The German’s spokeswoman Sabine Kehm feels it is highly unlikely while Mercedes said at the weekend that “some speculations are nothing but dreams which will not come true” (although note the carmaker did not specifically say this particular piece of speculation was one of them).

Team principal Ross Brawn, who is currently on holiday, has been quoted by Germany’s Bild newspaper as saying that “the media are trying to put together a dream. Michael would have returned to the cockpit for Ferrari, but only temporarily. He has no ambitions to start a new career.”

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone told the BBC on Sunday that he was “very doubtful” about any such comeback, however appealing it might be.

On the other hand, Kehm told Britain’s Times newspaper on Monday that “I can see a lot of tempting things in it for Michael, but I can also see a lot of non-tempting things. I don’t know.

“It is as it was in August when you couldn’t tell what was going to happen. Then I was convinced Michael would never come back and suddenly all the circumstances were right for him,” she added, referring to the champion’s abortive attempt to return as a stand-in for injured Brazilian Felipe Massa at Ferrari.

A Schumacher comeback has a lot of media appeal — witness all the stories — and not least because McLaren will have two British world champions next season in Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton.

That would revive the old Britain v Germany rivalry on a team level as well as a personal one.

Mercedes motorsport vice-president Norbert Haug and the team’s chief executive Nick Fry both had chances to put the record straight about Schumacher in a conference call with reporters to announce Nico Rosberg’s signing on Monday and they ducked them.

One had to feel sorry for Rosberg, appearing for the first time as a Mercedes driver only for the opening question to be about Schumacher.

In fact, Haug actually stoked the speculation by suggesting that the second driver would be a very good news story for Formula One, just like the Mercedes takeover of Brawn and Rosberg’s signing.

It is hard to see how Nick Heidfeld or Adrian Sutil would fit that billing, even if they are also Germans.

The Brawn management response in itself rings alarm bells, although there could be any number of explanations.

One might be that Mercedes and Brawn, piqued by Button’s defection to McLaren last week, want to regain the media spotlight and such speculation does the trick.

Another could be that as soon as one driver is ruled out, the media bandwagon moves on and targets another. And it is always good for a team to show they have options to keep a lid on salary demands.

Or could it be, perhaps, that Schumi — who incidentally has a three-year consultancy agreement with Ferrari — really is a target? Time alone will tell.

PHOTO: Former Ferrari Formula One driver Michael Schumacher of Germany attends a news conference in Beijing, Nov. 3, 2009. REUTERS/Jason Lee

They have good reason. Before David Haye upset the Russian giant Nikolai Valuev in Germany, only three Britons had held a generally recognised world title.

The first was Bob Fitzsimmons in the 19th century, the second was the over-rated Frank Bruno and the third the under-rated Lennox Lewis.

Lewis’s refusal to do any more than he needed to ensure victory irked the American boxing fraternity who like more flash and action from their fighters. However, the former Olympic champion eventually won their reluctant respect by defeating Evander Holyfield and demolishing a burnt-out Mike Tyson. He then demonstrated impeccable timing outside the ring as well as in by retiring in 2003 with his brains unscrambled and his fortune intact.

Among the heavyweights, only Americans Gene Tunney and Rocky Marciano had previously retired while still world champion.

Now there is Haye, who has unexpectedly thrown open the division at just the right time for the United States where the sport is in danger of dying from boredom.

Before Saturday night, the four main heavyweight belts were held by Valuev and the Klitschko brothers from Ukraine. Neither WBC champion Vitali or younger brother Vladimir are as tedious as Valuev but neither do they hold a licence to thrill.

One world champion from the old eastern bloc would just about have been tolerated in the United States. Three is two too many.

Agents by the very nature of their trade must be treated with caution but Haye’s U.S. promoter Richard Schaefer could be excused his ebullient mood after Haye had triumphed in Nuremberg.

Schaefer predicted Haye could earn $120 million by fighting one of the Klitschko brothers in the United States, provided he survives his mandatory WBA title defence against American John Ruiz.

