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Do professional golfers "choke"?

Russell D Clark1

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of North Texas, Denton 76203-1280, USA. rdclark@unt.edu

Perceptual and Motor Skills
|August 21, 2002
PubMed
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Professional golfers do not appear to "choke under pressure." Leading players in professional golf tours consistently performed well, winning the majority of tournaments, contrary to choking under pressure hypotheses.

Area of Science:

  • Sports Psychology
  • Performance Analysis
  • Golf

Background:

  • The phenomenon of
  • choking under pressure
  • , where athletes underperform in critical moments, is a widely discussed topic in sports psychology.
  • Professional golf, with its high stakes and individual performance metrics, provides a unique setting to examine this phenomenon.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether professional golfers exhibit a tendency to
  • choke under pressure
  • during final rounds of PGA Tour, Senior PGA Tour, and LPGA Tour events.
  • To test the hypothesis that players leading or close to the lead in final rounds exhibit poorer performance compared to those further back.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of final round scores from PGA Tour, Senior PGA Tour, and LPGA Tour events.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Comparison of player performance based on their position relative to the lead (leading, one stroke from lead, two or more strokes from lead) entering the final round.

    • Main Results:

    • The study found no statistical support for the
    • choking under pressure
    • hypothesis in professional golf.
    • Players who were leading going into the final round won the majority of the tournaments analyzed.
    • Performance did not significantly degrade for players leading or one stroke from the lead compared to those further behind.

    Conclusions:

    • The findings suggest that professional golfers, contrary to popular belief, do not typically
    • choke under pressure
    • in final rounds.
    • Leading golfers demonstrate a high propensity for winning, indicating robust performance under pressure.
    • Further research could explore other factors influencing performance in high-pressure sporting situations.