2023 Masters Eliminator

Posted on April 3, 2023     Leave a Comment

You will hear (or read) a common refrain from prognosticators this week when addressing who will win the 2023 Masters: There are only XX players who can realistically win this golf tournament. Whatever number is assigned in that phrase will determine how accurate it ultimately is, but there is much truth in the more general reality that this particular major has fewer potential suitors to win a green jacket than the other three majors do to win their respective trophies. (There is a Masters trophy btw, which I feel bad for. No trophy in sports is more overlooked thanks to a fairway-hued coat)

While it would take a separate blog post to highlight why winning a Masters is “easier” for a select fewer number of golfers (field size/strength, history, course fit), let’s hone in on who makes up my XX for 2023, and then get crazy and whittle it down to who will actually get it done, completely subjectively, of course. (I always have a hard time believing what these end up deciding)

A couple of notes of concern for this exercise in 2023:

  • The weather looks awful. A cold front is crashing into Augusta just as the tournament gets going on Thursday, and then it stalls out. It’s going to be breezy. It’s going to be wet. And it could be like that for four days. The only “fluky” winner of the past decade (in terms of form – more on that below) was Hideki Matsuyama in 2021, who went bonkers on the course after rains softened the course into a dartboard. Let’s just say I don’t like what the forecast is doing to predictability, not to mention how closely we may have to pay attention to weather timing on Thursday for those out early versus late.
  • The LIV guys. Are they sharp? Who is actually playing well? As much as this week will be (unfairly) used to measure the talent of both tours against one another, for the simple exercise of picking who might win, how to factor in certain LIV guys (Cam, DJ, Koepka, Joaco) is a really perplexing situation. I will fold in some data below, but I don’t like it. Even Brooks Koepka sounded a bit like he doesn’t know if he is playing well enough, and he just won**.

Okay, so how do we start to identify who the guys are to win this championship? The easiest way to look at it is form. You can’t be playing bad golf arriving at Augusta and win the tournament. Honestly, you can’t even be playing average golf and expect to win that week. Here are the last 10 champions of the Masters and their Strokes Gained: Tee to Green for the calendar year leading into the Masters:

2013, Adam Scott: +2.33
2014, Bubba Watson: +2.06
2015, Jordan Spieth: +1.85
2016, Danny Willett: +2.00
2017, Sergio Garcia: +2.15
2018, Patrick Reed: +1.25
2019, Tiger Woods: +1.83
2020, Dustin Johnson: +2.87
2021, Hideki Matsuyama: +0.89
2022, Scottie Scheffler: +1.70

Again, Hideki winning with the “weakest” form of the last decade gives me some pause this year with the weather forecast, but also remember that the Fall Masters of 2020 was super soft too, and the best player in the world at that time still won the whole thing. If we simply average these numbers together, we get +1.89. If we take the mean of the bottom five, that’s +1.50. That seems like a safe place to start:

Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Cameron Young, Jon Rahm, Jason Day, Tony Finau, Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland

‘But Will, you’ve left some really good names off that list, like Max Homa, or Will Zalatoris!!’ You’re right. There is a robust number of players in the +1.00 – +1.50 SG: T2G category, so let’s combine an adder and a subtractor to the next category: Elite Iron Play. No matter how many times I have tried to talk myself into giving elite drivers any edge here, accuracy off the tee matters little (compared to most weeks in professional golf) and Augusta National is a great second shot golf course. So, let’s bump anybody onto the list who has at least a +0.70 SG: Approach number for the year. The last two champions (Scottie and Hideki) were +1.4-1.5 for the week with irons, so you need to show some iron form coming in, and this gets us to a longer sustained trend that is halfway to that weekly peak needed to win. Conversely, let’s take off anybody from the list who is below +0.5 (Oh wait, that’s nobody):

Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Cameron Young, Jon Rahm, Jason Day, Tony Finau, Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, Tom Hoge, Max Homa, Xander Schauffele, Tiger Woods (I know, I know, it was one tournament), Jordan Spieth (yes, I did this to get Spieth on the list), Corey Conners, Tyrrell Hatton

So that is 17 golfers, and we haven’t even scrubbed the list to add LIV guys. This is where it gets really sketchy in terms of data and expectations. With only 3 LIV events this year and no real dominant individual results, how do we roll those guys in? I do believe there will be a fractional dip in performance due to a lack of quality, competitive reps. According to Data Golf’s metrics, 10 guys have a positive SG: Total this season, with Mito Pereira the best performer and Talor Gooch and Abraham Ancer the only other players in a +1.00 or higher category (a shot better, per round, than average). I’ll begrudgingly put them in, and also include Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka because of eye-test and pedigree. This is the largest the list will be, 22. (Nope, there is no Cameron Smith. He hasn’t been good on LIV. Maybe he finally cares this week, but I can’t trust it) My conservative XX is 22:

Scheffler, Rory, Cantlay, Morikawa, Young, Rahm, Day, Finau, JT, Hovland, Hoge, Homa, Xander, Tiger, Spieth, Conners, Hatton, Mito, Gooch, Ancer, DJ, and Koepka.

