Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Fried Egg Podcast.
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Speaker 1: com backslash Fried Egg member SBIC. Today I'm joined by
Speaker 1: Professor Andrew Urbacewski and Ryan Elmore from the University of
Speaker 1: Denver's Department of Business Information and Analytics. Andrew and Ryan
Speaker 1: put together a study on loss aversion and professional golf,
Speaker 1: specifically looking at how changing the power of a hole
Speaker 1: in the US Open affects scoring. I won't spoil the podcast,
Speaker 1: but this study has some implications for professional golfer and
Speaker 1: the way golfers think overall. So without further ado, here's
Speaker 1: Andrew and Ryan I miss the green.
Speaker 2: For example, I'm already upset when I find my ball
Speaker 2: in the bunker.
Speaker 3: I'm really upset when I find my ball.
Speaker 2: In a bride egg, Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg,
Speaker 2: fridagg Bright Egg, Brian Egg, bride Egg.
Speaker 3: Bride egg Lie.
Speaker 2: I'm about ready to run off of the hub course.
Speaker 1: So you guys are both at the University of Denver
Speaker 1: in business analytics. How did this paper that you wrote
Speaker 1: about loss of version and professional golf come about?
Speaker 4: I think it was really as we were working on
Speaker 4: another paper that was looking at streaks in golf and
Speaker 4: that we had been working on for a while, and
Speaker 4: can I have had a graduate assistant compile a bunch
Speaker 4: of the data that was looking at our is there
Speaker 4: really a such thing as the hot hand? And we've
Speaker 4: seen plenty of research on the hot hand in basketball,
Speaker 4: in baseball, lots of different domains, And then we started
Speaker 4: thinking about it in golf, that is there really a
Speaker 4: such thing as the birdie barrage or the bogie train?
Speaker 4: And we wound up going through a set of data
Speaker 4: from twenty thirteen to twenty fourteen looking at all the
Speaker 4: PGA tours, and it was a lot of data massaging
Speaker 4: we had to go through to figure out which you
Speaker 4: would normally think that people just play holes one through
Speaker 4: eighteen and we could just look and see are they
Speaker 4: making strings of birdies or strings of bogies? But you
Speaker 4: have to figure out from this did they start on
Speaker 4: the front or did they start on the back. Was
Speaker 4: it a split course tournament. Was there a rain delay
Speaker 4: that got involved and you're completing rounds on different days.
Speaker 4: A lot of different data analysis that we did, and
Speaker 4: what we found in that paper was that when you
Speaker 4: control for everything like difficulties of the whole individual skill,
Speaker 4: that there's really no such thing as a hot hand effect.
Speaker 4: That somebody making a birdie on one hole is not
Speaker 4: really more likely to make a birdie on the next hole,
Speaker 4: But there is a huge cold hand effect that somebody
Speaker 4: can get on the making a bogie and then they're
Speaker 4: much likely to do much worse on the next hole
Speaker 4: or holes following. So it's a lot tougher to get
Speaker 4: off of that bogie train. So we published that paper
Speaker 4: in the journal Sports Analytics, and then we were just
Speaker 4: continuing to talk about golf, and for whatever reason, there was.
Speaker 2: Also the Continance book you know, came out about that
Speaker 2: similar time. I would say, I, or at least sorry
Speaker 2: not Continents book, Michael Lewis's book. I had read that
Speaker 2: and you were talking about something related to either prospect
Speaker 2: theory or something along those lines. The idea is all Andrews.
Speaker 4: Well, it was one of those chance conversations. We're just
Speaker 4: sitting around one day and it's like, you know it
Speaker 4: the us GA, and you know, everybody's got their opinions
Speaker 4: about the us GA, but we're just sitting around I
Speaker 4: think it was one somewhere around the open and we're
Speaker 4: just talking about this idea of protecting par It's like,
Speaker 4: why did these people call holes par five's or par four's?
Speaker 4: And then we just started getting into some of the research.
Speaker 1: So what what's the paper called that's about the hot hand.
Speaker 4: On the hot ending golf?
Speaker 2: Well, hot end cold hands because we found the cold hands,
Speaker 2: we had to add colde hand in there as well.
Speaker 1: I can send you a copy of You're I'm extremely
Speaker 1: there might be a podcast number two of this. We
Speaker 1: might just roll right into it after this. But uh,
Speaker 1: with uh with with regards to the loss of version,
Speaker 1: I have to event I've been, uh, I've been misrepresenting
Speaker 1: your paper.
Speaker 3: I'm very embarrassed. I skimmed it.
Speaker 1: I had, you know, I was talking to the that
Speaker 1: sent me it and I kind of flipped it wrong.
Speaker 1: And I've mentioned it on a couple podcasts and I've
Speaker 1: been I've been misrepresenting this paper, and I have to
Speaker 1: apologize to the listeners, but also you guys as people
Speaker 1: that put it together. So the paper is is called
Speaker 1: loss a version and professional Golf. Your theory that you
Speaker 1: started out with was that players spend more energy and
Speaker 1: concentrate more on playing a hole in.
Speaker 3: Four strokes four a part four than a par five.
Speaker 1: So if a hole becomes less par players will score
Speaker 1: less on it. And so you started with this, and
Speaker 1: you know, the paper came about from a conversation. How
Speaker 1: did you go about tackling this this project?
