Is the Masters the Easiest Major to Win?

[Moecat]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576244803731755180.html

 

 

Golf fans generally consider the Masters, which begins Thursday, the most prestigious event on the calendar. (If you didn't already know that, Jim Nantz will remind you a few hundred times on the TV broadcast this weekend.) But, according to one study, the classiest tournament of the year is also the easiest major to win.

 

Richard Rendleman, a professor of finance at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and Robert Connolly, an associate professor of finance at the University of North Carolina, recently conducted a study that ranked professional golf events by how difficult they are to win. They determined that the PGA Championship is the toughest major, followed by the U.S. Open, the British Open and the Masters. The hardest overall tournament to win was actually the Players Championship, and the easiest—among the tournaments still in existence—was the Puerto Rico Open.

 

To draw their conclusions, the researchers gathered the round-by-round results for each player at every tournament from 2003-2009. They plugged this data into a statistical model that estimated how each golfer should have scored in every round of every tournament he participated in based on his skill level, while also factoring in the effects of random variation in scoring. Using their model, they ran 10,000 simulations of each tournament to determine the average minimum score required to win, factoring in the size and overall quality of the field.

 

Rendleman said the Players earned the top spot because it has a large 144-player field consisting only of top professionals. The Masters, meanwhile, has the smallest field of any major at roughly 95 golfers, and it reserves many of those spots for amateurs and past winners who have virtually no chance to win.

 

—Jared Diamond

 

 

Tournament Difficulty Rankings

 

Here are the hardest golf tournaments on the calendar based on a statistical model that estimates the minimum score required to win. Results are the average of the tournament's difficulty ranking from each year between 2003-09.

 

TOURNAMENT AVG. RANK

Players Championship 2.71

PGA Championship 3.14

U.S. Open 3.43

British Open 3.71

The Masters 4.57

The Barclays (FedEx) 7.33

Deutsche Bank (FedEx) 7.33

WGC-Bridgestone 7.86

[harrison101]

wow interesting thoughts on the tournaments. I think the reason Augusta and The Masters is considered the most prestigious is because of the history of the tournament as well as the beauty of the course. Things like Amen corner just can't be repeated. As far as difficultly that's debatable I guess.

[JBones]

I think the only reason it can be considered the easiest major to win, is because it's the only major played at the same course every year. Players know exactly what to expect (course wise) every time they go there. It also always seems to have the perfect golf weather.

 

Man, I'm so excited; 30 minutes until the par 3 contest.

[Justin66]

I think the only reason it can be considered the easiest major to win, is because it's the only major played at the same course every year. Players know exactly what to expect (course wise) every time they go there. It also always seems to have the perfect golf weather.

 

Man, I'm so excited; 30 minutes until the par 3 contest.

 

 

I agree. US Opens are ALWAYS made more difficult (gotta protect par!) with the narrow fairways and 6" rough, Open Championships can be played at quirky tracks, the PGA and Open Championship are also more apt to have varying degrees of weather differences, depending on where they're played. Not that the US Open or Master's isn't immune to weather, I feel it just seems to be more of a factor in the other two (think along the lines of the 100+* temps at the PGA at Southern Hills).