Applying the Hardy Distribution to the Hole Scores of the 2012 British Open Championship

Abstract

In an article titled "A Mathematical Theorem about Golf", Godfrey Harold Hardy (Hardy, 1945) introduced a simple model of golfing. Hardy models golf as a sequence of independent shots, each of which can be ordinary (or normal), good (or excellent) or bad. In a more recent paper titled "The Hardy Distribution for Golf Hole Scores" van der Ven (van der Ven, 2012) derived the probability distributions of scores for par three, four and five holes according to Hardy's basic assumptions. In this paper the results are reported of a goodness-of-fit test of Hardy's theorem using the hole-by-hole scores of the 2012 British Open Championship. Pearson's chi-square goodness of fit test was used to determine whether the observed sample frequencies of the hole scores differed significantly from the expected frequencies according to Hardy's model. The fit between observed and expected frequencies was generally very satisfactory.