Let’s carve out some guys based on warts. If you have a short-game weakness, this course will exploit you. Cameron Young and Justin Thomas are both laboring with the putter (this one stings, because I like Young this week, and am intrigued by the new putter grip, along with Paul Tesori’s eyes now guiding him as a caddie). Tough cuts to make, but made nonetheless. Viktor Hovland still has to chip and pitch. He’s gone until Augusta elects to turn the second cut into fescue. Since I don’t have current SG numbers for LIV guys, Gooch was outside the top 100 in putting last year and Abraham Ancer has had Hovland-like ARG numbers for a couple of years. Bounced. Even with a win last week, Corey Conners was only slightly above average as a putter, as is still losing strokes on the greens in 2023. He’s bound to top 10 here for a 4th straight year, but win? Nah.

Scheffler, Rory, Cantlay, Morikawa, Young, Rahm, Day, Finau, JT, Hovland, Hoge, Homa, Xander, Tiger, Spieth, Conners, Hatton, Mito, Gooch, Ancer, DJ and Koepka.

How about Masters form? That matters. There is a reason why a rookie hasn’t won in my lifetime (sorry, Mito) and veterans play well on this course. If you don’t have multiple top 20 finishes at Augusta (or flashed in your lone start, like Spieth in ’14), you are gone:

Scheffler, Rory, Cantlay, Morikawa, Young, Rahm, Day, Finau, JT, Hovland, Hoge, Homa, Xander, Tiger, Spieth, Conners, Hatton, Mito, Gooch, Ancer, DJ and Koepka.

We waited long enough… Of course Tiger is not winning. Nobody knows the course better than him, but it’s four rounds guys, and 2019 Tiger is not walking through that door. That was a miracle. Now?

Scheffler, Rory, Cantlay, Morikawa, Young, Rahm, Day, Finau, JT, Hovland, Hoge, Homa, Xander, Tiger, Spieth, Conners, Hatton, Mito, Gooch, Ancer, DJ and Koepka.

What about win equity? Of those last 10 Masters winners, all but two (you guessed it, Hideki and Reed) won a tournament in one of their previous 6 starts entering the week. Given how much golf these guys have been playing, that is a really tough ask, but I am running out of gas here:

Scheffler, Rory, Cantlay, Morikawa, Young, Rahm, Day, Finau, JT, Hovland, Hoge, Homa, Xander, Tiger, Spieth, Conners, Hatton, Mito, Gooch, Ancer, DJ and Koepka.

The Fab 4. Kinda surprised Koepka is still here, but winning last weekend showed he had a pulse. And when he has that plus his majors record, you can’t totally discount him. This exercise, however, was always going to boil down to the top 3 players in the world. It had to. Sorry, BK.

Scheffler, Rory, Cantlay, Morikawa, Young, Rahm, Day, Finau, JT, Hovland, Hoge, Homa, Xander, Tiger, Spieth, Conners, Hatton, Mito, Gooch, Ancer, DJ and Koepka.

If the first round of the Masters had teed off on February 6th instead of April 6th, Jon Rahm probably wins by 5. He was out to prove something, or everything, to anyone who would believe he had something to prove. Liquid hot magma type of run. Scorching. Then he left the west coast. Driver was bad in Orlando. Body (and putter for a day) let him down at the Players. Irons didn’t cooperate in Austin. There was always going to be a slight regression to the mean from the torrid pace he was on. This isn’t his major in 2023.

Scheffler, Rory, Cantlay, Morikawa, Young, Rahm, Day, Finau, JT, Hovland, Hoge, Homa, Xander, Tiger, Spieth, Conners, Hatton, Mito, Gooch, Ancer, DJ and Koepka.

There is only one player in the world right now with a +3 strokes gained total in 2023. A player who is three shots better than his average peer. He is peaking heading into Augusta. It’s Scottie Scheffler. It is eerily similar to where he was a year ago, only he is actually a half shot better entering this Masters than the one he won in 2022. The difference? His ballstriking numbers are staggering right now. (+2.41 gained with his tee and approach play). So, it’s Scottie right?!? Nope, I’ll find the wart… His putter is way better than it was to end 2022, but it’s not what it was when he won last year (almost a half shot worse), so there is my nitpick!! I found a loophole to arrive at destiny. To arrive at the storyline.

Scheffler, RORY, Cantlay, Morikawa, Young, Rahm, Day, Finau, JT, Hovland, Hoge, Homa, Xander, Tiger, Spieth, Conners, Hatton, Mito, Gooch, Ancer, DJ and Koepka.

