McIlroy for the win, Stenson for the wise

THE Masters, the first men’s major golf tournament of 2017, is set to kick off in Augusta, Georgia on April 6th. The Economist Advantage in Golf Likelihood Estimator (EAGLE), our statistical forecasting system first developed last year, is poised to return for its third tournament. We are currently in the midst of upgrading to a more granular and comprehensive version of the system, whose characteristics we outlined in a presentation at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last month. As a result, our live hole-by-hole calculation of each player’s win probability will not be available on our website for the 2017 Masters. However, we will be posting daily updates on this page. And unlike in last year’s version of EAGLE, which relied exclusively on the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGRs) and previous performances in major tournaments, we calculated our 2017...Continue reading