Mike, I saw that result, and I agree that it’s suggestive and consistent with the “scale back effort” strategy. To rephrase my question to incorporate this discussion: in the “trying too hard” hypothesis, is there a way that such a strategy would manifest itself other than in score variance? How might golfers try too hard that might differ from “riskier” strategies?

The cool thing about Jen’s dataset is that she can control for within- and between-tournament variation, as well as cross-player variation, and that she can do the hole-by-hole analysis in the “risky strategies” analysis. This yields an estimate of within-round variance by player, so we can compare across players with and without Tiger.

I interpret Lehrer’s “paralysis by analysis” as possibly manifesting itself in some other way than through riskier shots on a hole-by-hole basis, which is what Jen tested for in Table 10′s estimates. Here’s what I have in mind: professional athletes train for precision and consistency, so even if they have a “paralysis by analysis”, they are still so consistent and precise because of their skill and training that they are still performing in a very high range, but that being self-conscious and overthinking things at the margin still results in lower within-round average scores by hole, even though it doesn’t result in higher within-round variance.

So I’m still searching for a way to tease the psychology result out of the data!

Hey, this is a fun discussion, we should do stuff like this more often …

Simpler to examine, and possibly revealing a difference, I would guess that “scale back” implies scores that are higher on average but likely with lower variance, while “trying too hard” produces scores that are higher on average but with a higher variance. (Trying “hard enough, but not too hard” is the ideal, which gives a desirable below average score and a typical variance.)

So, what happens to the variance of scores of all of the non-Tigers with and without Tiger in the tournament?

… a brief pause while I look at Brown’s paper …

She says: “Results in Table 10 suggest that the presence of the superstar does not lead to increased variance in players’ scores.” and “Overall, this hole-level analysis provides little evidence that Woods’s presence induces players riskier strategies that result in higher scores and the observed superstar effect.”

Case closed on the “trying too hard” explanation?

If he really is intimidating, then I think he would have the greatest impact when his opponents get a first-hand look at him.