To arrive at the completion of the career Grand Slam. To emphatically slam a PGA Tour flag in the ground outside Butler Cabin and take a step inside that Greg Norman never got to experience. Yes, with the weight of the golf world crashing on his shoulders, he gets it done. RORY MCILROY WINS THE 2023 MASTERS because this eliminator says so. Because a saturated golf course makes his tee game — which he seemed to perfect in Austin — a little more of a weapon. Because the new tee on 13 didn’t Rory-proof the course, it only gave him more of an edge. Because we want it to happen, that’s why.

(Do I believe this? Probably not. Would I put Rory in my top 10 or top 5? Yeah. I like the idea of Morikawa or Cameron Young this week. A LIV guy or two will make noise. I can’t quit Spieth at Augusta. It is really hard to ignore Scheffler, who is the most consistently overlooked number-one player in the history of golf, relative to skill. But humans watch golf, which is played by humans. We didn’t want Tiger to win in 2019 because we thought he was the best. We rooted for him to win because we could finally, slightly, understand him better as a human, and that was cool. Rory winning wouldn’t come close to matching that popularity, but it would be closer to that level than any other storyline I can think of.
Now is not a good time to tell you that Morikawa is putting better than Rory in 2023. So is… Cameron Champ?! BTW, look up Champ’s record at Augusta. Respect.)

Enjoy the golf! Remember, only 22 guys can actually win.

Grace Haskett, November 8, 2006 – March 3, 2023

Posted on March 3, 2023     1 Comment

Grace Alabama Haskett passed away peacefully at home in the loving arms of her family on March 3, 2023 at the age of “almost 17.” (Officially 16 at her passing, Pedigree calculates her age in dog years at 119) A life lived well past its expectancy, it was defined by a never-ending spirt and joy that refused to quit up until the moment her body quit for her. She is survived by her parents, Will and Mandy Haskett, along with her younger siblings (“puppies”), Hudson and Gwen.

Born into the cutest and most rambunctious litter in La Fontaine, Indiana, Grace was the perfect combination of English Cream Retriever Sir Casper of the Morning Valley and champion Golden Retriever Honibun Goldenpaws. Upon meeting her (human) parents for the first time, Grace was with her fellow litter mates when one of her brothers was pushed out of the scrum, left crying in the corner. Grace heard this, left the scrum to comfort her brother and gave him a kiss. The Hasketts immediately knew that she was meant for them. Adopted earlier than planned, she was too young for kibbles when she came home, prompting many in her family to believe that she never actually considered herself a dog, but rather a human. If that was indeed the case, then she lived a “human” life worth emulating.

Grace spent her early years as an only child in Broad Ripple, piling up the miles on the Monon Trail and developing a life-long affinity for mulching sticks. She survived early tussles with neighboring dogs and cats, while also fighting a losing battle of chase with a persnickety groundhog named “Gary.” It was also during this time that Grace began a lifelong love affair with travel. While the trips could often be traumatic, the destinations were always treasured. She spent vacations in Alabama, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee and northern Indiana, oftentimes basking in the beauty of the great outdoors her city life couldn’t match back home. Grace was an avid swimmer, with no body of water too big or too small to satisfy her love of the water. From puddles to oceans, she swam in them all, living out the last four years of her life in the family pool, her personal fountain of youth.

Grace was a proud patron of the Broad Ripple Dog Park, Hunt Club, Kim’s Bed and Biscuits, Puppy Playground and many other dog-centric social clubs and retreats. She loved a lively conversation, fetching without giving, strong tugs, stuffing, squeakers and any member, regardless of color, of the tennis ball family. As she matured, her stature in the Indianapolis community grew, regularly accompanying family members on errands, to the occasional pet-friendly restaurant, parks, picnics and even the broadcasting studios as a trusted companion and uplifting spirit. To know Grace was to know love, and her devotion to all that she met was as plain to see as the wag in her tail.

The word Grace is derived from the Latin word meaning kindness. To love a dog is to understand kindness in its most purest form. Grace was more than just a creature of unconditional love. She knew when you were happy. She knew when you were sad. Like any good Golden, she would lend you her paw or the top of her head at the perfect moment. There is a frequent saying that we ‘don’t deserve dogs.’ We (and Grace) couldn’t disagree more. We need dogs. We need them to lift our spirits, to connect us with nature and the spirit of life, to make us whole, even when our actions or our thirst for individualism split us apart. We needed Grace more than she needed us. She will be missed… forever.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you hug your pet tightly, love unconditionally, and find any and all means to spread kindness to those you encounter on a daily basis. Oh, and take a walk.

The Science of Golf

Posted on December 13, 2022     2 Comments

I wrote a book.

