Age and Winning Professional Golf Tournaments

Aging tends to decrease the flexibility, bone mass, and strength of the human body, leading to a decline in the level of physical activity of the average person (Birrer, 1989). 1Even professional athletes are not immune from the decline of talent due to aging. In swimming, cycling, and weightlifting, for instance, most athletes reach their prime in their 20s and early 30s (Wilmore, David, Costill, & Kenney, 2008). How about the age at which professional golfers peak? The conventional wisdom about professional golfers is that they go through three consecutive phases; first, they go through the learning process, acquiring both physical and mental skills of the game. Second, after a few years of experience, they reach their prime. Lastly, due largely to physiological factors, their skills start to decline (Berry & Larkey, 1999). There is only one identifiable study conducted to investigate such a relationship, however. Based on 489 golfers and using scoring average as the measure of performance over the course of several years, Berry et al. (1999) found that most golfers, who played in the four Major championships (the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and the PGA), peak on average between 30 and 35 years.2 They, however, did not include non-Major golf tournaments in their analysis.

They also did not deal with other major tours, such as the European Professional Golf Association (European PGA), the Champions, and the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tours. Nor did they measure golfers’ performance by number of wins.

This paper uses winning, as opposed to scoring averages, as a measure of performance and investigates the ages at which professional golfers peak their wins in both Major and non-Major golf tournaments for the years between 2003 and 2007. The analysis also covers four major golf tours. Specifically, using data available from the Golf Channel, the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour, the European PGA Tour, and the LPGA Tour, I calculated and provided the mean, the median, and the mode ages at which professional golfers on these tours had won over a five-year period. I have found that the ages at which golfers peak their wins on the PGA, European PGA, Champions, and LPGA Tours are 35, 30, 52, and 25, respectively. Moreover, the regression analyses I conducted seem to support my hypothesis that age affects winning professional golf tournaments.

The PGA Tour I relied on 239 major tournaments in which PGA Tour golfers played between 2003 and 2007 to calculate the mean, the median, and the mode ages of winners. Table 1 Ernie Els think that he is well above everybody else with respect to his golf skills. In other words, if one was to analyze the skills of professional golfers, Tiger Woods’ extraordinary talent would make him a deviant or an outlier case. In Model 2, I excluded Tiger Woods from the analysis. The mean, the median, and the mode ages of winning PGA tours were 35.65, 35, and 35, respectively. The main difference between the analysis in Model 1 and that in Model 2 is that in the absence of Tiger Woods, the mode or the age at which tour players peak their wins increased from 31 to 35.

Another golfer who may be considered an outlier due to several wins in his forties is Vijay Singh. Singh won 23 tournaments between 2003 and 2007, after he became 40 years old. When Vijay Singh is excluded from the data, in Model 3, the mean, the median, and the mode ages became 34.36, 34, and 31 respectively. The main change from Model 1 is that the mean and the median ages became smaller by about a year. And the main change from Model 2 is that the mode age decreased from 35 to 31, which seemed to be influenced by the presence of Tiger Woods. In Model 4, I excluded both Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh from the analysis. Interestingly, the mean, the median, and the mode ages of winning PGA tournaments became almost equal, 35 years old. When these measures are equal, the distribution of the data is said to approximate or take the form of a bell curve. Thus, we can say that about 68 % of winners were between one standard deviation from the mean. Since the standard deviation is 6.15, we can say that about 68 % of the winners were between the ages of 29 and 41. Similarly, about 95 % of the winners were within two standard deviations from each side of the curve. That is, about 95 % of the winners were between the ages of 23 and 47. It is, thus, safe to say that under normal circumstances (that is, without the presence of outlier golfers like Woods and Singh), the age at which the PGA Tour golfers peak their wins is 35. It is interesting to note that perhaps because Berry et al. (1999) relied only on the four Major championships (as opposed to all tournaments) and on golfers’ scoring averages (as opposed to winning tournaments), their peak years (between 30 and 35) and mine (35) are not identical.

The European PGA Tour There were 237 major tournaments in which European PGA Tour players played between 2

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