour, 3x world golf champion Geoff Ogilvy.Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on:TuneIn: tunein.com/playingwithscienceApple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjqSoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-scienceStitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-scienceNOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/golf-science-with-geoff-ogilvy-and-neil-degrasse-tyson/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Nutt and this is Playing With Science. Today we have to drive ourselves, bring our own chips and I will get my own tea which will be splendid. Ah yes, we will be accountable for our own scores and things could get a little rough. Yeah, but never fear. Ogilvy is here in the shape of Jeff Ogilvy, a golfer who is, in his time, ranked number four in the world and owner of not one, not two, not three. Yes, three world championships. And lest we forget today's smooth operator, who is all back of the golf buggy with his feet up, it's, of course, our very own Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Well, let's get straight to it, shall we? Up on the first tee, Jeff Ogilvie, a man who won the US Open in 2006. Jeff, welcome to Play With Science. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And we also have with us. Oh, don't we?

Yes. The man himself, the myth, the legend. I have just decided to start calling him Rocket Man. Rocket Man is here with us. And it's none other than our very own Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. What's up? I need a haircut if I'm going to be Rocket Man. I need a new do.

You need extensions and all sorts of work for that. But anyway. Well, just a quick thing. You said not one, but two, but three. Yeah. There are certain tribes in the world that do not count anything beyond three. So it's just one, two, three, and then many.

Right. Yeah, there's just no, they don't care. It's quite sensible. So you know what that means. Four or 50 or 100 is just more than what and then many. Right. Yeah, there's just no, they don't care. It's quite sensible. So, you know what's happening? Four or 50 or 100 is just more than what I care about. Right. More than I can get in my hands. Yeah.

That works with golf. Three is good in golf. It's good in golf. Yes, it is. We might move there. Yeah. And by the way, that means you have to win just one more championship, Jeff, and then it'll just be many.

Many. Many, yeah. Just like, how many champions do you have? Many. Many. Okay, so you're here in New York and I'm thinking because you've got a lovely cap and a sweater on that it's all about the President's Cup.

So let us know exactly what's going on. What is the President's Cup? Seriously, because some of our listeners are just sports fans but they're maybe just discovering golf. So what is it? President of what? Whose President's cup is that? I'm the president of golf.

That's right. Okay, sorry. Well, I guess if you've been on this planet for a while, I guess you probably have heard of something called the Ryder Cup. Absolutely. Which is basically the European tour versus the U.S. tour in golf. Yeah. Kind of a bragging rights kind of thing. It's been going on tour versus the US tour in golf. Yeah. Kind of a bragging rights kind of thing.

It's been going on for a really long time. And that's become a really, really big event. But that's owned by the PGA of America. The PGA Tour, which is really kind of the powerful organization, which kind of runs the tour on a regular basis, kind of wanted to get in on the mix. So they created their own thing called the President's Cup, which is a US team versus everyone else in the world except for europe which is quite a lot of

good golfers you know generally there's four or five of the top 10 in the world of this out of that sort of area of the world so to have created this event i think in the early 90s um this is about nine or ten now it's every two years every every other Ryder cup year. So it's this year at Liberty national, which is staring at the statue of Liberty and the skyline of New York. It happens to be the very best golf club in the world outside of any other golf club I own. So sorry. Yeah.

It's one of those. That was well done. We're staying. Good man. This guy, he knows what he's doing. We're staying. Good man, this guy. He knows what he's doing. We're staying down kind of Wall Street way, and we battery park.

We get the ferry every day. It's beautiful. If anyone ever wants to see professional golfers actually get truly passionate, go to a President's Cup or a Ryder Cup, because it means a lot more when you're playing for a club. Who's going to win? One word answer.

Internationals. There you go. And which president does it refer to? All of word answer. Internationals. There you go. Jeff Berkelby. And which president does it refer to? All of the above. The presidents. The many's. Of every president that's ever been.

45 of them. 45 of them. Oh, it's an American President's Cup. Yeah. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. All right. That's cool.