I almost put a question mark at the end of that first sentence. With the likely scatterbrained-ness that is to follow in this post about that endeavor, you may also be questioning that decision as well. Why The Science of Golf? Good question…

If you are skimming the front of my meager website to read this non-marketing pitch to take the plunge and buy this book (which you can do HERE, HERE or even HERE), you might also notice a podcast feed over there —->
The Perfect Number Podcast was a four-year journey of golf discovery for me, a selfish act to give me a controllable outlet of golf talk AND a place to learn from people smarter than me. While I have spent 25+ years broadcasting a multitude of sports, I’m really a golf guy now, and while I’ve played and worked around golf most of my life, I didn’t truly understand all aspects of the game even when I arrived on the PGA Tour a decade ago to call the sport at the highest level.

The Science of Golf is the assembly of that four-year education, plus some more research to fill in the cracks. The book doesn’t aim to derive absolute truths about the sport (although there are experts in it who will stand by their truth). Instead, I wrote this book to inform any fan of the sport about the various elements that shape it, told through the lens of somebody who has seen some of the most remarkable golf played at the highest professional levels.

The chapters, while titled a bit more creatively, aim to cover all(?) of the scientific elements in the sport:

Contact –> Ball Flight
Body Motion
Exercise, Strength and Nutrition
Psychology
Stats & Strategy
Ball Technology
Club Technology
Putting
Agronomy & Weather

Can this book make you a better golfer? I think so, because knowledge is power, but there aren’t swing tips in it. I don’t talk about how to hit your perfect shot. I talk about what happens to make you swing your club and what happens to the ball afterwards. Has writing this book made me a better golfer? Well, yes, yes it did. Again, knowledge is power.

Can this book make you enjoy watching golf more? I hope so, because the best in the world are doing EVERYTHING in this book. Some may focus on elements more than others, but an undercurrent in the anecdotal evidence in this book is to show how golfers on the PGA Tour know more than ever before about the sport they play. While Lee Trevino intuitively knew what his golf ball would do, his successors at the heights of the game know what their balls will do because of science (and confirmed intuition).

Can this book make you understand golf more? I firmly believe so. When I talk, in 2023, about a shot, a player, a tournament or a theme in the world of golf, I know that I am framing that conversation (or debate) from a much more informed perspective than when I got my first national taste of golf broadcasting a dozen years ago. That’s what this book is. It is my accumulation of knowledge about the game. It’s a resource. If you’d like to add it to your golf resource library, I’d appreciate it.

2021 Players Championship Eliminator

Posted on March 9, 2021     Leave a Comment

‘Who is going to win The Players Championship, Will?’ is probably uttered more from folks this week than ‘hey, how’s it going?’ and it comes with the territory, but man is it a hard question to answer. Why? Because it’s the one major elite golf tournament, in my opinion, where the entire field – or at least the largest percentage – has a chance to win.

TPC Sawgrass is not a bombers course, but being long always helps. It rewards great iron shots, but not in a way that eliminates guys susceptible to shaky ballstriking. Tiger doesn’t own the place, and Fred Funk + Tim Clark have as many Players as the GOAT. But, you want an answer to that question, so let’s break it down by looking at the last 10 years of winners, and how they were playing leading into Sawgrass (previous month worth of play + SG: Total)…

2019 – Rory [T4, 2, T6 – +3.07]
2018 – Webb [T5, T21 – +1.88]
2017 – Si-Woo Kim [T22 – +1.33]
2016 – Day [T23, T5 – +2.37]
2015 – Fowler [T12, MC – +1.13]
2014 – Kaymer [T31, T23, T18 – +1.34]
2013 – Tiger [T4 – +3.05] – Also won previous two starts
2012 – Kuchar [T44, T13 – +1.34]
2011 – Choi [T3 – +3.73]

Over the last decade the recency SG: Total (**This is true strokes gained by @DataGolf) average of those winners is +2.03, with nobody lower than +1.03.

That latter number eliminates big names like Fleetwood, DJ and Sergio (a course history stud). If we take the top number and only focus on the guys north of +2 (That means two shots better than field average per round) over the last month, here is our list to start with…

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

So that is a list of 18 guys to work with, and if we go back to that decades-worth of information on past winners, we see that Rickie Fowler was the only one to miss a cut in that month leading in. 16/17 cuts made. Does that mean you can’t win if you have a MC? Of course not, but we have to start somewhere (this also eliminates my sleeper pick of Billy Ho)…

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

We know that experience matters here, and to steal the research from Ben Coley this past weekend:

Good case that experience is even more important at Sawgrass than it is at Augusta.

