How Mental Capabilities of Players Affect Their Monetary Prizes in PGA Golf

This study is about the effect of the mental capabilities of golfers on earning monetary prizes in the PGA. A very similar study was conducted by Chung(2008). But his study was focused on prize money and golf skill not mental ability. In other sports, the studies of winning in match play were conducted by Cho(2007) and Lee(2006) in baseball. In sports, mental factors can greatly affect a player s ability to win, especially in golf. Couples of studies were conduct before by Murphy(1994) and Larkey(1994) in this area. Players take approximately 4 hours for one round with the assistance of a caddy. If a player scores 72, he takes at least 10-20 minutes before he makes each shot. To get the best performance, a player should know how to manage the game whatever arduous conditions he may experience. From last year s PGA records, some players rankings in the amount of money they earned were very poor compared to their actual average score rank. If a player s final score is worse than first or second round score, his prize money rank is very low. Through this point of view, we can successfully measure players mental ability to manage the game and analyze the difference between rankings based on money and rankings based on average scores. In this study, generally we can find that the player, who has big variance between average scores of round, also has a low money rank. Based on this finding, mental ability in the game deeply affects earned money prizes.