Golfers play worse when grouped with partners from the other side of the political divide. On the PGA Tour, players scored 0.2 strokes better per round when their group was politically homogeneous rather than mixed.
The study is by Tim Sels and Balázs Kovács and was published online in Management Science on October 17, 2025.
A natural experiment on the fairway
Professional golf offers a rare natural experiment: PGA Tour tournaments assign players to their playing groups at random.
Using those assignments, the authors compared how individual golfers scored when the people they played alongside shared or did not share their politics.
The 0.2-stroke advantage of a like-minded group translated into a five-place improvement in rank before the tournament cut, and between $13,000 and $23,400 in additional tournament earnings.
Stronger when the country is divided
The effect grew during periods of high political polarization in society and faded when polarization was low.
The authors propose that politically mixed groups create a more stressful, less psychologically safe environment that erodes focus. Shot-level data back that up: the effect was strongest on drives and putts, moments when players stand close to each other.
They see implications well beyond golf, for any organization managing ideological differences among people who work side by side.
Study Details:
- Title: Political Heterogeneity and Societal Polarization Impair Individual Performance: Evidence from Random Assignment in Professional Golf
- Authors: Tim Sels, Balázs Kovács
- Journal: Management Science
- Publication Date: October 17, 2025
- DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2023.01798