Moments after Vanderbilt defeated Alabama to reach the final of the 2021 SEC Men's Golf Championship at Sea Island Golf Club in Georgia, Scott Limbaugh served up a seemingly innocuous answer to a question posed in a television interview.
"We liked our matchups a lot," Vanderbilt's head coach told the SEC Network reporter. "Felt good about them."
What sounded like boilerplate post-match platitudes had unusual roots. Beating Alabama, and then hours later beating Arkansas for the SEC title, came down to five student-athletes in one-on-one match play format. They hit shots, made putts and handled pressure. They won it.
Limbaugh's challenge had been to put them in an optimal position to shine. So the golf lifer had turned to a novice to help answer a critical question: Could game theory give the Commodores an advantage in match play lineups?
Vanderbilt's campus is teeming with researchers who are well-equipped to help answer Limbaugh's question, including Eugene Vorobeychik, adjoint associate professor of computer science and computer engineering.
Vorobeychik couldn't help Limbaugh's student-athletes read putts or pick the right clubs. But the computational game theorist knew all about optimal matchups.
