Comparing "golf" over time: New York Times's Chronicle

[Mark Bourgeois]

The Times has created a word and phrase comparison tool that enables one to see the popularity of items (at least via proxy). This is a nice supplement to Google Ngrams: Chronicle provides a bounded or contained set in which the search is run (ie it's just the Times). Thus there should be no errors of timing that sometimes appear in Ngrams, plus the denominator is controlled, so you don't have to worry about things like variances and biases in publication types and volumes (which is a major reason why Ngrams has a smoothing function).

Presented (almost) without comment:


Golf




Golf and stock market




Golf and cars




Golf and Princeton




Golf and tennis




Golf and football




Golf and Tiger Woods -- look closely at this one




Tiger Woods and Bobby Jones




Tiger Woods, Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus

[Ken Moum]

That's really interesting.  Wish I knew what it meant.

[Jim Nugent]

Mark, looks to me like Bobby had a bigger impact on golf mentions than Tiger or Jack did, even if his name didn't come up as much. 

[David_Tepper]

Jim Nugent,

Bobby Jones had a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York City. That never happened for Jack or Tiger.

DT

[Mark Bourgeois]

I, too, am surprised Bobby Jones did not garner a share of total articles comparable to or in excess of Tiger Woods. Possibly the proliferation of lifestyle sections in the NYT began in the 1990s? This said, please note the boom in golf -- well, in golf articles -- preceded Tiger Woods. Look how much of that golf (golf mentions) upward trend occurred before Tiger Woods stories proliferated.

Another interesting comparison is between golf and football. Golf was right there until the 1950s.



Golf, Bobby Jones and Ouimet

[Jim Nugent]

Jim Nugent,

Bobby Jones had a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York City. That never happened for Jack or Tiger.

DT

The NYT was more fixated on golf all through the 1920s, judging by those % figures.  That was true well before Bobby's ticker-tape parade.  My guess is that Bobby was mostly responsible.  The ticker-tape parade was just one more offshoot of the Bobby phenomenon, not a cause of it. 

[Bill_McBride]

I'm surprised there was so much interest in golf during the Great Depression of the 1930's.   There was a sharp decline in the later 1930's but still high in relative terms. 

[David_Tepper]

"The ticker-tape parade was just one more offshoot of the Bobby phenomenon, not a cause of it."

Jim N. -

Agreed. I was just pointing that out as a symbol of Jones' (and golf's) popularity in the 1920's.

It is also worth noting that boxing and horse racing were way more popular in the 1920's than they are now.

Of course professional football and basketball barely existed back then.

DT 

[Peter Pallotta]

Mark - thanks very much, those are interesting and fun to look at, and bring many thoughts to mind.

For example, when in your last post you note how close golf and football were until the 1950s, my first thought - 'yeah, and then Las Vegas -- and the legal gambling/football point spread -- started taking over.'

Thanks again.

Peter

[BCrosby]

Mark -

Fascinating. The frequency of references to golf confirms what I have believed intuitively for a while. Coverage of golf in newspapers in the 1920's was both more frequent and more thorough than any other era I have found. Articles tended to be long, illustrated with drawings of golf courses and gave hole by hole scoring reports for entire fields.

There was also a society page aspect to the coverage. There were lots of column inches given over to the comings and goings of local amateurs, even if they weren't very good players. They tended to be the same men and women who attended local charity balls.  

Peter -

I'd guess that the rise in football mentions in the 1950's is about the rise in the popularity of the NFL.

Bob