“This is the kind of event which is not a boxing event, it’s a global event,” said Schaefer. “If he comes and fights in the United States against one of the Klitschkos, I have no doubt that the total global receipts could be close to $120 million for one fight.

“David’s win was perfectly executed. Valuev is an amazing attraction but Haye is the start of a new generation. We have been waiting for somebody like him, with talent and charisma, to enter the heavyweight division.”

The sight of Valuev’s co-promoter Don King at ringside in Nuremburg, an anticipatory grin firmly in place as Haye celebrated, showed the wiliest operator in the sport realised the Briton’s box office potential. King, who switched his allegiance effortlessly from Joe Frazier to George Foreman after the latter had made no contest of their 1973 fight in Jamaica, said Haye “had put on a brilliant performance and executed it perfectly”.

“The Americans will embrace David because of his skills inside the ring but equally important are his skills outside the ring,” Schaefer said. “He is charismatic, he is good-looking, he is well-spoken. He knows how to entertain and that is what we were looking for, not just in the U.S. but around the world.

“The world has been waiting for a heavyweight champion who cannot just fight but who is charismatic and here he is and his name is David Haye.”

PHOTO: Britain’s David Haye, the new WBA heavyweight boxing world champion, speaks during a news conference in London November 9, 2009. REUTERS/Andrew Winning

Major League Soccer’s finale, MLS Cup, takes place on Sunday in Seattle and (perhaps surprisingly to some) the game between L.A. Galaxy and Real Salt Lake will be broadcast in over 120 countries.

For the benefit of those fans outside of the States, who might be tuning in to watch David Beckham play for the Galaxy (or perhaps admire the intelligent midfield play of Real’s Clint Mathis?) and aren’t familiar with MLS or it’s final, here are some answers to the kind of questions you might be asking yourself as you sit down on the sofa and get ready for…

Well no, not really a Cup final. Officially the game is known as ‘MLS Cup’ (or Copa MLS in the league’s Spanish language literature) but unlike say every other Cup final in the world, this is not the final game of a knockout Cup competition. No, this is the game which decides the league champions of MLS.

But what about the team who finish top of the league table? Aren’t they the champions?

What league table? There is no single league table in MLS. The 15 team league has two league tables for the two conferences – East and West. The top two teams from each conference alongside four teams with the next best record in the league overall go into a knockout playoff format and this is the final game of that process.

Ah, so it’s like the NFL’s Super Bowl then, or the World Series. MLS Eastern Conference champions v MLS Western Conference champions?

Got it! L.A Galaxy are the Western Conference champions and Real Salt Lake are the Eastern Conference champions.

But, hold on, isn’t Salt Lake City in the West of the United States?

Yes it is and it plays in the Western Conference. But as five of the eight playoff teams were from the West, Real were moved into the Eastern playoffs – which they won. So both teams in this final are from the Western Conference…

Right…erm, moving on…what’s all this ‘Real’ about anyway? Isn’t it a bit silly to copy Real Madrid’s name when the team has nothing to do with the Spanish giants?

To be fair, the alternative name was apparently Salt Lake City Highlanders and the Salt Lake team, who only joined MLS in 2005, have a 10 year co-operation agreement with Real Madrid which is to include a $25 million youth academy in Salt Lake which Real cough up half the costs for, in return for access to the young players.

However, as this article shows, little has been delivered on the agreement.

$25 million academy…there seems to be a lot of money in MLS. Isn’t Beckham getting something like $250 million for his five-year contract?

No he isn’t. Nowhere near that amount. That widely quoted figure was put out by Beckham’s management team when he signed for Galaxy but it includes an estimate of likely revenue in sponsorship. His actual salary is $6.5 million a year, which is not bad either but not at all typical of the league.

In fact there is very little money in MLS for players salaries – Real Salt Lake’s leading scorer Robbie Findley (18 goals in 27 regular season games) this year earned just $72,000. The MLS Players Union kindly provides details of every player’s salary here.