Start on which champion won (recent first):

10th
9th
2nd
6th
6th
6th
15th (Woods, had won 5th too)
8th
10th
8th
4th
9th
14th
8th
15th

1/15 (Si Woo Kim) had three or fewer previous starts.— Ben Coley (@BenColeyGolf) March 6, 2021

So… Winners of The Players have at least 8-10 competitive rounds at TPC Sawgrass prior to that win

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

Down to 10, and this is where we have to really stretch ourselves subjectively to figure out where we are going to lean. Sadly, I already have my “pick” for the week on this list, so now I am operating from a place of total bias, admittedly.
I believe complete driving of the golf ball is a massive edge at Sawgrass – the ability to work tee shots and keep them in play, avoiding foul balls – and if you look at the YTD and recent SG: Off The Tee numbers of the 10 remaining, I can wipe a few out.

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

Sorry, Spieth Legion, but I don’t like the fit this week. I also took Casey off the list, as he’s a 0.0 OTT guy right now, and almost a half shot worse OTT than his career arc of the last couple of years.

What’s next? How about the dreaded injury bug?

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

Admit it, you were kinda wondering how Louis was on this list in the first place, plus his course history isn’t great, so… OH YEAH, course history!! Let’s remove everybody remaining on the list whose SG: Total at TPC Sawgrass is lower than their career average. (Again, thanks to my guys @DataGolf)

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

Down to 4, and before you question the removal of Webb, if it weren’t for his runaway win here, we’d be wondering why his record was so spotty.
Time to pick some nits, because we’ve taken a bloated field down to four guys we expect to win, but I promised to answer the question (it’s Cantlay, Patrick – Yes, I know I cheated a bit on minimum rounds to keep him alive. Shhh!!)

Chris Kirk’s name keeps popping up, and I know he won on the KFT last year, but to break through with a PGA Tour win here is, well, unlikely.

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

The weather looks perfect this week, so the course will be fast, but it should also allow for a low round on Sunday to win it. You need to be a closer. Not somebody who is 194th on the PGA Tour this season in final round scoring.

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

So it’s down to two guys who went down the stretch at Pebble, and we know who is going to win (Cantlay), so… Daniel Berger is 187th this season in SG: Around the Green. Boom!! Consider yourself cherry picked, DB!!

Oosthuizen, Simpson, Finau, Cam Smith, Scheffler, Morikawa, Homa, Casey, Spieth, Berger, Fitzpatrick, Cantlay, Hovland, DeChambeau, Conners, Horschel, Kokrak, Kirk

PATRICK CANTLAY WILL WIN THE 2021 PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

(Please avoid the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet)

Stuck at Home Content

Posted on August 14, 2020     Leave a Comment

The kids started “school” this week, virtually, and will eventually have full-time help at home (aka, not me) before eventually getting back into a classroom. After five months of being stuck together, I am really going to miss inventing ways for the kids to be a part of my #content.

I also needed to have a place where I could come back and watch these. I don’t know if I posted them for sanity, therapy, entertainment or to leverage my children to advance my career, but I can’t wait to revisit these with them in 10 years, not to mention all of the fun #MathMondays they were a part of. (This was a favorite too)

 

 

 

Fi-now

Posted on July 22, 2020     Leave a Comment

Having a front row seat to Jon Rahm’s impressive win at Memorial, it was hard not to pay attention to the new world number one putting together a major-like performance all week. It was impressive for its consistency and for showing how all-around talented Rahm is at such a young age. It’s worthy of praise and lots of discussion, but it may have overshadowed two things I witnessed this past week.

One, which I won’t dive too much into, was the fine line of having it and not having it on the PGA Tour, by Ryan Palmer. He went from 77-81 on an easier setup at Muirfield Village the week before (-6.69 Strokes Gained: Total, weighted for field strength*) to a career-best +4.20 SG: Total* and his best iron performance on approach in five years. In the span of five prep days, he became 11 shots better, PER ROUND.

The second thing I witnessed, which I will dive into with numbers in this entry, was Tony Finau embracing his talents and deciding that now, in 2020, is the time to unleash the power. Now, he didn’t do it all the time, and picked his spots, but readily admitted after early-week success at Memorial that the immediate overall gains of Bryson DeChambeau’s distance made him take notice and start being more aggressive.

It’s something many around (and beyond) Finau have been dying waiting to see him try. He fizzled on the weekend, a blur of bogeys and doubles that had more to do with his short game and poor approach play than philosophy off the tee. But, if he and his team analyze the numbers, they will find that the experiment did and will work. Here’s a breakdown…

On 11 occasions this past week, Finau — who averages only +.331 SG: Off the Tee per round this season — gained .3 shots or better per hole with monster tee shots. That’s a big gain, and a big edge to start, and subsequently attack, a hole. One would think, statistically, that it would be hard to continue gaining strokes (in relation to the average score on that hole) from there. For Finau, it was not.

On those 11 holes, his average SG: Total was +.609! He was six-tenths of a shot better than the field on those 11 holes where he was aggressive off the tee. For the week, his strokes gained per hole was +.149. So, his aggressiveness off the tee led to him being almost a half shot better per hole than his baseline for the tournament.

