Ignorant question, but how does one scrape the data from every schools website?
Also, if you would be so generous, would you explain the difference between the 1st graph and the last graph? 1st graph says in recent years 70-75% of freshman are US born. Last graph says in recent years only 58% of golfers are US born. How is that possible?
1) I see that I've had an error in the graph that estimated the International and U.S. Born players. I've updating the article to just include the correct table estimating the number of players. The correct numbers (with this logic) in 2023, for example, is 2,089 U.S. Born players and 800 International born players. That is an International share of 27.7% - much more in line with the incoming freshman-share from earlier in the article.
The reason they don't perfectly match up is that early graphs are filtered for just freshmen. The NCAA-number logic is applied to the entire dataset (all classifications).
Anyways, thank you for pointing this out - and I hope this explanation makes sense!
2) Not ignorant at all.
I wrote a script that's been going through all available roster-pages online. It finds previous years as the roster-pages have different urls.
My script has gone through all available rosters from the teams' pages going back to the 2005-06 season. From there, I've cleaned and organized the data into databases and will use other aspects and patterns form this dataset in upcoming pieces.
Thanks for reading and again, thank you for highlighting my error in the graph!
Ignorant question, but how does one scrape the data from every schools website?
Also, if you would be so generous, would you explain the difference between the 1st graph and the last graph? 1st graph says in recent years 70-75% of freshman are US born. Last graph says in recent years only 58% of golfers are US born. How is that possible?
Hi Anthony!
1) I see that I've had an error in the graph that estimated the International and U.S. Born players. I've updating the article to just include the correct table estimating the number of players. The correct numbers (with this logic) in 2023, for example, is 2,089 U.S. Born players and 800 International born players. That is an International share of 27.7% - much more in line with the incoming freshman-share from earlier in the article.
The reason they don't perfectly match up is that early graphs are filtered for just freshmen. The NCAA-number logic is applied to the entire dataset (all classifications).
Anyways, thank you for pointing this out - and I hope this explanation makes sense!
2) Not ignorant at all.
I wrote a script that's been going through all available roster-pages online. It finds previous years as the roster-pages have different urls.
For example, here's the url for the Texas Tech roster last season: https://texastech.com/sports/mens-golf/roster/2024-25
The roster page for the year prior is:
https://texastech.com/sports/mens-golf/roster/2023-24
My script has gone through all available rosters from the teams' pages going back to the 2005-06 season. From there, I've cleaned and organized the data into databases and will use other aspects and patterns form this dataset in upcoming pieces.
Thanks for reading and again, thank you for highlighting my error in the graph!
Great piece Mikkel. Stories like this make your Substack an essential read for those interested in college golf
Thank you so much, Dan! More coming.