But if Findley keeps scoring like that he will get a big money move to another club won’t he?

Do you really want me to go into salary caps, drafts, roster regulations etc? Let’s just say MLS is very different from the league you are used to in your country. MLS is called a ‘single entity league’ which means that all the player contracts are actually owned by the league not by the clubs.

There isn’t really an internal transfer market. And as for moving abroad – if say, Manchester City wanted to sign Robbie Findley, they would need to do a deal with MLS not just Salt Lake.

But anyway, Americans don’t care about soccer do they? Will most Americans even know this game is taking place?

Come on, get with the program. 40,000 tickets have been sold in Seattle for Sunday’s game. The main newspapers – like the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today and TV channels like CNN and ESPN have been building up to the game.

Remember with cable or satellite you can watch soccer from around the world pretty much non-stop every weekend from any living room in the States. And quite a number of Americans do just that. If you have the good fortune to meet a committed MLS fan be ready for a two hour conversation covering various aspects of the global game over the past 20 years and to be told about their lifelong passion for Scunthorpe United....

Scunthorpe United?

Or some obscure Irish team or a French third division club. Soccer is a sub-culture in the United States, maybe even slightly counter-culture. It is an alternative ‘scene’ and the fans are intensely proud of their involvement in the sport, take their ‘fandom’ very seriously and consume and debate huge amounts of information about the game locally and internationally.

Yet despite all that they aren’t trainspotters – just very passionate and remarkably well-informed. Soccer fans are basically amongst the nicest people you will meet in the U.S. Oh and its not just Americans, don’t forget Canada is part of MLS too – with a team in Toronto and a future team from Vancouver joining in 2011 with Montreal possibly following.

Expansion franchises eh?

Now you’re getting it....

By the way, who is that white guy with the long dreadlocks in midfield for Salt Lake?

That’s Kyle Beckerman. He’s pretty good actually and could well be part of the U.S midfield at the World Cup. Keeps it ticking in midfield, intelligent passer.

Is he a Rasta or what?

A Reuters reporter asked him that this week and Beckerman replied that his haircut does not reflect any religious beliefs. However he did say that if he was religious he would probably be a Rastafarian.

And that Donovan fellah playing upfront for L.A. He doesn’t like Beckham does he?

Nonsense. Landon Donovan may have made some very critical remarks about his team mate in the book “The Beckham Experiment” and made no attempt to hide his antipathy for how the Englishman was behaving at the Galaxy but he and David are best friends now. The other day they spent two thirds of the pre-final press conference expressing their admiration and respect for each other.

What is that Shakespeare line about protesting too much?

Stop being cynical. But if it goes on like this much longer, they’ll be modeling underwear together….

Hold on a minute, aren’t they playing on a plastic pitch?

The surface is called ‘FieldTurf’ and is indeed an artificial grass pitch. It’s very different to the early artificial surfaces (English fans may remember a very bouncy ‘plastic’ pitch at QPR’s Loftus Road) and is used on a number of NFL venues. Qwest Field is home to the Seattle Seahawks as well as the MLS’s Seattle Sounders.

So American players like playing on artificial surfaces then?

No. “All the players prefer grass” said one MLS Cup participant this week.

What happens if the scores are level after 90 minutes?

Extra-time and penalties if needed -- same as anywhere else. The days of the ‘shootout’ with players running with the ball and taking on the keeper are long gone. Shame really, that was pretty good.

So will they be dancing in the streets of Salt Lake or honking their car horns around L.A if their team wins?

OK, MLS Cup is raising its profile but sure, it isn’t the Super Bowl. There will however be several thousand fans from both cities in Seattle to support their team and many more at viewing parties in the pubs back home. The pub has become a central part of the new MLS fan culture as the last few nights in Seattle have proven.

Hmm almost sounds worth going to a game over there, but if I go to America do I really have to call it ‘soccer’?