Speaker 4: You know, actually we you know, we talked about it
Speaker 4: and we just seen boy, you know, maybe there's an
Speaker 4: effect here, maybe not, I don't really know. And we
Speaker 4: reached out to the Nicies Golf Association and the Victoria
Speaker 4: student as Victoria's didn't in their history group, reached back
Speaker 4: out to us pretty quickly and not only gave us
Speaker 4: data on the two holes that we were interested in
Speaker 4: in the beginning, which was the ninth at Oakmont and
Speaker 4: the second at Pebble, but any US open that had
Speaker 4: ever happened where they had changed the holes from par
Speaker 4: fives to par four's, and most of them were unusable
Speaker 4: for us. As we're looking at the data because they'd
Speaker 4: either linked in the whole by seventy yards or shortened it,
Speaker 4: or it was like Chambers Bay when they're playing eighteen
Speaker 4: as a par four one day a par five another,
Speaker 4: but it's one hundred yards difference. So we looked at
Speaker 4: and we did some real preliminary analysis and we found, boy,
Speaker 4: there's a big effect here. They take the same hole,
Speaker 4: they call it a par four instead of a par five,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden they're scoring much better. And
Speaker 4: this was then aligned with some other research that we
Speaker 4: had found earlier as we were trying to see who
Speaker 4: else had done this. Couple of economists at the University
Speaker 4: of Chicago back in twenty eleven, Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer.
Speaker 4: In fact, Ian Fillmore may have studied under them looking
Speaker 4: at was calling is Tiger Woods loss of verse persistent
Speaker 4: bias in the face of experienced competition and high stakes
Speaker 4: where they had gone through and looked at a whole
Speaker 4: lot of different data on putting and just looking at
Speaker 4: putting on golf courses and laser measurements, and they looked
Speaker 4: at something like two and a half or three million
Speaker 4: putts and then tried to figure They figured out that
Speaker 4: people were more likely to make the same putt if
Speaker 4: the putt was for parr as opposed to if the
Speaker 4: putt was for birding, looking at that as evidence of
Speaker 4: loss of version, like if it's that they're really going
Speaker 4: to try harder when it becomes that And the paper
Speaker 4: was really interesting, But to us it was a little
Speaker 4: bit complicated for the average lay person to understand. By
Speaker 4: the time that they had gone through all of the research.
Speaker 4: It would have been really hard for somebody that wasn't
Speaker 4: trained well in economic and statistics to understand what it
Speaker 4: was that they were really doing. But we thought, boy,
Speaker 4: we've got a real what economists call natural experiment out there.
Speaker 4: That the perfect natural experiment would be to tell half
Speaker 4: the people this hole is a part five, the other
Speaker 4: half that it's a part four, and just see what
Speaker 4: they do. We're trying were racking our brains trying to
Speaker 4: figure out how we might be able to do something
Speaker 4: like that. The other day, I was even talking about
Speaker 4: going to the mini golf course and just handing out
Speaker 4: scorecards to your average gel and saying, you know, this
Speaker 4: hole is a part three or this hole is a
Speaker 4: part four, and seeing how people do on that. We
Speaker 4: figured out pretty quickly. It's probably not a great idea,
Speaker 4: but that's where we came to it.
Speaker 1: As a background just for listeners, what is loss of version?
Speaker 4: Sure? Loss of version came from a paper in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy nine by Amos Tiski and Daniel Konnoman. Amos Tiski
Speaker 4: is now to cease, but people may have heard of
Speaker 4: Danny Konnoman. He won the Nobel Prize in two thousand
Speaker 4: and two for much of his work there, and then
Speaker 4: he had a twenty twelve or thirteen text called Thinking
Speaker 4: Fast and Slow that became a New York Times bestseller
Speaker 4: that explained a lot of the behavioral economics concepts, one
Speaker 4: of which was this idea of loss a version, and
Speaker 4: in loss of version, it's most simply states that people
Speaker 4: value something that they already have greater than what other
Speaker 4: people would value it for, and that individuals, if you're
Speaker 4: looking at a choice between gains and losses, that they
Speaker 4: the pain of the loss hurts much more than the
Speaker 4: the reward of the game.
Speaker 1: With golf, as you mentioned, with putting, people make more
Speaker 1: par putts because they fear the bogie putt. Then they
Speaker 1: want the gain of a Birdie Putt. What would be
Speaker 1: some other examples in other sport, In.
Speaker 5: Other sports, I mean that there's you know, it's kind
Speaker 5: of closely related to some extent risk aversion.
Speaker 2: So there's you know, fourth down opportunities in the NFL
Speaker 2: or coaches tend to.
Speaker 4: Not go for.
Speaker 2: You know, go for it because they're worried about more
Speaker 2: than they're worried about getting, you know, more than they
Speaker 2: want to get that first down, so they just putt it,
Speaker 2: you know, where they shouldn't probably be going more fourth downs.
Speaker 2: But that's a you know, not the same problem.
Speaker 1: It's it's very similar though, because there are Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get what you're saying.
Speaker 3: So for the paper, you zeroed.
Speaker 1: In on two of the most historic venues for the
Speaker 1: US Open.
Speaker 3: You've got Pebble Beach and.
Speaker 1: Oakmont, So each of them have hosted a number of times,
Speaker 1: which I imagine is very important for the study. So you
Speaker 1: want to look at whole number two, which changed to
Speaker 1: a par four at Pebble Beach in two thousand and
Speaker 1: then you did the same thing with Oakmont's ninth hole,
Speaker 1: which went from a five to four for the two
Speaker 1: thousand and four championship and since has continued on. So
Speaker 1: Pebble Beach's second hole this year will be for the
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen US Open will be a part four again, How.
Speaker 3: Did you start with this study? What did you what
Speaker 3: did you compile the data?
