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The importance of recent scores in a forecasting model for professional golf tournaments

McHale, I; Forrest, DK

Authors

I McHale

DK Forrest



Abstract

In many fields of forecasting, practitioners face the problem of how to distinguish signal from noise in recent news. As an illustration of how one might approach the problem we examine, in the context of golf, the extent to which recent players' scores embody genuinely new information relevant to predicting the outcomes of tournaments. We construct an ordered logit forecasting model for tournaments on the Professional Golf Association US Tour. Player scores in their six most recent appearances are demonstrated to have an important role additional to that of a longer-run indicator of player quality. The model performs well relative to reliance on weekly official world rankings of players and the results of log-likelihood tests indicate that this is because of greater weight attached to very recent tournament performances.

Citation

McHale, I., & Forrest, D. (2005). The importance of recent scores in a forecasting model for professional golf tournaments. IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, 16(2), 131-140. https://doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpi005

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Sep 1, 2005
Deposit Date Aug 21, 2007
Journal IMA Journal of Management Mathematics
Print ISSN 1471-678X
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 16
Issue 2
Pages 131-140
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpi005
Keywords forecasting, golf, ordered logit, world rankings
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpi005