Level of Education of Students Involved

Both Undergraduate/Graduate

Faculty Sponsor

Tiffany Kolba

College

Arts and Sciences

Discipline(s)

Data Science, Sports Analytics

Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

Symposium Date

Spring 4-25-2024

Abstract

One important question in sports is whether it is possible to predict a player’s professional performance based on their collegiate or amateur success. This question has relevance for coaches, fans, and the players themselves. Many studies have examined the relationship between amateur and professional performance in sports such as football and basketball, but no such studies have been conducted in golf. In this study, we combine data from three prominent amateur, collegiate, and professional golf ranking websites in order to predict golfers’ professional success based on their performance as an amateur and collegiate player. The data for the analysis was collected using web scraping, including the Selenium package in Python. Once the data was collected, regression analysis was used to predict players’ professional rankings at various time increments after turning professional based on their amateur and collegiate rankings. Additionally, logistic regression was used to predict whether or not a player reaches certain ranking milestones. The results of this study will be valuable for golf fans and aspiring professionals, as well as the academic community. Many golfers are curious about their chances of success if they were to turn professional, and fans are interested in this as well. Additionally, this analysis adds onto existing literature that compares professional and amateur success by exploring a sport that has not been examined before.

Biographical Information about Author(s)

Caleb VanArragon is a graduate student in the Analytics and Modeling program. Last year, he received his undergraduate degree from Valpo as a double major in biology and statistics. He is a member of the Valpo men’s golf team and is interested in applying data science techniques to amateur and professional golf. Matt Latzke is an undergraduate student at Valpo majoring in data science. He is interested in computer science and sports analytics.

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