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September 27, 2007
Sports and Raising/Lowering Your Game
Interesting NBER paper looking at peer effects in the workplace. While fruit pickers, grocery scanners, etc., become more or less productive in correlation with their coworkers skill level, professional golfers play roughly according to their abilities, uncorrelated with their playing partners' skill levels.Lots of way to look at this, including the obvious one poor play by golf partners has only an indirect effect on me, at best, while poor work by coworkers can have a much more direct effect. that points The subject came up recently in the U.S. Open, where some players were deemed the sort who played you tight at their opponent's skill level, while others played tough all the time, crushing weak opponents while playing better players close. Put differently, I defy any tennis pro to play well against me -- I'm too awful.
This paper uses the random assignment of playing partners in professional golf tournaments to test for peer effects in the workplace. We find no evidence that the ability of playing partners affects the performance of professional golfers, contrary to recent evidence on peer effects in the workplace from laboratory experiments,
grocery scanners, and soft-fruit pickers. In our preferred specification, we can rule out peer effects larger than 0.045 strokes for a one stroke increase in playing partners' ability, and the point estimates are small and actually negative.
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Among the competencies of top caliber golfer is the ability to focus competitive energies on beating the course, versus the competitors on the course. The notable exception is Tiger Woods who can do both, without succumbing to the pull of poor play in the field or in his foursome. Tiger appears to be playing against a standard that is internally derived-- the linking of 60ish perfect strokes in succession.
"Irregardless" is not correct usage. :-)
http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=23&
My mother always told me it is impolite to correct other's grammar. She also told me that I minded her like a stick. Double negative. Use regardless instead. That is what is meant. OTOH, there is this cafe, http://www.irregardless.com/ ...
Irregardless?!? I'm shocked. I thought you were a fellow language snob.
[nails on blackboard sound]
Irrespective or regardless, but never, ever, ever irregardless.
Or simply say "no matter".
I doubt this is limited to golf and fruit pickers. In most jobs a certain level of conformity is expected. You also learn that there is little point in performing too far outside the height of the bell curve at any company.
Sports are different, especially non-team sports. There you are almost always rewarded for performing at the positive fringes of the bell curve.
I think that Joe McMackin (comment 1) makes an excellent point and that it is certainly better to compare average golfers to fruit pickers, etc.
Taking Tiger out of the equation, the difference between the number 2 scoring average (Els) and the number 50 scoring average (Mayfair) is 1.13 strokes per round. In either case, though, both players are playing exceptionally well scoring an average of 69.29 and 70.42 per round.
Compare that to average golfers where one player in the foursome could be shooting 110 and taking time looking for balls, duffing shots and blowing putts, this will undoubtedly impact the other 3 players in the group whose timing will be off, concentration will be affected and rhythm will be shot.
In a foursome that includes 3 players with an index of 10 - 15 and one with an index of 36, I suspect, that the 3 better players will shoot at the high end of their index. This is no different than 1 fruit picker / grocery checker being slow or unproductive and impacting the entire line.
On the flip side, one could look at the final round of the 2005 US Open in which Goosen & Gore went shot for shot with an 81 & 84 respectively.
To me professional Golfers are completely different people then fruit pickers, grocery scanners, etc.. Professional golfers are highly competitive and have a much better mental makeup. They know they are playing against an entire field. I don't think this study really means anything. Now if you compared average golfers who play for fun to fruit pickers or compared professional golfers to high powered business executives you may have something.