Well, is it really so bad? Think of the history of that term -- soccer was a phrase first used by the English as a way to shorten the term 'Association Football' used to distinguish the game from Rugby Football. Charles Wreford-Brown is credited with coining the phrase and if it was good enough for a man schooled at Charterhouse it is surely acceptable for former subjects of the crown to use.

And doesn’t it make perfect sense in countries with other kinds of football (Australia or the U.S) to use the phrase soccer?

But anyway if you really have ‘issues’ with the phrase then don’t worry – almost everyone in America knows what the rest of the world means when it talks about football. They won’t think you are talking about the NFL. MLS probably gets it right with its slogan – Football, Futbol, Soccer (video here).

In other words, take your pick.

Ok, let's have your pick then. Galaxy or Real?

I'm not a betting man but the form book shows that Salt Lake lost more games than they won in the regular season and only won twice away from home.  But then again this is a Cup final.....

PHOTO: Kyle Beckerman (R) of the U.S. and Walter Julian Martinez Ramos (L) of Honduras fight for the ball during the first half of their CONCACAF Gold Cup semi-final soccer match in Chicago, Illinois, July 23, 2009. REUTERS/Frank Polich

After the last 2-4 we had a big bounce back week so that’s the game plan again.

I was going to start off by making the Miami Dolphins my Pick of the Week but since that game has been played, well that would be cheating (I think).

Anyway, I get the impression many of you think I would still make the wrong pick - even if the game had been played.

But the Lineman can take a hit and is looking for revenge this week — starting with Pick of the Week.

Record: 31-29. Last week 2-4

Pick of the Week: 5-5

PICK OF THE WEEK

San Diego Chargers (6-3) at Denver Broncos (6-3)

(Line Broncos plus 2 1/2)

Broncos let me down last week and as that ol’Who song goes, “We won’t get fooled again”. The Broncos, once running away with the AFC west after a 6-0 start, have lost three in a row and now must face a surging division rival who smells blood.

The problems are starting to pile up in the Mile High City and Broncos fast start has slowed to a crawl. Denver QB Kyle Orton is on the limp and if he is unable to play the starting assignment goes to Chris Simms, who was 3-of-13 for 13 after taking over against the Redskins last week.

The Chargers meanwhile have found their mojo racking up four straight wins, including back-to-back victories over the Giants and Eagles. San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers is having another strong year, running back LaDainian Tomlinson is shifting into high gear and the Chargers defence is starting to look like it means business.

That means trouble for Denver. Rocky Mountain meltdown continues.

Take the Chargers give up the 2 1/2 points.

Arizona Cardinals (6-3) at St. Louis Rams (1-8)

(Line Cardinals minus 9 1/2)

Cardinals QB Kurt Warner returns to the Big Top where he made his name as the ringmaster of the Greatest Show on Turf taking the Rams to the Super Bowl. But that was nearly a decade ago and now Warner returns to St. Louis calling the shots for another high powered offence. After an uneven start the Cardinals have won five of their last six and are starting to resemble the team that made it to the Super Bowl last year.

Poor Rams fan must be wondering what that have done to anger the NFL schedule Gods as yet another juggernaut rolls into St. Louis. The last three home games the Rams fans have watched the Brett Favre and the Vikings, Peyton Manning and the Colts and Drew Brees and the Saints beat up on their boys and this Sunday welcome the Cardinals, who have been one of the NFL’s hottest road teams this season (4-0).

The Rams have shown some grit in November. They beat the Lions early in the month to notch their only win and then threw a scare into the unbeaten Saints last week, hanging in there before falling 28-23.

The building momentum, however, will not be nearly enough to carry the Rams past the Cardinals who cannot let off the gas with the 49ers still within striking distance of the NFC west crown.

Take the Cardinals give up the 9 1/2.

Washington Redskins (3-6) at Dallas Cowboys (6-3)

(Line Cowboys minus 11 1/2)

Before a Lambeau meltdown last week Dallas was cruising along on a four game win streak and QB Tony Romo was once again the most popular Cowboy since John Wayne. But a loss to the Packers has seen things tighten up in the NFC East and the Cowboys return home this week to take on a rival that is showing signs of life with a win over the Broncos.