Now, the quick counter to this is ‘Well, Will, of course his gains are better, because he was so good off the tee.’ This would make sense, but look at his numbers the rest of the way in after those tee shots, compared to his averages for the week.

  • SG: Approach on those 11 holes: +.166
    [SG: APP (per hole for the week): +.045]
  • SG: Around the Green on those 11 holes: -.009
    [SG: ARG (per hole for the week): -.030]
  • SG: Putting on those 11 holes: +.118
    [SG: PUTT (per hole for the week): +.088]

Finau was better, statistically, in all areas of his game after having his most aggressively successful moments off the tee. Is it mindset? Maybe. Is it a statistical oddity? Possibly. Is it a factor of 11 holes versus 72 in sample size? Could be.
What it is to me, is short-term validation that Finau should be more aggressive because the scoring metrics show it not only gave him lower scores, but also put him in a position to be better in other areas of his game.

It should also be noted that Finau only lost -.3 shots off the tee four times over the four days at Memorial. Twice was at #14 trying to drive the green and finding the water (he made double laying up there on Sunday, so no tee shot worked for him) and the other two were with hybrid off the tee on #5 and 3-wood off the tee on #17 (where he should’ve been sending it over the left bunker every day)

This does NOT mean that Finau needs to unleash 200 mph ball speed on every swing. The rough at Memorial merited finding fairways, and his failures on/around the greens late in the week highlighted how an all-around game was important. But, many weeks on Tour, Finau will increase his likelihood to win again if he takes on a more aggressive mindset.

Case in point, this week at the 3M Open, where 87% of the field hit the greens last year from 125 yards in, with a 27% birdie percentage from that distance (2nd highest on Tour in 2018-19). Finau should look to capitalize on his length to increase the number of short shots into the green, especially with the rough more manageable than Muirfield Village.

I saw enough from the new Tony Finau to make him my favorite to win this week. It feels like DeChambeau arriving in Detroit a few weeks ago. A golf course waiting to be punished by that length advantage and a strategy that actually improves performance, eliminates mistakes and creates better finishes.

Distance + Age in Golf

Posted on May 4, 2020     2 Comments

In a slow time for thought-provoking statistics in real golf — we have no real golf — I opened up the Twittersphere to any queries that folks might have about the game. Admittedly, this was a terrifying endeavor because I don’t have the bandwidth of many of my peers to dive quickly into the numbers, but here we go. Thanks to Mike Maddalena for the question…

This question, at its core, is more subjectively individual to the golfer in question. For instance, Fred Couples was 24th in distance during his age-49 season on Tour in 2009. We’ve documented what Phil Mickelson is doing as he hits 50 this year. Historical “bombers” find a way to keep hitting bombs, health permitting.

That last comment is important because for every Phil, there is a Hank Kuehne, who led the Tour in distance in 2004 but was ravaged by injuries. There is really no debate that age eventually leads to a drop in distance, and while there are cases of veterans finding power surges (see Francesco Molinari in 2018) to improve performance, Father Time is undefeated and there is generally a dip shortly thereafter (see Francesco Molinari in 2019).

So, to answer this question, I found it easier to look at it through two lenses:

  1. The youth movement of the PGA Tour in the Age of Distance
  2. The commitment to a new philosophy

*This was all sourced from ESPN.com because they have a handy age tool (thank you, Bristol!)

Screen Shot 2020-05-04 at 11.56.04 AM

There should be no surprise that as the group of hitters gets shorter on Tour, the average age of player gets older. What’s most important, to me, is to see how balanced this range has been throughout the entire distance era. Players who hit it 290+ are getting younger on average, but they continue to be below average in terms of age. In fact, in all 5-year increment windows analyzed, that middle tier was between 1 and 2.3 years younger than Tour average.

In 2004, there were 15 players on the PGA Tour who averaged over 300 yards off the tee. That number skyrocketed to 50 last season. However, there were more 40-year-olds (3) who did it in ’04 than last year (2).

While it would be irresponsible of me to make the claim across all of time in golf, it is logical to assume that age has always had an adverse effect on distance in professional golf. This should come as no surprise, but to see it be as gradual and consistent in this era of information shows that it is highly predictable.

Screen Shot 2020-05-04 at 12.02.59 PM

Just noticed the error in the final column – avg. distance in 2004 on the PGA Tour was 287.2

This was the one measurement that gave me something to latch on to. You would expect to see a gradual decline in average distance as players age, but the data showed a rise and/or plateau for players in their age-20’s seasons before sliding once they hit their 30’s. That is, until this past season on the PGA Tour, where the young players produced the spike.

