Your Stage 4 capstone project is an original contribution to golf history — not a summary of what others have found, but an argument of your own, grounded in original research and engagement with existing scholarship.

A strong capstone begins with a genuine research question — something you actually want to know the answer to, that requires real research to answer, and that has not been answered definitively by existing work. This is harder than it sounds. Good research questions are the product of deep familiarity with existing knowledge.

Your research design should specify: what sources you will use (primary and secondary), what analytical methods you will apply, what the scope of your argument will be, and what you expect — at this early stage — your argument might look like. Your initial thesis is a hypothesis, not a commitment.

The strongest capstone projects at Stage 4 combine original primary source research (finding and analyzing documents, data, or artifacts that have not been analyzed in exactly this way before) with original argument (making claims that go beyond summarizing what others have said).