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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2014
PAGE 7
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INTERNATIONAL
Defense: Pistorius has reckless history with guns
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oscar Pistorius, left, leaves the high court in Pretoria, South Africa, Tuesday, March 11. Pistorius is charged with murder for the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentines Day in 2013.
PRETORIA, South Africa — Oscar Pistorius fired guns in public in the months before he killed his girlfriend — once out of a car sunroof on a road and once in a crowded restaurant, a onetime friend, said at the athlete's murder trial Tuesday.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The account by Darren Fresco portrayed Pistorius as a reckless hothead infatuated with firearms and seemingly drifting down a precarious path before he fatally shot Reeva Steenkamp through a closed toilet door at his home before dawn on Feb. 14, 2013.
Fresco's description of how Pistorius once berated a police officer fit the prosecution's attempts to cast the double-ampute athlete as prone to flashes of anger and blinded by an inflated sense of entitlement at a time when his public image was that of a clean-cut poster boy for overcoming adversity.
"I said to him, are you (expletive) mad?" Fresco testified after, he said, Pistorius fired his gun out of the sunroof of the car later on the same day that he had the dispute with the police officer. "He just laughed."
At the same time, the testimony was coming from a man whose own actions were under scrutiny. Judge Thokozile Masipa cautioned Fresco, who was also a friend of Steenkamp, that some questions could intriminate him for offenses including discharge of a firearm in a built-up area, negligent damage to property and reckless endangerment. She said he would not be prosecuted if he answered the questions truthfully.
Pistorius, 27, denies shooting the gun in the car, although now two witnesses say that he did. The athlete is on trial for murder in the killing of Steenkamp, and also faces two firearm charges for shooting in public and a third firearm charge for illegal possession of ammunition.
after an argument.
Pistorius says he shot Steen-kamp by mistake, thinking she was a dangerous intruder. The prosecution says he killed her
The athlete's demeanor in court Tuesday was drastically different from the previous day, when he needed a vomit bucket as he heard a pathologist give graphic details of the injuries he inflicted on his girlfriend when he shot her multiple times.
This time, Pistorius mostly sat with his hands in his lap and often made notes.
Fresco testified that Pistorius' altercation with a police officer happened in late 2012, when their car was pulled over by traffic police for the second time that day. He said Pistorius was furious with an officer for handling his gun, which he had left on the passenger seat.
"You can't just touch another man's gun," Pistorius said to the officer, according to Fresco. "He started telling the officer: 'Now your fingerprints are all over my gun, so if something happens, you are then going to be liable for anything that had happened.' He was furious about that. Someone else had touched his gun."
Fresco and a former Pistonius girlfriend have both testified that the Olympian shot his gun out of the car sunroof later that day. But their stories do not match in parts, a fact highlighted by defense lawyer Barry Roux.
Fresco, who said he was driving the car, testified that Pistorius fired without warning sometime after visiting an unidentified person's house. Samantha Taylor, who was dating the athlete at the time and was in the car, has testified that it happened soon after the altercation with police and after Pistorius and Fresco discussed finding a traffic light to shoot at.
Roux also questioned Fresco about an incident at a packed Johannesburg restaurant in the posh Melrose Arch district in early 2013 — about a month before Steenkamp's death — when he said he handed his gun under the table to Pistorius and it fired. According to Fresco, Pistorius said there was too much "media hype" around him and
asked Fresco to take the blame for the shooting, which he did.
"I knew that he had a big love for weapons," Fresco testified. "My assumption was that he had competency."
"Will you agree,Mr. Fresco, you have uncertainty ... about what specifically happened and what was said?" Roux asked.
Fresco said he had warned Pistorius that the gun was "one-up," meaning it had a bullet in the chamber.
had asked him to take the rap. The friend couldn't pinpoint the precise times.
Roux sought to undermine Fresco's character, questioning why he crumpled up a speeding ticket and threw it on the floor of the car after he and Pistorius were stopped by the police. Fresco also said
Roux asked Fresco when exactly he had warned Pistorius that there was a magazine in the gun and a bullet in the chamber, and when Pistorius
he'd been following some previous testimony in the case on Twitter, which witnesses should not do.
If convicted on the murder charge, Pistorius could be sent to prison for at least 25 years before the chance of parole, the minimum time someone must serve if given a life sentence in South Africa. The judge will ultimately deliver the verdict and decide on any sentence. South Africa has no trial by jury.
Pistorius was born without fibula bones because of a congenital defect, and his legs were amputated when he was 11 months old. He ran on carbon-fiber blades and is a multiple Paralympic medalist. He also competed at the London Olympics but didn't win a medal.
PGA
Golf analytics show numbers are not a reflection of success
| MCCLATCHY TRIBUNE
BOSTON — If you've spent enough time around a golf course in your life, you have invariably heard the phrase: "You drive for show but putt for dough."
Anyone who has three-putted in an important match can sympathize with the phrase coined in the 1940s by four-time British Open winner Bobby Locke.
Today, you probably head back to the clubhouse after your round, pull out your scorecard and, over the course of some cold beverages, count your number of putts to determine whether your round was a success or failure.
Nearly 70 years later, golf has evolved in such a way that we now know that simply counting putts is not a true measure of success. Tiger Woods' swing coach, Sean Foley, shone a new light on golf's emerging analytical approach last weekend at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference with the help of Columbia professor Mark Broadie.
That's why Foley, a self-described "swing geek" and "range rat," said he doesn't spend a lot of time around the putting green with clients Woods, Hunter Mahan, Justin Rose or Sean O'Hair.
In 2013, Brian Gay led the PGA Tour in fewest average
putts per round at 27.5. The tour average was 29. After one round, when Woods putted just 27 times on 18 holes, he called it "one of the worst putting rounds I've ever had." Most golfers would have been ecstatic with that number.
So why was Woods so discouraged? Not because he is exceptionally hard on himself. He knew that he didn't make a single putt in the round longer than six feet.
To track his clients, Foley said he uses a statistic called "strokes gained." The PGA Tour leader in 2013 was Luke Donald, with an average of 0.70 strokes gained per round. Most of those are gained away from the putting green.
In golf, a two-putt from 60 feet is a good result. A two-putt from six feet is a huge disappointment. Simply counting doesn't take into account the distance covered.
Strokes gained are calculated relative to Tour average. For instance, the Tour average for an eight-foot putt is 1.50 strokes. So, if a player holes out from eight feet, he or she has gained 0.50 strokes on the field. This can be calculated from any distance and added together after each round, tournament or season to determine leaders.
Broadie said the long game "explains about two-thirds of the scoring." Woods is considered the world's best golfer, but it's not because he is the best putter.
For his career, Woods gains 0.3 strokes on his competitors from driving, 0.7 strokes on approach shots (130 yards and in), 0.4 strokes on short game (inside 30 yards) and 0.2 strokes from putting. He has never ranked lower than fifth in strokes gained on approach shots in his career, using the PGA Tour's shot-tracking software from CDW, an 11 million stroke database that measures every shot within one-foot accuracy and every putt within one-inch accuracy.
"Distance is far more an indicator of success than accuracy." Foley said. "That's maybe not true at the U.S. Open, but overall, if I have the choice of giving someone five extra mph in clubhead speed or have him hit the corresponding number of fairways, net earnings will increase more from the extra swing speed. You have a greater opportunity of gaining strokes."
For Foley, so much of what he does with clients now is less technique and more breaking down their games to a micro level.
"When they start to struggle is when they believe they're in a slump," Foley said. "It's simple math, letting them know where they're strong as well as where they're weak."
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