This could simply be a Cameron Champ data bias, but I like to think it is representative of a trend that doesn’t get noticed as much as the distance gains – the youth gains. Technology and forgiveness haven’t solely been responsible for the average age on the PGA Tour dropping by over three years in the past 15 seasons. The preparedness of young golfers is greater than ever. I like to point to the growing strength of the college game as a big reason why, but its also greater training, understanding, data, swing tracking, etc. that has players well ahead of the learning curve that only experience and feel could improve in previous generations.

In 2004, young players were still waiting to hit their physical peak. Today, while a 22-year-old still has years to grow physically, advancements in all areas have shrunk the gap between him and his prime, late-20’s, self.
(I’d invest heavily in Jon Rahm futures if I could)

And to answer the initial question, yes, you could say there is a drop off in distance in age bracket. A player in his 40’s is now 3.6% shorter than a young gun fresh on Tour, whereas that number was 2.8% 15 years ago.

There are also just half the total number of players in their 40’s on Tour now than in 2004. It’s lazy simple to say that distance is the reason for that, when distance has always been a challenge for an aging, veteran player. More likely, the reality is younger players better understand the benefits of length and are built to succeed at an earlier age.

Phil Bombs

Posted on February 10, 2020     1 Comment

Let’s be honest, the last 18-24 months of Phil Mickelson have been the best stretch of his career… for us as consumers. You can have his joyful leap at the 2004 Masters, but I’ll take youth-guiding, Phiresiding, sound bite appetizing, Tweeting, Unapologetic Bombing Phil Mickelson all day at this point. Even as the most sympathetic superstar of the past 25 years, don’t you feel closer than ever to him now?

Cue the distance debate, where Phil dropped different bombs on the discussion about athleticism and issues he has with the governing bodies. While it seems some of the loudest voices in golf media support some level of bifurcation or complete rollback, Phil is Team Hulk Smash. He was quickly blasted by many for his take, but I think much of it had to do with his inability to properly communicate his numbers. So, let me do it for him…

Mickelson has never been a short hitter in his career. In the late 1990’s, before the solid core golf ball accelerated distance, Mickelson annually ranked in the top 10 in driving distance on the PGA Tour. He is tall, he is flexible, and he has incredible hands to deliver a perfect strike. It made sense. He was also in his physical prime, just shy of his 30th birthday.

What has happened more recently – once Phil turned 40 – is his understanding of what it would take to stay relevant in the game. Any golfer should, naturally, decline in speed as he ages – Dustin Johnson lost 2 mph last year over five years ago, although his knee may have something to do with that – but Mickelson has found a way to not just gain speed as he approaches 50, but gain it at a rapid rate.

Phil Speed

The chart above shows Mickelson’s clubhead speed over the past decade. In 2010, he ranked 9th on the PGA Tour at that speed, bottoming out in 2017 at 91st on Tour. “New” Phil has committed to both length as a strategy, and fitness for sustainability to see incredible gains. His speed gain from 2016 to now is right around 4%. The Tour average speed improvement is just under 1% in that same time frame. Phil has quadrupled Tour average in his speed improvement, in his late 40’s!!

So, in many respects, Phil was correct. A commitment to athleticism and speed can have big gains, more than just the control line of technological advances shows. While his delivery could probably use an adjustment, his physical wonder should be championed, especially with some recent positive results. What he is doing at his age is impressive. Case in point…

Phil Speed w DL3

This second chart adds Davis Love III to this equation. DL3 was just as long, if not longer, than Mickelson back in the late 90’s. Love is five years older than Phil, so his decline in speed in the first four years on this chart would be what you would expect Mickelson’s to look like on the final four years of hisI Again, impressive.

Not to drop a bomb on this whole blog and throw all of this evidence under the bus, but there was an interesting (perhaps coincidental) discovery I made when looking this data over…

I was drawn to Phil’s speed in 2015, when he suddenly gained 3 mph and dipped back down the following year. There was no significant equipment change for Mickelson that year. (More on 2015 in a second)

While Mickelson is hitting it farther now, there has been a sharp decline in his iron game over the past year. He posted his worst Strokes Gained: Approach season in the ShotLink era last year on the PGA Tour, just above the 0.0 mark, and has seen his 50-round average (as of the end of Pebble Beach) drop to the lowest of his career, SG: App of -0.18.*

Screen Shot 2020-02-10 at 3.18.11 PM*Courtesy of DataGolf
It marks only the second time since 2004 that Mickelson has seen this 50-round average dip below average/zero. The other time?! Yep, you guessed it, 2015. Could a commitment to trend-defying speed be costing him with the irons? That seems like the more relevant question than whether or not Mickelson’s speed gains are justified or not.

Heat Check

Posted on January 28, 2020     Leave a Comment

In a week where we lost one of the transcendent, great figures in sports, I am reminded of what it meant to shout “Kobe” in anything you did. Pickup games, throwing away a tissue, changing a diaper, it didn’t matter. You shout his name and it was synonymous with clutch. Kobe Bryant was a walking heat check every time he played.

