Blog
Tiger and his rivals
12th March 2008
Does the presence of Tiger Woods in a professional golf tournament inhibit the standard of play of his rivals?
A fascinating paper by Jennifer Brown from Berkeley and given at a conference titled “Tournaments, Contests and Relative Performance Evaluation” earlier on this month suggests that he might do just that. Download the full paper here ... of great interest to golf loving behavioural economists! Rather like the jockeys who ease down their mounts in races where they have no chance of catching the leader, perhaps some of the cohort of professional players do not play to their maximum in tournaments where Tiger is pretty much expected to win? The paper looks at how performance of golf players changes at different stages of the tournament.
Average Number of Eagles, Birdies, Pars, Bogeys and Double Bogeys in Tournaments
With and Without Tiger Woods on “Tiger-Played” Courses from 2002 to 2006
Average # Per Round in Tournaments With Tiger
Eagle 0.1
Birdie 3.8
Par 11.3
Bogey 2.5
Double bogey 0.3
Average # Per Round in Tournaments Without Tiger Woods
Eagle 0.1
Birdie 3.9
Par 11.4
Bogey 2.4
Double bogey 0.2
Average Strokes Relative to Par for Tournaments With and Without Tiger Woods
With Tiger Woods
2002 -4.14
2003 -1.66
2004 -2.03
2005 -3.46
2006 -2.73
Without Tiger Woods
2002 -6.88
2003 -7.63
2004 -6.08
2005 -4.65
2006 -4.16
Data is for exempt players i.e. professional golders who do not have to qualify for the tournaments
Geoff Riley
Geoff Riley FRSA has been teaching Economics for over thirty years. He has over twenty years experience as Head of Economics at leading schools. He writes extensively and is a contributor and presenter on CPD conferences in the UK and overseas.