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MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE ECONOMICS DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 07-14 TEE TESTS: PLAYING WITH TIGER
TEE TESTS: PLAYING WITH TIGER
Tiger Woods is arguably the best golfer ever on the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour. In 2006, he was first among money leaders. In that year, he also ranked 1st in scoring average, 1st in birdie average, 1st in greens in regulation, and 1st among par breakers. In May 2007, Rory Sabbatini publicly challenged Tiger saying that he wanted Woods in the final pairing of the 2007 Wachovia Championship. Woods shot a 69 and won the tournament, while Sabbatini posted a disappointing 74 to tie for third. How daunting is it to be paired with Tiger? Or, unlike Sabbatini, do individuals perform better in the face of tougher in-group competition? Using data from the 2006 men’s PGA Tour, we find that playing in a group with Tiger Woods (which usually attracts enormous crowds and intense media attention) can adversely affect a golfer’s concentration level and hence lead to higher scores. The typical tournament on the PGA Tour involves four rounds. Roughly half of the field is cut at the end of the second round. In 2006, Tiger participated in twelve PGA Tournaments in which he made the cut (missing the cut in only the U.S. Open). He won eight of them, including two majors, the British Open and the PGA Championship. He finished tied for third or better at two others and earned $9.941 million, about 38 percent more than his closest rival (Jim Furyk) [see www.pgatour.com/r/stats/2006/109.html ]. A complete list of the tournaments and the players with whom he was grouped in the third and fourth rounds are presented in Table 1 [see http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/golf/pga/2006/schedules/ ] . The table also provides detailed round- by-round results for each of these golfers, when they played with and without Tiger. Our reliance on a subset of elite golfers in each tournament is intended to mitigate the effects of the “marginal golfer” who fails to make the cut. Tiger was paired with the same two golfers in rounds 1 and 2 of each of these twelve tournaments. Six of his twenty-four playing partners failed to make the For each of Tiger’s playing partners in the third or fourth round, the score for a round played with Tiger was paired with the same player’s score for a (post-cut) round played without Tiger. In no case did any of the thirty-one players in our sample who made the cut have to play with Tiger in both rounds 3 and 4. Two players (Sergio Garcia in the Buick Invitational and Aaron Baddeley in the Deutsche Bank Championship) were paired with Tiger in rounds 1 and 2, and then again in one of the remaining two rounds after the cut. After the cut, the paired difference between the average score with Tiger (72.71) and the average score without Tiger (69.52) was statistically discernible from zero (p < .001). Golfers who made the cut had scores that were, on average, over three strokes higher per round when they were grouped with Tiger than when they were not. The differences are even greater when one compares the averages for all rounds (including the first two rounds) without Tiger and those with Tiger (68.91 and 72.53, Which is worse: pairing with Tiger in round 3 or joining Woods in the final pairing? Table 2 shows Tiger’s playing partners’ final position and their position after three rounds (that is, at the start of the fourth and final round). [The leaderboard positions at the start of the final round were obtained from http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/leaderboard?tournamentId=253 .] If Tiger’s presence inflates a playing partner’s score, then the golfers who played with him in the third round (but not the fourth) would be expected to finish higher up the leaderboard than they would have had the tournament ended after three rounds; those golfers who played with him in the fourth round (but not the third) would be expected to finish lower down the leaderboard than they would have had the tournament ended after three rounds. The improvement without Tiger for each group of playing partners (those who played with him in round 3 and those who played with him in round 4) is recorded in the last column of Table 2. (Note that a “T” denotes a tie.) A 1- sample Wilcoxon signed rank test for players grouped with Tiger in round 3 showed that the median improvement (without Tiger) was not discernible from zero (p = .932); the median improvement (without Tiger) for players grouped with Woods in round 4 was, however, discernible from zero (p = .005). In other words, playing with Tiger is more likely to hurt your final position (that is, add strokes to your final score) if you are paired with him in round 4 than if Concluding Remarks
The presence of a superstar might force some professional golfers to concentrate more and elevate their game. But, among golf’s elite on the 2006 PGA Tour, the evidence presented here suggests that few players can handle the duress of playing with Tiger Woods (after the cut). And, the deleterious impact Tiger has on his playing partners’ game is more pronounced in the fourth and final round than it is in the round immediately following the cut. Table 1. 2006 PGA Tour Tournament Results,
Golfers Who Played with Tiger Woods in Rounds 3 or 4*

77 73
71
69 68 68
75
70 67 68 76
72
66 67 68 77
73 73
70 70
69 73 70 76
70 72 70 80
76 81
69 70 75 84
70 73 72 69
70 72 72 69
70 71
69 67 69 70
68 65 71
68 71 65 73
71
72
67 67 66 72
73 77
68 68 66 74
70 71
69 69 64 71
70 67 64 69
67 71 71 70
70 71 61 68
69
70 64 67 73
67 68 65 69
*Numbers in italicized boldface are rounds played with Tiger Woods Table 2. 2006 PGA Tour Tournament Results,
Golfers Playing with Tiger Woods,
Final Position and Position After 3 Rounds


Played with Tiger Woods in Round 3

Played with Tiger Woods in Round 4

Source: http://sandcat.middlebury.edu/econ/repec/mdl/ancoec/0714.pdf