Member Locations - A Study of Maps

JW requested an analysis of our league member's locations in order to find a central bar. It's a fun exercise, especially when it gives you actual perspective on where everyone lives. However, this will NOT change the Hangover bar location for this weekend.

First we need to set some parameters:

• I'm only going to use the 13 members ranked in the Official Golf Rankings.
• This gives us only those who have played in at least 8 of the last 18 events, thus eliminating the guys who rarely show up.
• Even though they're eliminated by the above parameter, Dan and Darryl would vastly skew this data. Reid is already somewhat skewing it... but he's been in the league since its inception, which is another reason we're heading up toward him this weekend.
• We need to actually calculate the mid-points. There's a great website I found which does this called the Geographic Midpoint Calculator. It allows me to load up exact addresses and then calculate a couple of points:
• Geometric Midpoint - Basically the true center of all the data points "as the crow flies."
• Average Minimized Distance - A complex algorithm finding the exact point that minimizes the total distance between each location. Obviously, it doesn't account for traffic or actual driving time.
• I had to "guess" for Brendan and Tall Mike since I couldn't snoop their exact locations. I'm told Mike lives under a bridge near International Mall, and Brendan lives at Sally O'Neal's Pizza.

For any of the maps below, you can click on them to get a much larger version.

First up is the true geometric midpoint:

True Geo-midpoint: 6003 North Hale Avenue Tampa, FL 33614

This is a neighborhood called "Pinecrest," which is basically at the corner of Dale Mabry and Hillsborough. It has a ton of car dealerships, and everything bar related is pretty terrible. If you live in Pinecrest, you do not have many options. I guess the Hooters on Hillsborough is the best bet.

Next let's look at the minimized distance point:

Average Minimized Distance: 3409 West Aileen Street Tampa, FL 33607

You'll see this location is skewed south, due to the 7 league members who actually live in the City of Tampa. You read that correctly... only 7 of us live in the Tampa city limits. The rest of you are posers who love to talk about how your mail says "Tampa" on it. But don't be fooled... your taxes do not fix my roads.

Anyway, this location is a few blocks south of Raymond James Stadium. It's a pretty bad location as well, but I guess you can cheat to the west slightly and hit bars near International Mall. However, most of those are restaurants and we wouldn't be drinking cheap. Best drinking spot: Chili's for all day 2-for-1 drinks?

As you can see, most of us are clustered in two areas. Which is why we've bounced between them every season: 1) Retreat (UT) 2) Taps (downtown) 3) Dubliner North (Carrollwood) 4) Islands Club (DI) 5) O'Briens (Carrollwood) 6) Maloney's (Westchase). Three down south, and three up north. Almost as if it were planned perfectly by a god of scheduling, organization and fairness.

That leaves us with our one outlier, Reid. Poor guy drives a million miles to not only golf with us, but to also drink with us. If you look at one of the maps above, we'll be hanging out this weekend at a location near the 2nd lowercase i in "University." It honestly isn't even as close to Reid as it should be. So with that being said... suck it up... get a sober driver... and let's go enjoy another JW Hangover event.