OK, the Redskins offence sucks, their play calling is done by a guy who was calling out bingo numbers a month ago and running back Clinton Portis is on the limp. But big rivalries have a way of making games interesting if not close and the Redskins have been tough on the road only once losing by more than 10 points.

Cowboys beat Indians but the Redskins cover.

Take the Redskins and the 11 1/2 points.

Indianapolis Colts (9-0) at Baltimore Ravens (5-4)

(Line pick’em)

This one puzzles me. At one end of the field you the unbeaten Colts and Peyton Manning who has thrown for 20 touchdowns and nearly 3,000 yards.

Manning scared Bill Belichick so badly last Sunday that he made the Patriots coach go for a fourth down gamble deep in his own end rather than put the ball back into the Colts quarterback’s hands. The Pats failed and Manning got the ball anyway and a touchdown giving Indy a big win. Nice trick. And guess what, the Colts also have the NFL’s top ranked defence allowing an average of just 15.8 yards a game.

Ok, I admit, Ray Lewis scares me but quarterback Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco has provided a few frights with his play this season as well. Ravens also come into the game off a short week and an could only manage a 16-0 win over the hapless Browns.

The Colts have won four road games by an average of 21 points and won their last six against the Ravens.

So what gives? Why is this a pick’em?

Odds makers must think this is a trap game and expect a let down from the mighty Colts.

No chance.

Take the Colts, who improve to 10-0.

Seattle Seahawks (3-6) at Minnesota Vikings (8-1)

(Line Vikings minus 10 1/2)

Vikings toyed with the Lions last week then cracked the whip. With every game Minnesota looks more-and-more like a Super Bowl threat while the Seahawks look more-and-more like seagulls. Quarterback Brett Favre and running back Adrian Peterson power a balance offence while Jared Allen has 10 sacks to lead an improving defence.

The banged up Seahawks have been inconsistent. QB Matt Hasselbeck is struggling with a sore shoulder and bruised ribs while running back Julius Jones has bruised lung. Seahawks still believe they have a shot at the playoffs but that slim hope ends this weekend.

Take the Vikings and give up the 10 1/2.

New Orleans Saints (9-0) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1-8)

(Line Saints minus 11 1/2)

The Saints looked like they slipped into cruise control last week doing just enough to beat the lowly Rams. Time for Drew Brees to get the league’s top offense (averaging 36.8 points a game) humming again and will get that opportunity against a Tampa defence that ranks second worst in the league giving up an average of more than 28 points a game.

The Saints defence leads the league in interceptions with 17 returning five four touchdowns but looked shaky against the Rams and must be better. Tampa Bay has shown some determination with rookie QB Josh Freeman at the controls but this is still a team that needs help.

Saints get it rolling again here.

Take the Saints give up the 11 1/2.

PHOTOS: Philip Rivers (TOP) by Mike Blake, Ray Lewis by Brian Snyder.

The 57-year-old former defender, whose name is booed at every match, has never made any effort to make himself popular, but here are 10 reasons (or nearly 10) why football fans may want to reconsider their view:

1. He has never won anything as a coach, a characteristic shared by most soccer fans, which makes him less intimidating than, say, Giovanni Trapattoni.

2. He was a workaholic defender with limited skills in his playing days, with makes a nice change in a country full of retired magicians.

3. He is more successful as a coach than the great Michel Platini, under the guidance of whom France failed to win a single match at Euro 92.

4. He convinced Zinedine Zidane, Lilian Thuram and Claude Makelele to come out of retirement and guide France all the way to the 2006 World Cup final.

5. He made Yoann Gourcuff his playmaker when others doubted he even had a place in the starting line-up.

6. He made sure Loic Remy, Andre-Pierre Gignac and Bafetimbi Gomis became famous outside their regions.

7. He is an incurable romantic, asking his partner to marry him rather than apologising to the fans after France lost a World Cup final largely because of Zidane's infamous headbutt.