Speaker 1: And what did were the early findings and the early
Speaker 1: kind of steps towards getting to this this working towards
Speaker 1: this hypothesis.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, initially Andrew got the data for Pebble and
Speaker 2: he just did a quick look, just look at the
Speaker 2: average score across the difference across hole number two, you know,
Speaker 2: through the through the years, and it was like, there's
Speaker 2: clearly a difference here, you know, just looking at your
Speaker 2: raw averages, you know, how many strokes were actually scored
Speaker 2: on a particular hole. And so then we got Outmont
Speaker 2: a little while later and decided to control for various
Speaker 2: variables including you know, the year that I was played. Jeez,
Speaker 2: I guess it just the.
Speaker 4: Whole difficulty rating looking at not just those holes, but
Speaker 4: other holes, because one hypothesis might be the entire courses
Speaker 4: getting easier. And so then you could just say that
Speaker 4: technology is caught up and everybody now is just you know,
Speaker 4: berating these or beating these golf courses into submission, and
Speaker 4: so we had what we found was that really was
Speaker 4: not the case. And particularly when you look at Pebble
Speaker 4: and you look at the other part fives, there was
Speaker 4: certainly not this increase that came during the two thousand
Speaker 4: Open or the twenty ten Open.
Speaker 6: And then when we looked at twenty two and seven
Speaker 6: and twenty sixteen at Oakmont, we even controlled for the
Speaker 6: round numbers as we're looking at them, because some of
Speaker 6: the guys aren't going to be playing as well that
Speaker 6: first round.
Speaker 4: You know, if you're going to go and shoot eighty,
Speaker 4: maybe you're not trying as hard in the second round
Speaker 4: knowing that you're going to be trunk slamon on Friday.
Speaker 4: So we looked at people that played two rounds and
Speaker 4: people that played four rounds, looking across those things, and
Speaker 4: we still found every variable that we tried to control
Speaker 4: for that might be an alternate explanation as to why
Speaker 4: we're seeing this precipitous drop on these two holes, we
Speaker 4: were able to explain away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think I think it's particularly notable when
Speaker 2: you just zero in on the other part fives, because
Speaker 2: you see, you know, you don't see the same behavior
Speaker 2: on the other part fives, whereas you might expect that,
Speaker 2: you know, driver technology is getting better, so of course
Speaker 2: they're going to play the five par fives in a
Speaker 2: different way. But you don't see that drop in scores
Speaker 2: across those part fives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that would be like the immedia thing
Speaker 1: I would think is like, well, they're hitting the ball
Speaker 1: further than ever, how you know, how is this? But
Speaker 1: you know, you guys obviously factor that in by looking
Speaker 1: at other holes. I imagine did you look at holes
Speaker 1: that stayed the exact same yardage that might not have
Speaker 1: changed part Yeah.
Speaker 4: Certainly looking at fourteen, which can at Pebble, which continues
Speaker 4: to be one of the hardest par fives on the
Speaker 4: entire tour each year, and eighteen as well, fourteen length
Speaker 4: and a little bit eighteen has stayed that same length,
Speaker 4: that same iconic group there, and there's just no change
Speaker 4: when you look at eighteen.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's anywhere they could move that te to.
Speaker 1: Bulli An Island, and I think there'd be outrage if
Speaker 1: they did anything to that all.
Speaker 4: Remember the outrage when they built the sea wall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's you do anything to to that course, then
Speaker 1: there's going to be people on either side of the fence.
Speaker 1: You do this with the ninth out of Oakmont and Pebble,
Speaker 1: and what do you find?
Speaker 2: Basically that the scores post change are are better relative
Speaker 2: to you know, you're you're scoring higher relative to par.
Speaker 2: But that's just you know, that doesn't really matter. That
Speaker 2: the result is that your average strokes for a given
Speaker 2: for those two holes decreased once you changed the par
Speaker 2: from five to four.
Speaker 4: And so over we found that it's really the effect
Speaker 4: was somewhere between a quarter and a third of a stroke,
Speaker 4: which over four rounds is a stroke a stroke plus,
Speaker 4: which is you know, last year was the difference between
Speaker 4: finishing second and getting into a playoff.
Speaker 1: If we took par and made it say, I always say,
Speaker 1: if we if we're playing like Lili for example, sure
Speaker 1: the par fives are so short, they're in actuality par fours.
Speaker 1: If we made that a par sixty eight instead of
Speaker 1: a par seventy, you'd expect average scoring to drop two
Speaker 1: shots average absolute scoring on the four round tournament, so
Speaker 1: essentially a quarter of a shot per par five that
Speaker 1: you switched to par four you would expect to you know,
Speaker 1: roughly and over a four round tournament that of costs
Speaker 1: a shot.
Speaker 3: So with this in terms of.
Speaker 1: US Open setup and par par was a constitute that
Speaker 1: was just started for viewers.
Speaker 3: Right, what would you expect to see if we just
Speaker 3: went no par.
Speaker 4: You know, it's really crazy. And we went back and
Speaker 4: looked at some of the articles that were being published
Speaker 4: when they decided to make Pebble's number two a par
Speaker 4: four back in two thousand and saw guys like Tom Watson,
Speaker 4: for example, that came out that said that absolutely, there's
Speaker 4: no reason to make this whole a par For a
Speaker 4: guy who had won the US Open at Pebble, David
Speaker 4: Duval was the only one that came out that we
Speaker 4: could find that said that it should be a par four.
Speaker 4: And the only guy we could find that actually said
Speaker 4: the same course for everybody, doesn't matter what you call
Speaker 4: it was Colin Montgomery.
Speaker 3: I see. That's I mean.
