Home Advantage in Team Golf

By John Considine

Recently, I was listening to an interview with Ryder Cup winning captain Paul McGinley.  During the course of the interview, McGinley made a reference to the importance of home venue for team golf tournaments.  He implied that it is very important in 2017 and gave a statistics that 80% of winners are the hosts.  McGinley's observation raises an interesting point about home advantage that is worth highlighting for sports economics - home advantage in team golf is unlikely to be channelled through the referees/umpires.

Below is a graphic that illustrates the proportion of team golf titles held by the host team.  Just over 64% of the titles were held by teams that won them at home.  McGinley's claim is supported by the data.  The tournaments included in the calculation are: the Senior and Junior Ryder Cups; the Senior and Junior Solheim Cups; the Presidents' Cup; the Arnold Palmer Cup; the Curtis Cup; Walker Cup; and the Men's World Cup of Golf.  The inclusion of the last of these tournaments is questionable as there are more than two teams competing and, therefore, a home win is less likely.  As many of the tournaments are held only every second year, the calculation is based on the current holder of the tournament.

It is very difficult to see how home advantage in golf could be the result of refereeing decisions.  On the surface it would seem that if the raucous support for a home team in Ryder Cup has an influence then it is through the players rather than the officials.  Do economists over emphasis the role of the referees/umpires?  In a 2011 post, Stephen Dubner wrote a blog post on "Football Freakonomics" where he seemed to approve of the view that referees were the most important influences in home-field advantage.  Dubner made reference to the arguments from a book called Scorecasting by Moskowitz & Wertheim.  However, saying that there is a bias in refereeing decisions is not the same as saying they are the best explanation of home-field advantage.  In addition, it is possible to interpret the research by Moskowitz & Wertheim a little differently (as I did here and provide further evidence as I did here).

There is some evidence to show that when it comes to refereeing decisions, there can be a bias towards the home team.  Some evidence.  However, there is also evidence to the contrary.  The Butler brother of this parish have found little evidence of home bias in the decisions about added-time (here).  Hlasny & Kolaric struggled to find evidence of home bias in disciplinary matters in a recent Journal of Sports Economics paper (access their paper here or my review of it here).

My disposition is probably to accept that there is possibly some home bias in refereeing decisions.  I'm not sure if it is a product of my economics training, my sporting experience, or my personality.  However, the home advantage that teams have in golf makes me wonder.