Jordan Spieth has Burstiness
Discovering a new word allowed me to decipher why Spieth's on-course game attracts so many fans.
Burstiness
Burstiness is statistics term which Wikipedia defines as, “the intermittent increases and decreases in activity or frequency of an event”. One can analyze a set of events over a given period of time and assign that set a burstiness score.
I first stumbled upon the term “burstiness” when reading the following assortment of links from Erik Hoel. Burstiness was noted as a useful measure to determine if some text had been written by humans or artificial intelligence. In addition to the tweet/website being referenced, Hoel explains,
Burstiness is how often the tone, or rhythm, or even content of writing, changes. Human writing, it turns out, has natural burstiness, since we focus on and emphasize various different things. Why? Perhaps because we have a stream of consciousness—as William James wrote, our consciousness is like a bird, flying from one branch to perch on another, and then dashing to alight on another, and these changes in our attention are reflected in our writing. But ChatGPT is likely not conscious (or if it is, it has a very different sort) and there is no alighting on one branch and then another, because there is no bird, and there are no branches, and nothing is surprising, nor particularly interesting, there is instead just a process mechanically bent on auto-completing the prompt and therefore putting out results completely uniform and self-similar and undifferentiated. A mind like mud.
Jordan Spieth
Through this explanation, I found immediate connections to the differences in playing styles of the world’s top golfers. A similar dichotomy to that outlined between human writing and AI writing can established by how golfer’s play. There are those who create intrigue via the absurd positions and recovery shots they put themselves in and those who plod along never attempting any theatrics. Some golfers play with flair, others play like machines. There are those with burstiness and those without it.
Jordan Spieth definitely has burstiness. He often makes inexplicable course management mistakes and subsequently attempts miraculous recovery shots. His game is variable, but when he’s on he wins. Spieth’s game keeps you on your toes. Even his conversations with his caddie can be riveting.
Spieth is a massive fan favorite on the PGA TOUR. He was third in the Player Impact Program in 2022, behind only Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. However, he was nowhere near the third best player and likely not even one of the ten best. The discrepancy between these two facts is due to Spieth’s playstyle. When players with burstiness start winning, they tend to quickly become fan favorites. Their mistakes are visible and frequent, but their recoveries are marvelous. Simply, players with burstiness are more entertaining to watch. Moreover, this playstyle more closely aligned with most fans’ own golf games. When players with burstiness capture victories, it resonates strongly with fans.
Burstiness is human and I believe we are attracted to it in life. We want to see Jordan Spieth at the precipice of disaster just barely able to hold on, knowing sometimes he won’t. Spieth’s failures and close calls at Augusta add to his appeal. As in life, we cannot always emerge victorious but having that flair for the dramatic creates intrigue and excitement regardless of the outcome.
Patrick Cantlay
Unfortunately, I also truly believe that the optimal way to play individual professional sports is without burstiness. One shouldn't play like Spieth. Instead you should be a robot; get to the golf course, hit it long, hit it straight, make your putts and leave, levelheaded and emotionless. But where is the vitality in that? Analogously, having a great poker face does not seem to be naturally human. It needs to be learned. Many modern players dedicate themselves to becoming stoic, robotic and clinical when competing. The prototypical current example of this player is Patrick Cantlay.
(This dynamic is not limited to golf. The same is true with other individual sports like tennis or MMA. Think of Kyrgios vs. Medvedev, McGregor vs. Nurmagomedov. Who’s performances feel more like the human experience? Who is the better?)
Cantlay is a slow, emotionless player. He rarely makes mistakes. This past season, he ranked highly in every single strokes gained category but did not win any events. The problem is that Cantlay rarely has any highlights. Cantlay enjoys consistent success in the form of high finishes and large paychecks. He does not enjoy success in terms of winning frequently or gaining support from fans.
Coming off a strong finish at the Masters in April, Cantlay was striping it again the next week at the RBC Heritage. Despite strong results, fans seemed to be rooting against the monotonous Californian. On Sunday, Cantlay’s ball found itself in quite a peculiar spot, resting on a bulkhead just inches from a pond. This is the kind of place you might expect one of Spieth’s shots to wind up, not Cantlay’s. Cantlay took forever to execute his eventual high-quality chip shot. To me, watching this was like watching a robot malfunction. This was a spot he had never been in before and the added variables took him completely out of his comfort zone. He couldn’t adapt quickly. Cantlay has no burstiness.