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting thing when you think about the
Speaker 1: mental side of golf, is that as a player, you're
Speaker 1: always thinking about your score, your par. The best players
Speaker 1: aren't thinking about it, but at the back of their
Speaker 1: mind there's always this par mentality in their mind.
Speaker 4: Yeah, back before there was again, as you mentioned TV
Speaker 4: and viewers and trying to allow the viewer to see
Speaker 4: at any given point, how to compare somebody who's on
Speaker 4: number seventeen with somebody who's on number eleven at a
Speaker 4: given time. They never even thought about it that they've
Speaker 4: just posted the total score over the four rounds. But
Speaker 4: now you've added another variable that people are. They get
Speaker 4: stuck in their head and they get.
Speaker 3: Thinking about it with the change.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you know this outside of
Speaker 1: just the scoring change. Did you see any behavioral stuff
Speaker 1: with players on those holes. Was it that they were
Speaker 1: going for the green more or that you know, when
Speaker 1: they were out of position they weren't playing as conservatively
Speaker 1: or is there any sort of stuff that you found
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: The data that we have, we don't have sort of
Speaker 2: the micro level look into the US Open that we
Speaker 2: were talking about before with the shot link data, so
Speaker 2: we don't really have that information. We just have the
Speaker 2: raw scores on the whole. So if they got a
Speaker 2: four from you know, if they started off their t
Speaker 2: shot went in the rough or was in the middle
Speaker 2: of the fairway, we don't know, you know, which scenario
Speaker 2: that they had going into the green.
Speaker 3: So and I imagine that you saw.
Speaker 1: Did you guys look at any other holes like the
Speaker 1: types of holes where we see a really long par
Speaker 1: three that's similar to the distance of a short par four.
Speaker 4: We referenced it in the paper, and of course the
Speaker 4: one we were thinking about was seven or eight. I
Speaker 4: forget at Oakmont that R three that the US opened
Speaker 4: side and made three hundred yards one day back in
Speaker 4: two thousand and seven. But those are really so rare,
Speaker 4: unlike the fours and the fives, that there just wasn't
Speaker 4: enough to actually do any type of meaningful analysis.
Speaker 2: There's another hole another part three? Is it bel three where.
Speaker 4: They had the tenth at the Belfry that goes what
Speaker 4: maybe two seventy five when they're playing the Ryder Cup there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, huh, we don't have that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was thinking seventeen and eight eight at Oakmont could
Speaker 1: be two examples.
Speaker 4: And seventeen they play at what about three ten, three twenty?
Speaker 1: Yeah, great in that range and that, yeah, it'd be
Speaker 1: It's an interesting, uh thought, is thinking about the yardage
Speaker 1: as opposed to the you know, the par and bucketing
Speaker 1: you know, numbers in the yardage with you know, because
Speaker 1: some holes, some courses it will have four ninety par
Speaker 1: fours versus four ninety par five, and.
Speaker 4: Of course in Colorado, where the balls would fly significantly further,
Speaker 4: So five hundred and twenty yard par fours even for
Speaker 4: the normal back teas as opposed to a championship is
Speaker 4: not that unusual when they're playing at They're gonna have
Speaker 4: a web dot Com tournament this year at the new
Speaker 4: TPC Colorado course up in Berth. Of that that's supposed
Speaker 4: to play out at seventy nine something yards, but again
Speaker 4: that's also at a mile above sea level. Both of
Speaker 4: these courses are effectively couple's at sea level effectively, and
Speaker 4: Oakmont senter eight hundred feet above it.
Speaker 1: I guess one thing I would since they were both
Speaker 1: around like five hundred yards these two holes, say you
Speaker 1: took like a six hundred yard par five and made
Speaker 1: it a part four. Obviously, you guys don't have the
Speaker 1: numbers to do that, but you would.
Speaker 3: You expect would.
Speaker 1: Your hypothesis before setting out be that we'd see the
Speaker 1: same aversion.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I would necessarily extend what we
Speaker 2: did to a six hundred yard hole that's going to
Speaker 2: pushing the limits of I mean, I like to think
Speaker 2: that there might be an effect, but it's I can't
Speaker 2: imagine it would be as strong as like a quarter
Speaker 2: of a stroke or you know, a third of a stroke.
Speaker 4: I think the more interesting part would be actually looking
Speaker 4: at that for amateur golfers. Let's take something like sixteen
Speaker 4: to Cyprus point. But the most of your average amateur
Speaker 4: golfer has no business trying to hit it over the ocean.
Speaker 4: They're knocking it on the green, bailing out left, trying
Speaker 4: to chip on. If you make three, great if not
Speaker 4: make four. But because somebody's labeled this a par three,
Speaker 4: it's like I have to go and try and drive
Speaker 4: this ball on the green over the ocean and wind
Speaker 4: up making you know, six or seven a heck of
Speaker 4: a lot more.
Speaker 1: What you're saying is that for the average golfer, the
Speaker 1: situation might be flipped where if you add par they'd
Speaker 1: score better.
Speaker 4: I think that it's put something in their minds there
Speaker 4: that it very well could be on that amateur golfer.
Speaker 1: As a guy that grew up caddying, I think about
Speaker 1: that all the time because when one of the things
Speaker 1: that the biggest problems with the amateur golfer is when
Speaker 1: they get in trouble. They just don't get themselves out
Speaker 1: of the trouble, right, yeah, guilty. Where As the professional
Speaker 1: at the level, a lot of where the game can
Speaker 1: be made is mental.
