Tom Watson’s brilliant round at Turnberry yesterday, at the age of 59, highlights again the question of the relationship between age and performance. A new study of PGA Tour golfers by Harold Fried and Loren Tauer sheds fascinating light on this.
They looked at the efficiency of golfers - the way in which they convert ability (as measured by factors such as the number of greens made in regulation or driving length) into earnings. This is a measure of golfers’ mental toughness. A player who shoots two great rounds but then falls apart is inefficient, whereas a less able one who keeps his game together will finish better, earn more and be more efficient.
They found that there’s an n-shaped relationship between efficiency and age. Players’ mental strength increases up to age 36, but then falls off.
This is because there are offsetting effects of age. The good news is that age brings wisdom and a sense of perspective and hence ability to cope with pressure. But the ability to concentrate wanes as folk get older.
You might think that older men, with more secure wealth and reputations, also have lower motivation - but the Yerkes-Dodson effect tells us this has ambiguous effects.
This relationship suggests we shouldn’t expect Watson to keep up yesterday’s great round - a fact which is reflected in his odds of 100-1 to win the championship.
Except for one thing. The n-shape is only a weak relationship - there’s a lot of statistical noise around it (though there is a selection bias in the research which might exaggerate this noise).
This is, of course, not just a story about golf. It corroborates other evidence suggesting that the fall-off in productivity as people get older is weak.
They looked at the efficiency of golfers - the way in which they convert ability (as measured by factors such as the number of greens made in regulation or driving length) into earnings. This is a measure of golfers’ mental toughness. A player who shoots two great rounds but then falls apart is inefficient, whereas a less able one who keeps his game together will finish better, earn more and be more efficient.
They found that there’s an n-shaped relationship between efficiency and age. Players’ mental strength increases up to age 36, but then falls off.
This is because there are offsetting effects of age. The good news is that age brings wisdom and a sense of perspective and hence ability to cope with pressure. But the ability to concentrate wanes as folk get older.
You might think that older men, with more secure wealth and reputations, also have lower motivation - but the Yerkes-Dodson effect tells us this has ambiguous effects.
This relationship suggests we shouldn’t expect Watson to keep up yesterday’s great round - a fact which is reflected in his odds of 100-1 to win the championship.
Except for one thing. The n-shape is only a weak relationship - there’s a lot of statistical noise around it (though there is a selection bias in the research which might exaggerate this noise).
This is, of course, not just a story about golf. It corroborates other evidence suggesting that the fall-off in productivity as people get older is weak.
Concentration goes - also memory and calculating ability. It's rare for leading chessplayers to get stronger in their thirties and their forties see a decline which gets steeper in their fifties. There may be ways to offset this with experience - I certainly hope so, I'm 44 - and the world champion, Viswanatham Anand, forty in December, may feel that he's a better allround player than he was twenty years ago (although he's also a slower one). One also thinks of Viktor Korchnoi, who made two attempts on the world title in his late forties (indeed he was fifty at the time of his second match) and should arguably have succeeded the first time. But in general, it's really hard to play against anno domini.
Posted by: ejh | July 17, 2009 at 08:14 PM
funny blog, tx for sharing
Posted by: stop dreaming start action | July 18, 2009 at 11:22 AM
One can only hope that the Yerkes-Dodson effect also has something in store for us.
Posted by: jameshigham | July 18, 2009 at 12:58 PM
That's age y'see, it always gets you in the end
Posted by: ejh | July 19, 2009 at 10:51 PM
Weak it might be, it remains a great myth to use to justify triming the payroll.
Posted by: Frank the sales forecaster | July 21, 2009 at 04:55 PM