If you put a gun to my head, started a 5 second timer and told me to blurt out a Patrick Cantlay highlight, I think I would be dead. There really aren’t any. But he’s been one of the best players on tour for years. In terms of on-course results, even if he doesn’t achieve the peaks of winning, he cranks out top tens better than almost anyone. There is success to be had playing without burstiness.
Phil Mickelson
Many golfers have exhibited burstiness over the years, but none more so than Phil Mickelson. Phil has all enthralled fans throughout his career. Phil was the epitome of excitement and volatility on the golf course plus he also won six majors. There is no player with more burstiness and more skill than Phil. Any other player can only be better than Phil in one of those two categories. The economic theory of Pareto efficiency explains why Phil has so much appeal. Here’s a 538 article explaining the concept:
Pareto optimality is helpful for thinking about how to get the most value in a situation that requires trade-offs. For example, if you’re buying a car and you want to maximize size and speed, you could start by ruling out any car that is both smaller and slower than at least one other car. The remaining cars would be maximized for size, maximized for speed, or have a balance of the two qualities, where the cars couldn’t get any bigger without also getting slower, or couldn’t get any faster without also getting smaller. When you can’t gain in one quality without sacrificing another, that’s called the Pareto frontier.
If we modify the variables to be overall skill and amount of burstiness in one’s playstyle, then it becomes clear Phil Mickelson was Pareto efficient.
Fans are attracted to those on Pareto frontier and players on the Pareto frontier cna have different combinations of skill and burstiness to become fan favorites. Tiger Woods was obviously Pareto efficient because he had the most skill, but he also displayed decent amounts of burstiness, just think of his most famous highlights. Phil and Tiger fall on different parts of the spectrum. Phil has more burstiness than Tiger, but less skill. Phil and Spieth would be located similarly on the Pareto frontier for their respective eras.
In the current era without Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm is in the conversation for the most skilled player. He’s insanely good at golf. However, his playstyle is not particularly exciting. If you think of some of Rahm’s big victories from this past season such as the Masters or the Genesis Open, there were no real exciting shots. These victories were captured through 72 holes of high-level execution and poise. This sounds quite similar to my description of Patrick Cantlay, however Rahm has gained fans because of his slightly better skill and ability to actually win. Fans enjoy watching someone who dominates regardless of how they do it. Rahm is Pareto efficient. Cantlay is not pareto efficient because he has less skill than Jon Rahm without any more burstiness. Cantlay is a grey dot on the visual. Phil, Tiger, Spieth and Rahm are all red dots.
Of course, there are many more factors involved in fandom than just these two components. Max Homa has attracted many fans due to his candid social media presence and decent skill. And there are also other off-course reasons to root for (or against) any player, most notably Tiger and Phil. However, skill level and burstiness remain the two most important.
Sahith Theegala
Based on this framework, Sahith Theegala will become beloved among casual fans off the PGA Tour once he wins once (or maybe twice). Sahith’s game is full of burstiness. As PGA TOUR rookie, Theegala was hanging tough with some big names at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open despite spraying his ball into the desert off the tee quite frequently. His ball got an awful bounce on the 71st hole to eliminate the possibility of him pulling off a miracle win. Still, he was punching above his weight and continually pulling off great recovery shots. Theegala has the kind of exciting sporadic play to quickly attract lots of admirers if he can start winning regularly.
If you listen to the No Laying Up podcast, you may have heard them mention that while they are often pulling for Sahith, it is quite stressful to watch him play 72 holes. How similar does that sound to Jordan Spieth? In fact, on an episode earlier this Summer, Tron speaks about Sahith and says, “I’m starting to feel like Sahith is mini-Spieth“ (51:55). Though Tron is lacking the precision with his words to describe why the two are similar, it’s certainly due to the comparable levels of burstiness in their play.
Having burstiness plus winning tournaments is a surefire formula for gaining passionate supporters because it puts a player on or near the Pareto frontier. I believe the missing piece of that equation for Sahith, winning, should come quickly. Don’t be surprised to see him lift a trophy soon and suddenly many more people pulling strongly for him.
This past season the following players all won: Taylor Moore, Davis Riley, Nick Hardy and Kurt Kitiyama. But there won’t be massive crowds pulling for any of these guys anytime soon and the PGA TOUR won’t spam you with content about these first-time winners either. These players lack burstiness. The opposite will be true for Sahith. Sahith embodies burstiness and has a high ceiling in terms of skill. He just needs to secure that first W.
As of today 2023-09-17, Sahith is taking a two stroke lead into the final round of the Fortinet Championship. Hopefully, he can get the job done and this burstiness thesis can be put to the test.
Thanks for reading.