Speaker 4: And the difference between that you know, number one and
Speaker 4: number one hundred and twenty six is so much smaller
Speaker 4: there than it would be out in terms of number
Speaker 4: one and number one hundred and twenty six that you're
Speaker 4: you know, at my golf club for example, there it's
Speaker 4: you know, one shot here, one shot. There is different
Speaker 4: between keeping your.
Speaker 1: Card and not if you guys were you know, all
Speaker 1: these players have these big entourages. Now, say Jason Day
Speaker 1: brings you into his entourage, or or Justin Thomas or
Speaker 1: Jordan Speith. You're you're you're on team Speeth or team Thomas,
Speaker 1: and they're they're asking you, guys for advice heading into
Speaker 1: the major championships this year. And obviously you aren't. You're
Speaker 1: not psychologists or anything. But what are you What are
Speaker 1: you saying to them?
Speaker 4: I let the guy from Kentucky handle t Justin Thomas, No,
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess my takeaway from this is I
Speaker 4: would say, try to ignore, you know, try to ignore
Speaker 4: par and just play your game.
Speaker 2: You know, try to try to score as best you
Speaker 2: can on the whole. Again, like you're saying, we're not psychologists,
Speaker 2: so you know, I'll leave that to you Bomberteller or
Speaker 2: somebody like that, who's the sort of psychologist. But I
Speaker 2: think this paper would suggest, you know, ignore par. If
Speaker 2: you're playing the US Open on this course, you ignore
Speaker 2: par and just try to go, you know, try to
Speaker 2: try to play your best shots.
Speaker 1: There's the aversion thing for the birdie too, like where
Speaker 1: you're making more par putt. It's fascinating when you combine
Speaker 1: the study about birdie putts versus par putts with this
Speaker 1: study and to think about if you could just convince
Speaker 1: yourself that every putt was a par putt in some way,
Speaker 1: because I imagine you see a similar thing with a
Speaker 1: bogie putt as a par putt. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that study went into that.
Speaker 2: I can't remember.
Speaker 4: Actually, ah boy, I'd have to reread it. It's the
Speaker 4: birdie versus par that I really remember.
Speaker 2: That's what stands out for the paper, and that's what
Speaker 2: they highlight.
Speaker 1: Because I would imagine that a bogie versus a double
Speaker 1: bogie would be similar to a par versus a bogie.
Speaker 3: You don't want to lose two shots.
Speaker 4: I mean to me, the interesting thing is going to be.
Speaker 7: Uh, let's say, looking last week playing eighteen at Honda
Speaker 7: in par five, there you're in fifth.
Speaker 4: Place and you've got two forty five over the water
Speaker 4: to the green. Do you really try to not get
Speaker 4: on that green and make eagle thinking that it's going
Speaker 4: to get you up to third? Or are you thinking
Speaker 4: about you know, I'm just gonna make sure that I
Speaker 4: get on the green and reg and I have a
Speaker 4: decent chance for Bertie, and I make sure that I'm
Speaker 4: going to cast a decent enough check. You know, we
Speaker 4: hear some of the old school golfers talking about guys
Speaker 4: today just playing for a check instead of playing to
Speaker 4: win as part of their livelihoods. I think some people
Speaker 4: winds up entering into their strategy and some it doesn't,
Speaker 4: and some of the traditional loss of version there doesn't
Speaker 4: apply as well, because the pay tables for these PGA
Speaker 4: tournaments are so top heavy that the difference between first
Speaker 4: and second is a lot bigger than the difference between
Speaker 4: second and third, which is certainly a lot bigger than
Speaker 4: the difference between fifteenth and twentieth.
Speaker 1: Even so at a certain extent, when you are near
Speaker 1: the lead, the loss of version changes.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I think you'd be interesting to study.
Speaker 1: That would be interesting to say, because like Morgan Hoffman
Speaker 1: last week was in a similar situation of what you
Speaker 1: just are an at Morgan Hoffman, Wyndham Clark was in
Speaker 1: a similar situation to what you just described, and he yeah,
Speaker 1: he is a Colorado guy and he goes for the
Speaker 1: green and makes a huge number, but he needed an
Speaker 1: eagle to get into a potential playoff.
Speaker 4: And there's those situations are different for each individual. And
Speaker 4: you know what we think about sitting there on eighteen
Speaker 4: on our Saturday afternoon game is it's like a boy,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm going to have to buy the beers
Speaker 4: if you know I've los this hole. As opposed to
Speaker 4: some of these guys that are thinking, you know, I've.
Speaker 8: I got to make a top ten to get into
Speaker 8: next week and if I finished, what's the difference between
Speaker 8: finishing ninth and finishing fifteenth, And they're thinking.
Speaker 4: More about I need those last few facts cup points.
Speaker 4: I've got to be able to make this birdy here
Speaker 4: in order to make sure I get in the field
Speaker 4: next week or maybe they aren't thinking about it. That's
Speaker 4: I don't think any of them will actually admit to it.
Speaker 4: Great story about Zach Johnson at the Bell South talking
Speaker 4: about knocking it on that green and tube back before
Speaker 4: he was the Zach Johnson we know now and thinking about, wow,
Speaker 4: I've got to make this eighteen footer for eagle. I
Speaker 4: finished fourth and he winds up four putting the hole
Speaker 4: and doesn't get into the tournament next week.
Speaker 1: So if you are a long hitter, say Tony Feow
Speaker 1: or someone of that like Brooks Kopka, Dustin Johnson, where
Speaker 1: every single par five is.
Speaker 3: Reachable with an iron, wee can week out.
Speaker 1: That's the type of player that should go into every
Speaker 1: week convinced that it's a par sixty eight.
Speaker 4: That would be That would be my advice, my strategy.
