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