Revolution in golf statistics: Study puts a number on extraordinary dominance of Tiger Woods

May 7, 2010 8:00am

Economics Professor Stephen Shmanske and his book, Golfonomics, continue to get media coverage. First by an Italian golf blog and now in a national article by Chris Gorski, Inside Science News Service.

In the article about the sophisticated statistical effort called ShotLink being used by PGA Tour events, the author writes, "Several years ago another researcher, economist Stephen Shmanske from California State University East Bay in Hayward, made an attempt to measure the correlation of golfers' earnings to their skills as part of. The only data available to him were the traditional statistics like year-to-date putting average, driving distance, and driving accuracy. Shmanske developed several interesting findings, including that for players on tour each hour spent practicing putting improves future earnings by $600. After writing the book Shmanske said that he used a painstaking process to "mathematically back out the most recent week's performance." He took the updated year-to-date driving distance or putting averages and calculated how well each golfer had performed in that tournament."