Speaker 2: It's a good way of summarizing the paper right there.
Speaker 1: It's funny because there's a golf course in Chicago that
Speaker 1: I play every couple times a year that's a par
Speaker 1: seventy three, and people give it flak. They say it's easy,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, I think about it when I
Speaker 1: play it, I always say it's a par sixty nine because,
Speaker 1: like they have four par par fives that are like
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty yards, and for me, that is
Speaker 1: a you know, a moderately long player, that's a mid
Speaker 1: am like type player. It's not a par seventy three.
Speaker 1: It's a par sixty nine in my mind, and I
Speaker 1: always play better there.
Speaker 4: You had this conversation with Jeff a couple of weeks
Speaker 4: ago talking about making Carnousti a par eighty and that
Speaker 4: it would be the they'd call it the easiest course
Speaker 4: in the world. Or making the old Bermuda Dins a
Speaker 4: par sixty four and having everybody say, my god, this
Speaker 4: is so hard.
Speaker 1: And it's with this with the USGA, they seem to
Speaker 1: be obsessed with score to par as opposed to total score.
Speaker 4: It's it's an interesting phenomenon that would certainly be one conclusion.
Speaker 4: I don't want to call.
Speaker 6: Out anybody at the USGA as to what they're thinking
Speaker 6: or not thinking.
Speaker 4: But you're not the first person to make that observation.
Speaker 1: Because like I think about Aaron Hills, and I always
Speaker 1: point out, like, hey, if Aaron Hills had been a
Speaker 1: par seventy, Brooks would have won with minus eight, not
Speaker 1: minus sixteen. But in all likelihood he would have been
Speaker 1: minus ten because they would have turned the two par fives,
Speaker 1: but the score, his score would have fallen into the
Speaker 1: range of regular the scores, you know, typical scoring.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you I don't know if you've thought about this,
Speaker 1: If you were, so, it seems like to me, par
Speaker 1: is getting a way of seeing these guys play the
Speaker 1: best golf they can play. So, if you were going
Speaker 1: to prevent present a model that you know, par's made
Speaker 1: for the the fan to better keep track of players
Speaker 1: across the course, have you thought about what might be
Speaker 1: a better way to show how a tournament's evolving with
Speaker 1: players in different stages of the tournament.
Speaker 2: I haven't. I would admit that that's an interesting point.
Speaker 4: No, not at all. I really haven't I thought about that.
Speaker 4: And I certainly don't blame the television for trying to
Speaker 4: come up with ways to make the fan experience better
Speaker 4: and how to compare people, because that's the reason that
Speaker 4: they're playing for nine point one million dollars this week.
Speaker 4: Without television, it wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: My other thought is about looking at match play scoring,
Speaker 1: because in match play par matters far less.
Speaker 3: You're playing against the guy.
Speaker 4: Right, and if I got to be commissioner, I would
Speaker 4: have thirty two people making the finals at east Lake,
Speaker 4: and that would just be a match play tournament and
Speaker 4: just let the people say, if we're trying to crown
Speaker 4: one champion, we're not gonna have to worry about FedEx
Speaker 4: points this and reset at and whatever. Let's just set
Speaker 4: everybody up and we'll play five rounds and see who
Speaker 4: winds up being the best golfer for the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ogilvy talked about with match play, how in stroke
Speaker 1: play he's building a foundation and he's the guy that
Speaker 1: won the match play twice. So in stroke play you're
Speaker 1: building a foundation versus in match play you're playing the guy,
Speaker 1: but it frees you up to take more risks, which
Speaker 1: what do you think about what he was saying. Inherently
Speaker 1: it falls into the same loss of version camp, where
Speaker 1: when you're playing stroke play, you're playing not to lose
Speaker 1: shots in some sense, versus in match play when you're
Speaker 1: getting in situations, you're playing to win holes, which would
Speaker 1: be a much more mind skape mindset that frees you
Speaker 1: of par if I'm thinking about it correctly.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, there's no a scorecard needed when you play in
Speaker 4: a magic play call every hole Part one here a
Speaker 4: part two if you want, doesn't particularly matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this podcast has turned into me pontificating on your
Speaker 1: guys and study.
Speaker 2: But I too.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 9: It was you know, as we're thinking about the rules
Speaker 9: and talking about some of the things about putting earlier,
Speaker 9: you know, which really was at a rules seminar dead
Speaker 9: by and made at the Colorado Golf Association that he
Speaker 9: turned me onto your podcast from previously.
Speaker 4: So and if you're happening listening to the this podcast,
Speaker 4: shout out and thanks that all you do for the
Speaker 4: for the golf golfers here in Colorado.
Speaker 3: So we gotta, we gotta ask.
Speaker 1: We got we got to two papers now about golf.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to dive into the hot hand cold hand paper.
Speaker 3: But what's next?
Speaker 4: You know, we tried looking at some things like thinking
Speaker 4: about extending loss of version. That sometimes you'll hear about
Speaker 4: guys as you were mentioned, when they get into trouble
Speaker 4: and they're pros that they punch out, and that if
Speaker 4: I have a name on my bag, I have to
Speaker 4: be able to get up and down for eighty yards
Speaker 4: and pre in the past years we had some access
Speaker 4: to some shot length data from the PGA tour, and
Speaker 4: we tried to do some analysis on people getting up
Speaker 4: and down from inside one hundred yards for Birdie as
Speaker 4: opposed to Par and maybe the limitations of the data,
Speaker 4: we just couldn't find anything that was there.
Speaker 2: In particular sand traps.