8. He is not obsessed with television, being the only Frenchman not to have watched the replay of Wednesday's controversial goal.

9. Most people don't like him, so being a fan of Domenech is more original than liking Nelson Mandela, the Beatles or chocolate ice cream.

10. OK, that's only nine. Anyone care to nominate a 10th?

PHOTO: France team coach Raymond Domenech (C) celebrates their win against Ireland in their World Cup qualifying playoff return leg match at the Stade de France stadium in Saint Denis near Paris November 18, 2009. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

It certainly is the best seat in the house, but sitting close to the boundary of a cricket field does not necessarily ensure you would have a good time watching the match. Cricket is like a religion in India. An unusual game, that goes on all day even through lunch and tea. Naturally then, covering this game in India is like covering it nowhere else in the world.

At least four hours before a match, photographers start out for the stadium, winding through noisy, mile-long lines. The lines of spectators are so long that one wonders if the last man actually gets to see the full match.

Security is often difficult. Parking passes are virtually impossible to get. So there’s little else a photographer can do, but walk along crowded dusty paths carrying heavy equipment. Certainly not a good thing for the faint-hearted!

It was no different at the India-Australia one-day match in Vadodara. The intense bag-checking by the police at several places made getting into the stadium an adventure sport by itself. Undeterred, spectators thronged the stadium well before the game. A glimpse of the players during pre-match practice was all it took to drive them into a tizzy. The cheering in the stadium is so loud that all laws on noise levels seem to be breached. Only the law of the willow prevails.

Photographers too go into a tizz when players appear, albeit for a different reason. When players practice in front of photographers, a straight or cover drive or a throw from a fielder sends us scurrying for cover too. Lenses get hit, laptops take a rap. Recently a photographer got hit on his head by a jet-paced-ball from an Australian cricketer. He  was lucky to come away with only minor injuries.

Such escapades happened at Nagpur too, but here, the photographers protested. Most Indian cricketers comply with photographer requests not to practice in front of them. But some young ones prefer to practice in front of the lenses. After several hits to man and machine, a confrontation ensued between players and shooters, and organizers intervened to prevent fisticuffs.

But it’s not always brotherhood and camaraderie among photographers. On smaller grounds, fights break out over a scarce resource - the right spot. Tempers usually subside when the first ball is bowled and lenses are trained on players. The game rolls on under the beating sun, giving us a taste of the warm nay hot country. Water becomes scarce at some venues, so does food. These are available in the press room,  often a winding walk or climb away, but photographers (especially us with news-agencies) usually don’t have the luxury of time to go there.

Not scarce though, are emotions running high. When the men-in-blue (Indian players) hit a shot, or a visiting player is dismissed, the stadium erupts as possibly the noisiest place in India. Turning a deaf ear to the noise, keeping one eye on the game, and the other on the laptop, is challenging. It’s like a circus, a modern-day gladiatorial game, involving sports-persons and photographers battling heat and thirst, dust and deadlines.

For hours players slug it out with bats and balls and we with our lenses and laptops. Finally the match ends, with a non-stop deafening roar from the crowd after an Indian victory or a deafening silence after the home-team’s defeat.

The departure of fans is no less chaotic than their arrival. Crowds are not enthusiastic to leave till the last player has left the stadium in the team bus, waving to them, that is if any were visible from behind the curtains. Now that’s extracting value for ticket-money!

After the crowds disperse, photographers leave too, clean-bowled by the time we reach our hotels or homes. All that’s left now is to dip into some curry, put our feet up and call it a day. Howzatt! for some curry and cricket?

France ensured the likes of Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema and Thierry Henry will be at the World Cup in South Africa next year after winning through with a goal that has left Irish fans seething.