Well, they had to have a name and it was a good name. The presidents didn't have one, so now they've got one. Okay. Has there been one thing in your career as a professional that you've gone, that really changed the game? And it's kind of like the science, the technology, that really thought that's really elevated it. Oh, wow.

Yeah. I mean, there might not be a sport that's had the kind of money thrown at R&D that golf has. Equipment, biomechanics and physiology, psychology, turf management. I mean, it's an amazing sport for the science and the research side of things. But the technology with the ball and the driver, the equipment especially, has been – it's a completely different sport we're playing now than it was, say, 20 years ago.

Wow. Wait, wait. But there are many sports where you introduce a new technology and everyone says, ooh, can't do that. That's not traditional. We've got to go back to the way it used to. Is golf just completely open to whatever will improve the game from one year to the next?

Or is there some tribunal that's saying, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah? It's interesting. I mean, there are ruling bodies that seem to be the tribunal and they kind of control the show like they do in the world, you know, big brother up there. But there's a debate, I guess. I mean, golf was the same for a really long time on really old school golf courses, played with woods

and kind of almost handmade stuff. Yeah. Is that why they're called woods? Well, they were wood in the original. That's what I'm saying, right? So that's not some stretch of vocabulary. No, it was actually a literal description. Yeah.

And it just, I guess the commercial, it's actually a literal uh description yeah um and it just i guess the commercial it's such a popular game the commercial uh kind of realization of we could sell a lot of these golf clubs if we make them go further and make them easier to hit so right um it's been a massive the progress since kind of mid 1980s has been huge what's taken it further ball or the clubs in terms of the technology and advancement And with that follow up I know you have a favourite ball And I want to know why

Okay, yeah Well, I mean, really it's a combination Probably more than anything Because they've mastered combining balls and drivers With golfers They kind of match the whole thing I mean, there's a few things that go into it Okay

You're telling me custom drivers and custom ball? Well, very, very adjustable with lots of variables so you can get different heads, different loft, different shaft, different weight, different grip. Different language. He's speaking in tongues now. And you can change

the syllables coming out of his mouth. See, the thing is, if you're a guy who can really hit the ball a long way on a drive, you're going to have a particular type of club and go with a particular type of setup on the ball. Because for a layman, you're thinking, the ball is dimpled. Yes, we understand that. And they're all the same. But they're not, are they?

They come in various set patterns. They do. I mean, for all intents and purposes, I guess the better you are, the more difference the ball makes. Oh, now that makes sense because if you suck, it does not make a difference how dimpled or what pattern of dimple the ball has because you suck. But if you are highly proficient,

those small changes to the physicality of the ball can actually become a measurable difference in your game. Incredible. Visible difference. Visible difference. Yeah, incredible. That's amazing. So I guess there's two, there's a few things that make a ball go far and straight and it's

speed. Talent. Yeah. Talent. Thank you, doctor. Talent probably will. Come to me when you need this. Go ahead. The club head speed. The to me when you need this. Go ahead.

The club head speed, the speed the club head is moving, where the club, the ball hits on the face, if it hits in the sweet spot or like a weaker spot, which can affect line and spin and speed and drag on the ball in the air, I guess. So before we go any further, since we have world-renowned astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson sitting here, can you please break down, just so that those listening can know, what the effect of dimpling a ball will have?

Why does it make the ball go farther? And if you change the pattern of the dimple, what would that do? Well, all I know is that I think you should get NASA on this. You're talking about new technology. They get a ball that has little rockets in it, and then it can go like five miles. You've been around Chuck too long. I still think there's improvements awaiting. But correct me if I'm wrong here, from reading the history of golf, the golf balls used to

be just perfect little spheres like any other ball we play with. And people discovered just accidentally, really, that highly used balls that were all dinged and nicked were traveling farther than perfectly new balls that had no blemishes on them at all. No nicks and dings. And so they decided to exploit this fact and figure out what kind of nicks and dings would make it go farthest. And it turns out that the aerodynamics around a perfectly smooth ball, the air sort of hugs the surface of the ball. And when it comes to the back, creates a partial vacuum and puts drag on the ball. So it's drag. Yeah. So it's just aerodynamic drag. But if you put dimples on it, it breaks up right on the surface of the ball.

