The quest for lower scores in golf has gone off the practice tee and into the laboratory. The European Tour, in conjunction with RSM, a leading provider of audit, tax and consulting services, has commissioned research to be done to find out where golfers are losing strokes on Tour.
As a result, once the strokes lost can be quantified, the corresponding amounts of money attached to each of those strokes can be calculated as well. The study confirmed some interesting albeit commonly-held assumptions about players costing themselves strokes.
Two years ago, in partnership with the @EuropeanTour we launched the RSM Player Performance Study, a unique research piece analysing golfers’ technique. Findings released today. #RSMStudy pic.twitter.com/dDzDCwfb3V
— RSM UK (@RSMUK) November 27, 2017
Here’s what the study results had to say.
Since 2016 we’ve been working with the European Tour on the RSM Player Performance Study – with the ambition of understanding the key drivers of player performance at the elite level in golf.
The study collected data on 47 European Tour professionals over five tournaments, 304 rounds of golf and 22,579 shots. Led by Dr. Matt Bridge, Senior Lecturer in Coaching & Sports Science at the University of Birmingham UK, the study revealed three key findings:
1. spending less time over the ball could earn a European Tour player an extra €189k per season;
2. quicker shots improve performance. A shorter time over the ball across all putts results in a 90 percent increase in the likelihood of strokes gained; and
3. consistency of time spent over the ball leads to a greater chance of making the cut. When players are more consistent in rounds one and two they are 50 percent more likely to make the cut compared to less consistent players.
The findings seem to have one common thread weaving throughout: don’t get in your own way. The more you stand over a shot and think about it, the more likely you are to be costing yourself a shot.
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