There was nothing wrong with the finish from William Gallas, but Thierry Henry admitted using his hand to keep the ball in play and commentators and Irish supporters are already talking of "The Hand of God II" and "The Hand of Henry" in reference to Diego Maradona in 1986.

"Yes, there is handball but I am not the referee," Henry told reporters. "I'm in the box, there are two defenders in front of me. The ball bounced off my hand, the referee did not see it and I played on."

Ireland coach Giovanni Trapattoni called the goal a "great mistake" by Swedish referee Martin Hansson but he chose not to accuse Henry of cheating.

"I told the referee that it is possible to make great mistakes," Trapattoni told a new conference after the game at Stade de France. "It is a bitter evening."

Trapattoni said he felt the referee should have talked to his assistants and to Henry before awarding the goal.

"I am sad because the referee had time to ask the linesman and I am sure he should have asked Henry as well," the Italian said.

The result, 1-1 on the night, gave France a 2-1 aggregate win and saw them join Portugal, Greece and Slovenia as the successful sides on the final night of European qualifying.

So Ribery and the rest will join Cristiano Ronaldo and Deco at the finals, after Portugal booked their place with a more convincing performance away to Bosnia.

Joining the list of big name players to miss out are Andriy Shevchenko, after Ukraine were denied by Greece, and Andrei Arshavin, following Russia's elimination against Slovenia.

With Algeria winning through 1-0 against Egypt in Sudan, 31 of the 32 places have been decided, with Uruguay v Costa Rica to decide the one remaining issue.

France wining through against Ireland was by no means a shock but the manner of their victory will be painful to take for a team that played out of their skins in the French capital.

(Post updated with quotes)

However, playing it safe has its own costs in golf and business, Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer, professors of economics and psychology at the Wharton School, said in their paper entitled “Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse? Persistent Bias in the Face of Experience, Competition, and High Stakes.”

The professors studied putts during pro golf tournaments and their research suggested the “agony of a bogey seems to outweigh the thrill of a birdie.” They calculated that type of decision-making bias costs the average golfer about 1 stroke during a 72-hole tournament, translating to a combined loss of about $1.2 million in prize money per year for the top 20 golfers.

“This research provides evidence that people work especially hard in order to avoid losses,” Pope said.

The researchers found that golfers avoid the possibility of loss by playing conservatively when they could do better than par, but will try harder if they are at risk of coming in above par. Pope said “loss aversion” is part of a growing field of behavioral economics, which explores how human psychology impacts markets and business.

In a business context, the professors said par might be equated to quarterly earnings or investors’ approach to selling or holding on to stocks depending on what they initially paid for the shares.

The professors said their work challenges theories that suggest bias in decision making does not persist in markets. They used data from 230 PGA Tour golf tournaments between 2004 and 2009, concentrating on 2.5 million putts attempted by 412 golfers who each made at least 1,000 putts.

Pope, who does not golf, and Schweitzer, who only occasionally plays, said the study shows even experts in a subject suffer from bias in high-stakes settings.

“The bottom line is this,” said Schweitzer, “If Tiger Woods is biased when he plays golf, what hope do the rest of us have?”

(Reuters photo by Mick Tsikas)

Belichick chose to have the Patriots go for a first down late in the fourth quarter with his team deep in its own territory and clinging to a lead on the road. New England failed to convert and the Colts immediately drove for the winning score in its 35-34 victory. And the second guessing began.

However, Greg Mankiw, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and now an economist at Harvard University, said on his blog that sometimes even the optimal strategy fails.

“It did not work out well in this particular case, and Belichick is coming under some heat for his call,” Mankiw said. “This does not mean … Belichick (is) wrong. Some strategies that fail ex post might be optimal ex ante. Randomness is a fact of life, even if Patriots’ fans do not fully appreciate it.”

Belichick defended his decision again on Monday. He should take heart that most people face criticism in their lives, including Mankiw, who in 2004 came under heavy fire for saying outsourcing of U.S. jobs to workers overseas may benefit the U.S. economy.

(Reuters photo by Brent Smith)