It breaks that up so that by the time the – and it's a rotating ball. So by the time the air gets to the back, it doesn't create the same vacuum that it would if the ball were smooth. Now, the opposite effect is true if the ball is not spinning. But that never happens in the sport. So if the ball is not spinning, if you had a ball that looked like, you know, those cone heads that they used to wear in the bicycle races, you know, yeah. If you did that, then you control that flow of air all the way to the back without any kind of a drag at all. But that's not how it's a round ball. It's not a cone

head ball. Which by the way, my favorite Saturday Night Live sketch, cone head ball. Since we're sitting here in NBC Studios, I figured I'd bring that. Oh, yeah, that's right. Nice touch there. That's all I can tell you about the ball. Now, if you're going to have patterns of dimples on balls that have a more subtle effect than what I'm describing, then that's beyond my physics 101. Cool. So the dimple actually acts like. Don't say it's cool that I just what I'm describing, then that's beyond my physics 101. Cool. So the dimple actually-

Don't say it's cool that I just said I'm ignorant on something. No, no. It's cool what you just said. Okay. And by the way, it is cool that you're ignorant on something because I've known you long enough to know that that's a cool thing. Okay. So Jeff, when you talk about, so Gary said there are patterns, right, Gary?

Yeah. So the size of the dimple varies. It's not a standardized pattern around the ball and the patterns on the dimples and such. No, it's generally, from what I understand, it's somewhere around 400 dimples. Okay. Somewhere around.

They used to sell them with like 392 or 384, like the amount of dimples on the ball. And they vary in size from what I, I mean, you look at it, they all look the same. Yes. But they're in little patterns of triangles and big ones and small ones and different depth dimples. Dimples are different sizes even on the same ball. Yeah.

So they have different sizes in diameter and different sizes in depth. The guys have been thinking. The guys have been thinking. And like you said, that probably only makes a difference to somebody who is on a level of play. You know, they're unbelievable. I have to say, I mean, anyone who's played golf

would understand that a ball can curve to the left and be a hook or curve to the right and be a slice for a right-hander. The dimple patterns they're managing to create these days actually self-correct that a little bit. So the ball's going straight.

The ball will be hooking into the left trees and it won't actually go back the other way, it will stop curving now start going straight i know what the guys are like when it comes to when you redesign a ball and make it do certain things as you've just described the top end players i'm going to include you in that jeff you're happy about that you'll start to think how can i use that to my advantage because if it's a self-correcting ball i know i can do something with that for my advantage have the guys worked that out yet definitely i mean well he's trying to be like bend it like beckham you know he's got a little soccer background yeah yeah i know

that's the way you'd be thinking for sure i mean it's a for those of us who grew up with the older stuff yeah the evolution of golf equipment was pretty linear, if you like. You have to go there. In my day. I remember. This gray hair measures all that. Yeah, for sure. Back in my day. The evolution of golf equipment was a fairly linear improvement until mid-80s and a guy called Karsten Solheim who started the Ping Company. Yes.

Who actually I think was a rocket scientist of some measure. Oh, okay. He completely changed the game. He showed us the technology. started the ping company yes yes actually i think was a rocket scientist of some oh okay he completely changed the guy he showed us the technology he moved the weight outside on irons and he was more of a golf club guy but he took a massive step forward and since then it's been changing so those of us who grew up with a ball that continued to curve we're still kind of retraining our instincts to trust that it won't curve as much as it used to. Counterintuitive. And so then you would adjust your shot accordingly, right?

Or leave your shot the same accordingly, depending upon what you know the ball will do. You just hopefully you gradually adjust to how far your new ball is going, how much the wind, because the crosswind is quite important for us. And the modern ball gets hit a lot less by a crosswind, which I assume is a… You mean influence less. Influence, yes, to use the right terminology. You hit the ball, it influences it, yeah. It influences it, yeah.

