Settling for Par: Pros More Likely to Play It Safe
When PGA Tour golfers from Tiger Woods down to the greenest rookie draw back their putters this week at the United States Open, their scorecards will be sabotaged by a force as human as it is irrational: risk intolerance.
Even the world’s best pros are so consumed with avoiding bogeys that they make putts for birdie discernibly less often than identical-length putts for par, according to a coming paper by two professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. After analyzing laser-precise data on more than 1.6 million Tour putts, they estimated that this preference for avoiding a negative (bogey) more than gaining an equal positive (birdie) — known in economics as loss aversion — costs the average pro about one stroke per 72-hole tournament, and the top 20 golfers about $1.2 million in prize money a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/sports/golf/16study.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
I don’t know why this doesn’t apply also to layups vs GoForTheGreen . . . maybe it does, but the Tour sells the sizzle, plus it may freak the newbies on tour and keep them from competing well?
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