The beauty of match play

This study investigated whether higher seeded players have an advanage in the only match play event on the PGA Tour. Analysis showed that the higher seeded won 54% of the time (p=.06); the correlation was .17 (p<.01) between higher seeded players winning and the difference in World Rankings between players. Given professional golfers are at the highest end of the distribution of golf ability, these players are so nearly equal in ability, it is mainly a matter of chance who will win a match play event or who will have the best round on any given day.