So it does a lot less than it used to. You talk about club development, and we did a show recently, Chuck and I, with tennis rackets, and they made, I think it was Prince, came out with, back in the 80s again the larger head which made it a larger sweet spot right are they able to do that on a golf club to get a larger sweet spot because you talked about it just before about you got to find it on the sweet spot all the time to get a strike that you want yeah they have i mean i guess traditionally golf clubs were just really simple

small yeah um and before they really did any of that this kind of launch this this kind of high speed camera scientific research of impact and kind of what happens at impact with the ball and um they were really small and you had a you had, maybe the size of a nickel maybe, where it would go optimally. Yeah. Optimally, is that all right? Optimally, yeah. Is it an Aussie nickel or an American nickel? We have a five-cent piece.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But would you know, because when we talk to baseball players and we talk to the tennis players, they say the same thing. You know the second you've hit it through the vibration or lack of and by your ear. Do you have the same feeling you know the second you've hit it through the vibration or lack of and by your ear do you have the same feeling both yeah you can tell instantly if you've got it right or wrong i mean it's the same with a lot of stuff right but uh we get pretty tuned to that i there's a there's a friend of mine a trainer actually who plays baseball and he said when you hit the ball

in the right spot and the right thing there is no vibration and the ball goes 400 feet and he says and he paused he said it's better than sex what is it jp alan sibio he was a baseball hitter and he's a catcher for the blue jays yes he said oh no it was jeff blump from the houston astros he said it was like a handful of bees if he hit if you hit the wrong way you hit it, it was like a handful of bees. If you hit the wrong way. If you hit it wrong, it was like a handful of bees. Shoots up your arms, everything. Why don't we get into like shot tracking?

Because I understand. Wait, wait, but just before you do that. Yes. Before you do that, this idea that the ball cannot curve in the way you thought it would. I'm just imagining a future where it's nothing but a game of trick shots, like in billiards. If you keep going with the ball, the ball might, you know, just... Yeah.

Oh, the tree's over here. Let me just curve it around the tree. You know, do a... Put some English on it to the left and do a three-cushion back shot. So many things. You're putting English on it. It doesn't sound like I'm doing the right thing.

That just means curve. They say that to me, and I'm like, what's that about? So I know you guys are tracking shots using several different technologies, but Doppler is one of them. What are they doing with Doppler in the PGA? Well, when we first started, when they started really chasing the R&D in the golf club and the golf ball,

they started working out they needed to take all the data from impact, from the speed of the club, where it hits, the whole thing. So they started taking photos of impact and then they thought, well, it would be much better if we actually, after the photo, knew what the ball did in relation to what happened to the ball with that photo. So they created a little thing, a Doppler radar at the back of the ball that you put kind of behind where you're hitting shots.

And you just hit shots and it measures club speed, club path, ball speed, ball flight. It follows the whole flight of the ball until it finishes. It started with 3D analytics with the swing and then the speed of impact. So you teach a golfer not just to swing swing, but to swing, but to get maximum speed at the point of impact, not halfway through. And this, these Doppler kind of ball trackers help you do that naturally because you put your iPad or your phone with the app open, kind of down right in front of your pile of balls or next to your bag. And every shot you hit,

it's instant feedback. It's spin rate, how far it it went spin rate spin rate of the ball spin rate of the ball uh holy crap both backspin and any sort of and you'll need to know that wait so that so that means it is measuring not only in the center part of the ball which will give you the ball speed but other the above the halfway point and below the halfway point. So you get a rotation rate. So this is a very precise Doppler measurement. I, I, from what I understand, it's very precise. I mean, you would understand how they get to where they get. Yeah, the point is if the ball is spinning, then the part that's spinning across your

view, which is the nearest part of the ball to you is neither coming towards you nor away from you. Cause it used to be coming towards you. Now it's going away from you. So in that moment, it's doing neither. You have to measure it there to get the actual pure speed of the ball. Otherwise, if you measure the speed

of the ball in either other spot, you're going to have less or more because the ball is spinning. But now you want to do that on purpose to get the actual spin rate of the ball. So this is more than what I was even imagining that you guys are up to. Well, they use lasers.