Transitioning to golf, what defines a hot golfer? Simply winning one week is too small of a sample size. We can’t say, for sure, that Marc Leishman is “hot” right now. It’s easy to fall into that trap, but one week does not a trend make in golf. Three months? Six months? Ten starts? Twenty?

This has come to the front of my mind because of how we treat Jon Rahm right now. I listed some of the numbers in the video above:

  • +2.68 SG: Total in 15 starts dating back to the U.S. Open
  • 380-11 head-to-head in his last five worldwide starts

The only publicly recognized method we have for measuring golfers worldwide right now is the Official World Golf Ranking. That’s a two-year, sliding scale based on field strength. In it, Rahm is No. 3 in the world. But what if we picked our own beginning to this? Go back to the U.S. Open last year. If you started the ranking then, provided for the same diminishing value as presently used in the OWGR, this is what the world rankings would look like in that span of time:

  1. Jon Rahm – 20.25 avg. points
  2. Rory McIlroy – 16.95
  3. Justin Thomas – 16.02
  4. Brooks Koepka – 14.06
  5. Tiger Woods – 12.93

Rahm gets a bump up two spots and is the clear Alpha of the sport. There is some moderate shuffling behind, but it gives you a clear view of who the “hottest” player in the game is.

Of course, this exercise has bias flaws in it. Why settle on the U.S. Open? Go back one week earlier, and Rory’s win in Canada significantly closes the gap to first. Add 3 more weeks in and Koepka’s PGA win, not to mention a solid run from Patrick Cantlay dramatically shifts the list above.

The point isn’t to be “right” about who is deserving of Number One, it’s to lend perspective to the current state of talent we are watching in the game. If you had to ask me who the best player in golf is right now – January 28, 2020 – it is Jon Rahm, and I won’t hesitate.

The Koepka Conundrum

Posted on January 21, 2020     Leave a Comment

One of the nuggets I tackled this week is something I continue to come back to when it comes to my golf geekdom… Brooks Koepka.

The Number One player in the world has arrived there because of how he plays in majors, and that’s about it. Yes, he won a WGC event last year. But his ratio of major wins to regular wins is far closer to Angel Cabrera than Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson or most players who have the consistency to be considered the top players of the game.

This is not a knock on Brooks. Please don’t add this to the pyre of slights he uses to fuel motivation. It is a psychological exercise in motivation. That somebody is able to channel world-class ability on the largest, most pressure-packed stages is beyond fascinating. It thens opens up only two possible solutions to the query:

  • Brooks Koepka’s ability to win majors is a fluke
  • Brooks Koepka isn’t motivated in non-major events

I explored those numbers a bit on #MathMondays above, but here is the full breakdown…

Since his win at the 2017 U.S. Open, Brooks Koepka has played 10 major championships, and this is his record: 1, T6, T13, 1, T39, 1, T2, 1, 2, T4

Win % = 40%
Top 2% = 60%
Top 10% = 80%
SG: Total = +2.957 

If you were to take that final number over the course of a season, only Tiger Woods has ever had a +3.000 or greater year. Koepka is nearly there – in a decent sample size – in majors alone. Now, the other side of the Brooks’ coin:

All Other Tournaments Since the 2017 U.S. Open (43 in total)

Win % = 7%
Top 2% = 12%
Top 10% = 30%
SG: Total = +0.747

The last number again would have ranked right around 40th on Tour last season, just better than Vaughn Taylor. When it is not a major, Brooks Koepka is Vaughn Taylor.

Koepka is 2.21 strokes better, per round – nearly 9 strokes better in 4 rounds – in majors.

For comparison’s sake, we look at, arguably, the best season for Tiger Woods in the Shotlink era. In 2006, Tiger won 9 times in 19 starts, including 2 majors.

Win % = 47%
Top 2% = 63%

So, you could say Tiger’s results in 2006 mirror those of Koepka in majors over the last 3ish seasons. What was Woods’ SG: Total that year?

SG: Total in majors = +3.18
SG: Total in non-majors = +3.78

Tiger was slightly better than Koepka in terms of strength in majors, but he was BETTER than the field in all other events. This shouldn’t be a surprise. He was the dominant player against the BEST fields in golf, he should be better against weaker fields. This just isn’t the case for Koepka today.

Again, this isn’t a criticism of Koepka. He understands that value, legacy and strength in golf Is measured unfairly by results in major championships. In his defense, he has had injuries that have hurt his numbers in non-major portions of the calendar. He also has said that he wants to use the full schedule in 2020 to show more consistency and validate his spot as the top-ranked player in the world. But, if all of his wins and top finishes come in majors again, he will continue to be one of the most fascinating athletes in all of sports.

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