The Columbia Business School professor who revolutionised golf analytics

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Mark Broadie’s data-driven research into the millions of shots struck by players has radically altered the game

Broadie’s seminal insights now pervade the game, with players guiding their practice and tournament strategy in order to snatch tenths of strokes that – over a four-day tournament and 25-tournament season – can mean millions of dollars in prize money and a string of titles.

Broadie had earned degrees from Cornell and Stanford before arriving at Columbia where he specialised in financial engineering research. As an amateur golfer unsatisfied by traditional metrics, he realised that more meaningful statistics would come from dissecting individual shot-level data. Just as Broadie was perfecting this strokes gained concept, good fortune struck. The US PGA Tour in 2003 had unveiled ShotLink, a laser technology used by volunteer spotters which tracked and stored every shot in its tournaments. That rich data set would become the baseline for Broadie’s strokes gained breakthrough.

The judges nearly unanimously picked the strokes gained group and a brave new world was suddenly upon golf. Players who had been strictly instinctive were suddenly data geeks. And those who had already been lonely number crunchers found a kindred spirit in Broadie. “Those of us who watch golf for a living, maybe see 10 per cent of the shots of a top player in a year. Strokes gained can tell us why Justin Thomas is falling backwards and what makes Scottie Scheffler so outrageous.”

 

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