So what is the difference, Neil, between tracking something with lasers and what is regular Doppler? Okay, well, he can answer the Doppler, but the Doppler is a radar that follows the ball. It tracks exactly what the ball does and does that. The lasers that we use on tour uh they kind of have three of them they create all these triangles so they can get the data from where our balls go after every shot okay so we finish our round we see that we hit it 275 yards on the first and then hit it to 20 feet

with a five on and then we hold a 20 foot putt and then we went to the next yeah and you compile data like this every round we play on tour is measured every Every single shot we hit, where it went on the course, how far it went, how far it was from our target, the whole thing. And we get years worth of data because of the laser measurements. Science! Science! So you're pushing all these buttons now. That's a happy face, by the way.

Science! So before we take a break, maybe you can break down just Doppler. Oh yeah, we can spend a minute on that. Can you take a minute? People know the word, but I don't think they always feel it. And really, it's just like, you know, you hear Doppler and you're like, there must be a hurricane or a storm coming. Yeah, something's in motion. Something's in motion. But what is Doppler? There was a German fellow named Christian Doppler who suspected that sound changed depending on whether an object was moving towards you or away from you. And he did experiments with trains.

This is in the 19th century. And a train whistle comes towards you. He noticed that the pitch was higher than that very same train whistle as it receded from you. So in the modern version of that, we think of cars. If you're standing adjacent to a freeway and a car is coming towards you, it goes. And in New York, you, it goes, no. And in New York, you hear, F you, right afterwards. No, there's no Doppler at all because nobody's moving in any driving. Or in LA on the 405, leave the Doppler at home.

Nobody's moving. So we know about this frequency change. And so it turns out it is an exact relationship between how much the frequency changes and the speed of the thing coming towards you or moving away. It's an exact, it's a clean, it's a clean algebra 101 formula. Clean ratio. Right, right. So if it's going twice as fast, it has twice the pitch coming towards you, the frequency of the pitch. Right.

So, so. Wow. Now, once you have something that can reflect that signal back to you, you have to choose the kind of light that would do that. Not all things will reflect a signal back to you in that way. So, by the way, it works with any wave. So it'll work with the sound waves on the train and it works with the light waves. And in this case, it would be microwaves or if you had some other kind of laser, optical laser, it would work for any kind of wave. Because light travels in waves.

But you need to know the speed of that wave in order to do this calculation. And in our case, it's the speed of light in air, which is slightly less than the speed of light in a vacuum. But it's a simple formula. Now you've got machines. You plug it into the coating of the machine, and now he can sit there and not have to even know what the formula looks like,

and his iPad is telling him as he stands there on the green. Damn! Okay, that was your Doppler Minute, brought to you by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. And you may have had a bit of a bonus on that minute, but there you go. We'll take a break. Jeff Ogilvie, pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Thanks for joining us.

I hope we can get to you back, man. You are really cool to talk to. That was fun. Just a quick thing. The putting green, that's actually real grass. Real grass. Because I've never seen grass that looks like putting green grass. Yeah, it was fun. Just a quick thing, the putting green, that's actually real grass. Real grass. Because I've never seen grass that looks like

putting green grass. Oh, yeah. You guys must genetically engineer that stuff. Well, believe it or not, we do. I think maybe we should come back and talk about

grass a different time. Absolutely on. We'll get a greenskeeper in. We're going to take that break. The good doctor will be with us and Chuck will have thoughts on balls when we get back. You know it.

Welcome back to playing with science. This of course is our look at golf. We've had to lose the services of Jess Ogilvie. Apparently he's got to practice. How can he be world number four and have to practice? You've already nailed it, dude. Anyway,

right. The good Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson still with us. So I, you know, I've never actually played golf. So I'm happy to help out where the physics applies, but you can't come to me for expertise here in the golf.

