So you think that people would be accepting of steroids if they were legal and not harmful (except for negative side effects)? I somehow doubt that.
gonzomax:
I recall hearing that George Brett had 20-15 vision, and this was an immense help to his baseball career.
I’m not sure what people would think. The public has a very “out of sight, out of mind” attitude toward drugs in sports, and baseball in particular. It’s not as if steroids are the only performance-enhancing drugs players have ever used. But if they were thought of in the same way vitamins are, it would not be such a big deal.
Lots of baseball players (and other athletes) have better then 20-20 vision. 20-20 is average and many of these guys, especially the great hitters, are way better then average.
Look, the basic fact is that good eyesight really doesn’t help a golfer very much. Tiger Woods is awesome because of his powerful swing and outstanding touch in the short game. I’m at a loss to say that enhanced vision brings any substantial advantage to a golfer, primarily because they all have caddies who have extensive notes on the layout of a course.
Same for Ted Williams.
Reading the greens.
Are you a golfer?
Because I can’t imagine how better distance vision improves green reading, and I’d like to hear an explanation of it.
I say at the PGA level, accurately reading the green has more to do with the grain of the grass, speed of the green, the way which water runs off the green, and locations of sand traps, rather than being able to see a contour some distance away – which really isn’t an issue, because one can always walk right up to contours.
In any case, very few pros have problems with reading greens. The difficulty of putting is far more influenced by the challenge of controlling the speed of the putt, which eyesight has almost nothing to do with.
I can not believe you can’t see that. Subtle breaks and angles are better read when you can see them. Tiger reads greens better than anyone. I have trouble believing how well he reads breaks on putts and chips.
Many times he has had putts where the announcers say ,no one has come close to reading this putt properly today. Then Tiger sinks it.
take it a step at a time. If you had very bad eyesight ,would that help you putt or hurt it? Then as your vision is better ,your ability to putt would improve. Eyesight is extremely important in putting.
Better ability to distinguish letters at a distance has nothing to do with reading contours, so long as you are able to see. Of course an uncorrected, nearsighted person is going to have trouble reading greens. But better eyesight doesn’t mean better putting.
Case in point: Scott Hoch had LASIK four times in 2002 and 2003. In 2000, he was 105th in putting; in 2001, 17th; in 2002, 50th; in 2003 he was off the Tour; but in 2004 he was back to 128th, and in 2005 he basically wrapped up his PGA career to get ready for the Senior Tour.
Tom Kite had LASIK in 1998, and guess what? Throughout his entire, long PGA career, he averaged 30 putts per round, year after year, with only a couple years outside of a variation of .2 putts per round better or worse than his standard 30, no matter whether before or after LASIK. He was a mediocre putter with bad eyesight and huge glasses, and a mediocre putter with LASIK and enhanced eyesight.
Kite was a senior golfer by then. If he had it in his 20s ,it might have been different.
Hoch was down a long way before his. He had trouble with his operation and did it over a few times.
20/15 means you see at 20 feet what the normally sighted sees at 15. That would be an advantage. It does not mean you can see the moon better. It means you can see clearly things much closer.
So did my mom at his age and laser surgery hadn’t been invented yet. Meanwhile my 20-200 vision and coke bottle glasses sit back and curse genetics.
Curse you genetics!
20/200? Amateur. I haven’t been 20/200 since fifth grade.
I don’t even have a 20/xx designation at this point.
But the diopter for both contacts is -8.5.
In baseball, better eyesight is clearly an advantage because it is easier to see the seams of the ball being pitched in the split second one has to decide whether to swing. In golf, one can walk all over the green to see the breaks. Nobody is looking at a particular object when reading a putt, you’re looking at the contours of the green. You don’t see contours better with better vision.
Let’s take Tiger, then. He had LASIK in 1999. Before LASIK, he was 117th, 95th, and 108th in putting. After the surgery, he was 36th, 134th, and 163rd in the next three years. Then in 2003, four years after the surgery, he started improving putting: 32nd, 20th, and 33rd. He had another LASIK done in 2007, and for that year he was 48th.
If you can find any evidence correlating LASIK with better putting, let me know. As for me, I’ve played with contacts, played after LASIK, and LASIK is better – not for reading putts, but for not having to deal with contacts.
If steroids are cheating, why isn't LASIK? In this article Tiger Woods says Lasik specifically assists in putting. He says that is the point of the surgery. You can read the subtle differences in the greens better.
And yet if Raveman is right, his putting didn’t actually improve.
If Tiger Woods is right ,it did. I believe Tigers’ explanation.
So, if an athlete thinks that carrying a lucky talisman makes him play better, but the statistics don’t bear that out, you believe the athlete?
That is not the same argument. I think Tiger is very bright.
Yeah, they would. See creatine, isolated protein, and caffeine.
Steroids are illegal because they kill people. They’re banned in sport because using something that a law abiding player wouldn’t use to gain an advantage is cheating.
(On second read of your post - what on Earth do you mean by “not harmful (except for the negative side effects)?”