Speaker 4: Particular sand traps. We really thought that there would be
Speaker 4: a difference in getting up and down for par Sandy's
Speaker 4: as opposed to getting up and down from the for Birdie's,
Speaker 4: and we didn't really we couldn't really get any type
Speaker 4: of data that should what kind of lie that they
Speaker 4: had in the bunker or where the slope was. And
Speaker 4: we might expect if you're coming in with a higher
Speaker 4: lofted club that you're more likely to get some type
Speaker 4: of bad pun f live than you would if you're
Speaker 4: coming in with more of a flatter club, less often club,
Speaker 4: But there's just no way to know from the data
Speaker 4: that we have.
Speaker 1: It's funny, you're what you were just saying about the
Speaker 1: up and down from the sandtrap brought me back to
Speaker 1: T shots and T shots on I'm Matin, And it
Speaker 1: goes back to the same thing we're doing here, T
Speaker 1: shots on long par fours versus T shots on par
Speaker 1: fives where there's on a par four, if you hit
Speaker 1: a long par four, you if you feel like you're
Speaker 1: losing if you hit a bad T shot, So T
Speaker 1: shots are probably I would be really interested to see
Speaker 1: the what the percentage of fairways hit is on a
Speaker 1: long par four versus a short par five, or any
Speaker 1: par five for that matter, because a par five, you
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of times you don't have to
Speaker 1: hit as good of a T shot to still make
Speaker 1: a par or.
Speaker 4: Birdie, depending if you're wanting to go for the green
Speaker 4: or not.
Speaker 3: There's something to look into, but it would fit.
Speaker 1: It would fit into this where the scoring is better
Speaker 1: when you flip the whole part four, because all around
Speaker 1: they're hitting better T shots that are setting them up
Speaker 1: for this quarter shot game.
Speaker 4: The loss of version theory would should indicate that they
Speaker 4: would put more mental energy into it, and then they
Speaker 4: would be more likely to hit the fairway by calling
Speaker 4: it apart four than would by calling it apart five.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the ideas that you're kind
Speaker 2: of riffing on here are awesome, and you know a
Speaker 2: lot of good ideas for potential research projects, and I
Speaker 2: think you kind of highlight the sort of the value
Speaker 2: of the shot Link database that the PGA Tour made
Speaker 2: available and now that we don't have access to it.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a shame because there are a ton
Speaker 2: of questions that could be asked related to the game
Speaker 2: of golf through I mean, they unparalleled data set on golf,
Speaker 2: and uh, if if they just keep making it available,
Speaker 2: like some of these questions that you're talking about, will
Speaker 2: surely get answered.
Speaker 1: It would make sense that you would have some of
Speaker 1: the brightest minds in academics looking at this data. It's
Speaker 1: a shame that it's now closed off, you know where
Speaker 1: where you close it off and inherently like if you're
Speaker 1: the only ones looking at it like that, the that's uh,
Speaker 1: that is a shame. I might reach out and see
Speaker 1: see why they uh why they revoked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they didn't stop collecting the data, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: No, it's still being still being collected. But hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I appreciate the the time, and uh we will we
Speaker 1: will pump out the article when we when we tweet
Speaker 1: this and mentioned in the newsletter as well as link
Speaker 1: to it in the post of the podcast. You guys
Speaker 1: were coming up on the Masters, you got any any predictions.
Speaker 4: My fantasy team will continue to suck. How about that?
Speaker 1: I feel like you guys would be the worst fantasy
Speaker 1: fantasy guys to go against.
Speaker 3: I when I see you in my.
Speaker 4: League seemed to be zigging and zagging. And I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, the golf certainly has a lot of variants.
Speaker 4: As you're trying to do this, there's plenty of analysis
Speaker 4: out there, horses for courses and again trying to ride
Speaker 4: an invisible hot hand that doesn't necessarily exist. You know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of study and data that's out there.
Speaker 4: One thing though, that, as you mentioned the Masters, it
Speaker 4: brings back to a topic that you've had a couple
Speaker 4: from the last couple of episodes talking about slow to
Speaker 4: play and some of the potential solutions maybe slow players
Speaker 4: or you know, I got admit I loved Olvi's suggesting
Speaker 4: about handing out the cash from the slow play fines
Speaker 4: to the fast players on the seventy second green or
Speaker 4: right there at East Lake all they're handing out the
Speaker 4: trophies that we know that will never happen, but that
Speaker 4: would make for great television if given nothing else but
Speaker 4: the loss of version theory that we look at and
Speaker 4: I really started thinking about that in terms of slow
Speaker 4: play and the whole idea that they're fined and they're
Speaker 4: find certain amounts, and we don't know what they're actually
Speaker 4: getting fined. That's a confidential matter between the PGA Tour
Speaker 4: and their individual contractors, but it would indicate that fines
Speaker 4: should hurt a lot more than rewards would help at
Speaker 4: a given level, that somebody losing one hundred dollars just
Speaker 4: to pick a round number, according to loss of version theory,
Speaker 4: that they would they would have to have a gain
Speaker 4: of two hundred and fifty dollars to feel the same
Speaker 4: amount of change to their youth utility that a loss
Speaker 4: of one hundred dollars would. So whatever finds that they're
Speaker 4: actually getting, you would have to add one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty to the money to actually get a better effect
Speaker 4: than maybe what they're seeing right now in terms of
Speaker 4: the the prize school finds. You want to see the
Speaker 4: real loss of version start handing out shots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, that's where you know the fact that there
Speaker 1: hasn't been a slow play penalty, and so you know
Speaker 1: there was one done in the Zurich which they in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen or sixteen where they and they find two
Speaker 1: rookies and two club pros who are in the field.