So here's how much I don't play golf. You ready? People ask me, am I an atheist? And I said, I'm really, so if you look at it, I'm closer to an agnostic, but I don't even like the word atheist because it's a word that describes what you're not. And why should there be a word to describe what you're not? And my example there has been, there's no word for me as someone who does not play golf. Are there words for non-golfers?

Yeah, it's called black. Plus, Tiger didn't say he was black. He was some other thing. He's cobbler-nation. Cobbler, whatever. Right, right, right. Thai, whatever. It's a Thai cocktail is what that was.

So golf was always my go-to reference for the statement that there are no words that says you don't play golf. That's actually really cool. I don't want words describing what I don't do. Give me words that describe what I am and what I do. Let's get to one of your

tweets. About golf. About golf. I don't remember tweeting about golf. How deep are you digging here in the twitter archives well let's just say we've been down the mine and we've come up with golfers wait when when was this that's april 2013 oh okay this is early uh yeah this is okay april 2013 tweets early tyson tweet golfers want silence when hitting stationary balls at their feet baseball batters in screaming crowds hit 90 mile an hour fastballs discuss that was just an observation you know i, I wasn't. Yeah. But no, obviously the psychology, the sort of hitting of a ball in the mind and being able to, well, I can't do it because everyone's talking.

Yeah. I think it's just tradition in the sport. I don't see any actual reason why a golfer shouldn't be able to concentrate regardless of noise level. If you speak to basketball players in the final seconds who have to hit a free throw and crowds are screaming and the crowd behind the backboard is waving things that are specifically designed to distract them. If you ask those players, they say, everything gets zoned out. Right. And it's just me, the ball, and the basket.

Nice. And we have the power to do this. It's selective attention directing. And I use that with my children all the time. We're very good at that. I'm so good at that. It's attenuating things that would otherwise distract your attention. And so in golf, they have no tradition of doing that.

Right. And therefore, they have no such ability to pull that off unless that we slowly sort of ease it in is golf unique in the sense that if it's a if it's a tennis match you've got an opponent uh if it's a baseball batter you pitch a hitter golfer it's you a ball a stick a hole and there's no one else involved. It's all about you. So there are other sports like that. Like in the moment, the field events of track and field, it's just really just you. There's not someone directly against you.

Yeah, absolutely. Singular performance sports. But track and field, like you said, also screaming, lights of, yeah, cheering on. And, right. And the funny thing is that, like in football playoffs, the coaches actually pipe in crowd noise if you're in the away team. So you're practicing at home and they turn the stadium speakers up as loud as they can go. To distract them.

To distract the players during practice in hopes that their mind will become acclimated to the distraction, and it will no longer be a distraction. It's weird if you're playing and there's nobody there. Or, like, there's no, didn't the NBA do a couple of games earlier in the year? Oh, yeah, with no crowd.

With no music, no background music. No, no, I thought, no, there was no, it was an empty stadium. And it was an NFL game because of, was it a storm or what was it? I can't remember. No, the NBA played games without any music. It's sort of, none of that happened.

Oh, okay. For the entire game? Yeah. And did it have an effect on the players? No, it freaked me out. Watching that was weird. He needs the music. That is great. But in tennis another game where silence is tradition you know as a tradition we always hear quiet please quiet please quiet

please and i'm just like who you telling me quiet not the path of me and then security gets involved it's just awful yeah so so i think it's just tradition but it's fun to sort of make fun of that difference that's all it was a playful no no i get it but it doesn, but it's fun to sort of make fun of that difference. That's all. It was a playful tweet. No, no. I get it, but it does spark the debate. And by the way, of course, the 90 mile an hour fastball is thrown with the full intent of you not hitting it. Right. Not only in speed, but in movement.

In movement. Yeah, yeah. Right. It is apparently the hardest thing to do in sports. Yeah. In elite sports. And now you know I was thinking about that. But that's a quantifiable statement.

