{"title":"‘Form is temporary, class is permanent’: identifying a longer-term hot hand in golf","authors":"R. Baker, Ian G. McHale","doi":"10.1515/jqas-2022-0051","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The existence (or not) of the hot hand in sport continues to attract the attention of economists and psychologists. The paper presents analysis to test the belief prevalent in golfing circles that golfers go in and out of form quickly, while ‘class’ remains relatively constant. By going in and out of form, the golfer is effectively experiencing a longer-run hot hand: one can speculate that periods of confidence breed good performance. To test for the existence of ‘form’, we present a new application of the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck model and use it to identify both a golfer’s class and form when modelling golf scores. The findings suggest that short-term form does exist in golf and that this hot hand lasts for about four weeks.","PeriodicalId":16925,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports","volume":"15 1","pages":"241 - 251"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jqas-2022-0051","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"SOCIAL SCIENCES, MATHEMATICAL METHODS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The existence (or not) of the hot hand in sport continues to attract the attention of economists and psychologists. The paper presents analysis to test the belief prevalent in golfing circles that golfers go in and out of form quickly, while ‘class’ remains relatively constant. By going in and out of form, the golfer is effectively experiencing a longer-run hot hand: one can speculate that periods of confidence breed good performance. To test for the existence of ‘form’, we present a new application of the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck model and use it to identify both a golfer’s class and form when modelling golf scores. The findings suggest that short-term form does exist in golf and that this hot hand lasts for about four weeks.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports (JQAS), an official journal of the American Statistical Association, publishes timely, high-quality peer-reviewed research on the quantitative aspects of professional and amateur sports, including collegiate and Olympic competition. The scope of application reflects the increasing demand for novel methods to analyze and understand data in the growing field of sports analytics. Articles come from a wide variety of sports and diverse perspectives, and address topics such as game outcome models, measurement and evaluation of player performance, tournament structure, analysis of rules and adjudication, within-game strategy, analysis of sporting technologies, and player and team ranking methods. JQAS seeks to publish manuscripts that demonstrate original ways of approaching problems, develop cutting edge methods, and apply innovative thinking to solve difficult challenges in sports contexts. JQAS brings together researchers from various disciplines, including statistics, operations research, machine learning, scientific computing, econometrics, and sports management.