Speaker 1: They did not find a big name or they didn't
Speaker 1: penalize a big name player.
Speaker 3: So the fact that they.
Speaker 1: Aren't penalizing people actively for slow play is removing the
Speaker 1: loss of version of playing slow.
Speaker 4: You know when the when the Master did it was
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen or fifteen when they handed out that too
Speaker 4: strict that penalty of that poor fourteen year old Chinese kid,
Speaker 4: an amateur who wasn't going to make any money from
Speaker 4: doing this. Anyway, I don't know if they were trying
Speaker 4: to send a message by knowing there was somebody that
Speaker 4: wasn't really going to take any money out of their pocket.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I thought it might cause a big political problem,
Speaker 4: to be honest.
Speaker 1: Another thing with slow play and loss of version, this
Speaker 1: type of topic I would think about is what happens
Speaker 1: when a player is on a clock versus off the clock.
Speaker 4: I thought that was really interesting listening to Oglevie's take
Speaker 4: on that, and boy, if we had some data on
Speaker 4: that to analyze, that would be really interesting.
Speaker 3: There's so much interesting.
Speaker 1: There's so many cool nuggets you can pull from golf
Speaker 1: with the data now that can completely explain phenomenons.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, it's God. We got to get more
Speaker 3: of these. We need more studies.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, well you can talk to your friends at
Speaker 2: the PGA tour. Are the people that you might know there.
Speaker 3: You might be able to do stuff with the HELPPGA tour.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, your interview with Mom was pretty telling about that,
Speaker 4: and it sounded like he was really wanting to do
Speaker 4: anything to limit access.
Speaker 3: So maybe that's where you go.
Speaker 1: You know, I think they're they're starting to do more
Speaker 1: and more stuff, so that would be an interesting place
Speaker 1: to go. And uh, I know that a lot of
Speaker 1: college teams, the coaches are charting shots like they their
Speaker 1: players are charting shots, and they're getting strokes gained data
Speaker 1: for all their their scores, like almost all the top programs.
Speaker 1: That could be another area where you start to look.
Speaker 4: Yeah, our own coach here at the University of Denver,
Speaker 4: we explored working with on a couple of different things.
Speaker 4: Natually gave us access to all of the data that
Speaker 4: they had since twenty ten. I think it was going
Speaker 4: back as we were actually trying to help them with
Speaker 4: recruiting strategies. The way that people are using analytics to
Speaker 4: help with college football recruiting strategies where they've got eighty
Speaker 4: five scholarships to hang out in Division one golf just
Speaker 4: four and a half, and where you wind up spending
Speaker 4: that money for recruiting and scholarship money. Any advantage we
Speaker 4: could help our coaches with here would certainly help feel
Speaker 4: more competitive team.
Speaker 1: Theoretically, along those same lines, I'd be interested to see
Speaker 1: if you'd be able to identify, you know, young players
Speaker 1: with certain skill sets, like if they're if they're like
Speaker 1: obviously the everybody's starting to look at like strokes gained
Speaker 1: off the tee as something that's you know, eight of
Speaker 1: the top ten strokes gained off the team made it
Speaker 1: to Eastlake for the FedEx Cup.
Speaker 3: So when you.
Speaker 1: Start to look at a you know, the PGA tour,
Speaker 1: especially with you know, younger players building their marketing strategy,
Speaker 1: as in trying to identify it's becoming more difficult to
Speaker 1: identify who is the next superstar looking and understanding what
Speaker 1: types of skills breed superstars.
Speaker 4: Interesting question. It starts getting a little young, and I
Speaker 4: start I start having ethical problems with that. You know,
Speaker 4: when you and I were in high school and we
Speaker 4: played golf, but we you know, we we played basketball
Speaker 4: and played tennis, and we did all kinds of other things.
Speaker 4: And seeing some of these folks that are getting tracked
Speaker 4: at age ten to do one thing, and I get
Speaker 4: these flashbacks to ty Trion, which probably a name you
Speaker 4: haven't het in years and years and years, and you
Speaker 4: know what happened there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is the specialization of of golfers. But I
Speaker 1: think this is an important thing where the de skilling
Speaker 1: of the game with all the technology, with the green
Speaker 1: reading books, all the you know, the yardage guns, like
Speaker 1: essentially nothing is is feel. Things are becoming less about
Speaker 1: feel and and reading a shot quickly. Other sports I
Speaker 1: think helps. Playing other sports helps like your hand eye coordination.
Speaker 1: It helps, like, you know, being more of a reactionary player.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what is lost on some of these,
Speaker 1: On some of these, but the specializations obviously proving to
Speaker 1: be vitally important and valuable the same token, i'd certainly hear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, these kids just aren't scared anymore too,
Speaker 1: because all their buddies are are doing great things at
Speaker 1: young ages.
Speaker 2: All.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we will, uh, we'll talk to you guys
Speaker 1: again soon. You know, we might have to do a
Speaker 1: follow up on the hot hand cold hand when I uh,
Speaker 1: once I read it, I'm like, try and read it
Speaker 1: actually this afternoon.
Speaker 2: So uh, that's right after the podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll I'll post that also in the preview, and
Speaker 1: then you guys are on Twitter. People can follow you
Speaker 1: guys on Twitter. Uh, your handles are I'm r T. L.
Speaker 4: Moore and mine is at proffer Achesky, which I'm sure
Speaker 4: I'll have to be able to just look in Twitter
Speaker 4: feed from this to spell out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, well we'll pull we'll plug that in. But thanks guys,
Speaker 1: and uh we'll talk soon, all right, Thanks, thank you,