I was about to say. know this two things one you just sparked in me uh when you were talking about tennis golf and tennis both country club sports oh and so therefore exclusive membership sports of membership sports and so i'm sure traditionally it was played in pretty much silence so when it becomes competitive they continue that tradition because that's how the game is played. Even though now there's thousands of people as spectators along the green. Yeah, you play in front of grandstands on a golf course, on the big majors. So yeah, they're saying, quiet please, while selling tickets in the tens of thousands. Yeah, that's right. They're saying quiet please while selling tickets in the tens of thousands. Yeah

The reason why hitting a baseball we know is the hardest thing to do in sports is because the best hitters Successfully put the ball Where that's not fielded. Yeah, only a third of the time, right? So if I come out with a point three average, I'm a superstar correct You're in you are in your you are in the hall of fame and people write whole articles about you i like this whereas i don't there's not clear that there's any other sport where if you had a a 67 failure rate that you would be considered a success so now check this out now that you say that golf we say the hardest thing to do is hit a baseball fastball but how about a hole-in-one?

So if you're on a par-three course, that means that you can get a hole-in-one. That is a possible shot. Yeah, the ball's not so far away that it's not out of reach. Right, which means you can get on the green-in-one, which means if you place the ball on the green-in-one properly, you could get a roll to get a hole-in-one. So how often does a hole-in-one happen in golf? And maybe

that's the hardest thing to do in sports. No, it happens a lot more. Than a home run? Maybe not a home run, but it does happen, yeah. But they say the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit a home run. No, it's the fastball, isn't it?

No, the hardest thing to do in sports is to pitch a perfect game. So let's just get that straight. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. What fraction of all games are perfect games? If that's what you're talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That is like the minuscule near zero fraction. So you are right. A hole-in-one is rarer for a golfer than a home run is for a batter, for any kind of slugger. Exactly. Right, right, right. So I'll give you that. All right. A hole-in-one is going to be rarer in golf. Well, if you're giving it, I'm taking it.

Do you advocate noise whilst putting to close out a major? You're in Augusta. You've got a six-foot putt. That's you banking seven, possibly eight figures in your bank. And you lot, shut up. I'm at work here. This is worth a lot of money. I sometimes fantasize,

like if I'm trying to solve some grand equation, that there's- You fantasize about equations? Audience watching this? You fantasize about equations? He's almost there. He's up with a commentator, right? He could go all the way.

He's got three lines left, we think. And he's there. He's a commentator, right? He could go all ways. He's got three lines left, we think. And he's there. He's almost there. Da-da-da-da, QED, he's done it. And then there's a point. So it's just kind of, who was it? There was a classical music comedian.

Was it Victor Borger? Victor Borger. He could well be, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the one who had a concert where there were announcers describing the classical music performance the way sportscasters. Oh, how funny. So they say, and they're like eating during the thing. They're like, you know, this tuba player, they traded him for the other guy for this. And then there's a trumpet thing. You know, the Philly Pops brought in this oboe player.

That's funny. And a trumpet hits- You know, the Philly Pops brought in this oboe player. That's funny. And a trumpet hits a wrong note. Yeah. Oh, that's his third mess up this year. We probably won't see him in the next performance. You know, it was hilarious. That's a brilliant pit. Brilliant pit.

That's pretty cool. Brilliant pit. Oh, man. We are out of time, guys. We are. But we have learned one thing. Neil fantasizes about equations. No.

One of- More than one thing I fantasize about. That's different to me. I've learned something. I want golf to change so that people can actually heckle people while they're putting. That would be awesome. You suck, McElroy, and your wife is sleeping

with your brother. Like, that would be amazing. I'm sorry. That's how I heckle. I probably went too far. Okay. May have done. Right. That's it for heckle. I probably went too far. Okay. You may have done. Right.

That's it for Playing With Science. Hope you've enjoyed it. And thank you to Neil deGrasse Tyson once again. And our new good friend, Jeff Ogilvie. So that's it. Hope you've enjoyed it. And we look forward to your company soon.