Skill, Luck and Hot Hands on the PGA Tour June 21, 2005 Robert A. Connolly Richard J. Rendleman, Jr. Kenan-Flagler Business School Kenan-Flagler Business School CB3490, McColl Building CB3490, McColl Building UNC - Chapel Hill UNC - Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3490 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3490 (919) 962-0053 (phone) (919) 962-3188 (phone) (919) 962-5539 (fax) (919) 962-2068 (fax)
[email protected] [email protected] We thank Tom Gresik and seminar participants at the University of Notre Dame for helpful comments. We provide special thanks to Carl Ackermann and David Ravenscraft who provided significant input and assistance during the early stages of this study. We also thank Mustafa Gultekin for computational assistance and Yuedong Wang and Douglas Bates for assistance in formulating, programming and testing portions of our estimation procedures. Please direct all correspondence to Richard Rendleman. Skill, Luck and Hot Hands on the PGA Tour 1. INTRODUCTION Like all sports, outcomes in golf involve elements of both skill and luck. Perhaps the highest level of skill in golf is displayed on the PGA Tour. Even among these highly skilled players, however, a small portion of each 18-hole score can be attributed to luck, or what players and commentators often refer to as “good and bad breaks.” The purpose of our work is to determine the extent to which skill and luck combine to determine 18-hole scores in PGA Tour events. We are also interested in the question of whether PGA players experience “hot or cold hands,” or runs of exceptionally good or bad scores, in relation to those predicted by their statistically-estimated skill levels.