Sungjae Im opens at 20-1 this week at Colonial. After playing at Quail Hollow three weeks ago, he traveled to Korea to play a tournament (which he won), then back to New York where he crashed out with a MC at the PGA Championship.
My question: has Data Golf done any studies on the effects this kind of travel has on players? Do they underperform?
Yes they have and yes they underperform. Jet lag is a very real effect on player performance. Just look at Australian PGA (Jet Lag) vs Australian Masters (Not Jet Lagged).
Haven’t looked at it directly, but we do have this blog post / data viz that looks at which nationalities play well in which countries.
I would agree in general that Jet Lag is real and especially when you are talking about APAC countries like AUS and Korea. I don’t think the Europe to US trip is as bad and most of these guys do it often enough. Im plays so often that I think he just needs a few weeks off to recharge the battery!