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BMW Champ. Review & TOUR Champ. Preview | Stats, Trends & More!

Aug 22, 2023

The final event of the 2023 season is here, but don’t fret — the next event is only two weeks away! Seriously though, I’ll be spending those two weeks making some major upgrades to the database and visualizations on RickRunGood.com. I already have a plan in place but if you have any suggestions, questions or comments, now is the time! Hit the reply button and slid into my inbox.

Chat soon.
Rick

PS — There are over 15,000 (!!) nerdy golf people who read this newsletter. You can join them by subscribing below.

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup 🚗

🃏 Viktory Will Be His

Big time hat-tip to Viktor Hovland who earned his 5th career TOUR victory last week. He did it in impressive fashion, shooting a 28 on his Sunday back nine which gained him about 6.5 shots on the field alone.

Hovland’s 2023 might have been overshadowed by Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy but he’s been nothing short of amazing.

6th best Strokes Gained (+1.57)
5th best off-the-tee (+0.73)
9th best approach (+0.67)
Neutral around-the-green (-0.05), best of his career
54th in putting (+0.18)

This is all fine and dandy but the one thing that should make Hovland supporters very excited is how well he plays on difficult golf courses. Here are the best players of 2023 on courses where scoring conditions are the hardest.

Look at those names! There’s a lot of Major Championships within that list and it appears like Viktor’s Major is coming soon.

🥈 The Weekly Scottie Scheffler Section

I’m running out of ways to show how insane (historic, impossible) Scottie’s season has been. But let me try!

At this point, you’ve probably seen that Scottie is lapping the field and then some in his outrageous tee-to-green play. He’s gained as many strokes from tee-to-green as Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele and Eric Cole combined. More than Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Sungjae Im combined. More than Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm combined.

Since 2008, Scottie Scheffler owns the two best tee-to-green years of anyone in the world. They are this year and last year.

While 2023 will feel a bit underwhelming in wins…

let’s zoom out and look at the best T2G players since January 1, 2022.

Scheffler’s four wins in six starts was viewed as a heater in play, but really it was a heater in win luck — which has since regressed. We should really be turning our attention to Sungjae Im and Collin Morikawa who have gained the 8th and 9th most strokes from tee-to-green but haven’t won during that stretch. Expect these two to breakthrough in the near future.

🏈 Stay In Your Lane!

A few times a year, I exit the safe comfy lane of golf analytics and try my hand at solving a different type of math problem. This has been successful for March Madness and now I’m geared up to solve NFL Survivor Pools.

I created a video with optimal strategy, considerations, tools to use and busted a few myths along the way.

If you want to join an online NFL Survivor, I’ve got two options available ($15 and $100). You can join them below.
Join: https://bit.ly/44KbAUB

❓ Trivia!

The FedEx Cup has existed since 2007 and has seen a few different ways of keeping scoring and distributing points/strokes. During this 16 year history there have only been three instances of a golfer A) ranking 1st in regular season points and B) winning the FedEx Cup.

I’ll tell you that Tiger was two of them (2007, 2009).

Name the other instance.
(Answer at bottom of this post)

🗺️ Don’t Miss It Here!

The 18th at East Lake is an exciting closing hole because it’s a gettable par-5. However, to fully take advantage, golfers need to avoid hitting it the right rough. Not only will the ball fail to runout but it’ll be in thick grass that will bring in doubt about carrying the water and taking on the green.

Statistically, golfers who drive it in the right rough are 0.382 strokes worse than the scoring average. That’s a 0.501 stroke difference between the right rough and the fairway, making it one of the most penal misses on the course.

Throw in the size of the moment, the pressure and that right miss could be rather costly.

💃 It’s Rory’s Course … For Now.

In the words of my buddy Mark Immelman, “Rory McIlroy could roll out of bed and finish inside the top 10 at East Lake.” He’s not wrong!

Rory has gained 1.44 strokes per round in 36 rounds, the best record of anyone with as many rounds as him. However — Xander Schauffele is sneaking up behind. Xander has gained a staggering 1.81 strokes per round in 24 rounds at East Lake.

That puts Xander firmly in the “Rory at Firestone” or “Rickie at Quail Hollow” category. It’s some of the best history for any player at any course with that many rounds. Here’s the full list of East Lake history for this week:

🤓 The Real Nerdy Stuff

There are four guys with a chance to win the FedEx Cup. There are two more with an “if everything goes right” chance. That’s it. No more, no less — and I can basically prove it.

Using each golfers last x rounds, we can look at a standard distribution and see the likelihood of them making up stroke deficits and taking over the top spot. For our purposes, I’ll use the last 36 rounds.

If every golfer in the field played exactly to their 36 hole average, the top three would be Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland. (Rory jumping Viktor)

Jon Rahm, who starts four shots back, would need to have a 70th percentile performance (+14.39 strokes gained) AND have Rory, Scottie, and Viktor play to their average or worse to win. Rahm is capable of doing that, he’s gained 14+ twice in last ten with a few other close calls.

Let’s see some extreme examples like Jordan Spieth. Starting at even-par, Spieth has just as much of a chance of winning the FedEx Cup as I do. Spieth would need a 94th percentile performance (+20.68 SG) AND every other golfer in the field playing to their average or below.

For perspective, there are zero instances of a golfer on TOUR gaining 20+ strokes in a single event this season.

I’ve built a matrix in Excel to mess around with the potential outcomes and no matter how you slice it the winner of the FedEx Cup will be Scottie, Viktor, Rory or Jon — with an outside chance for Glover or Cantlay.

Here’s one random sim I ran:

The way to read this —
Scottie Scheffler had a slightly better than average week (54th percentile) and beat McIlroy and Rahm who both had above average weeks. Brian Harman had an awesome week and moved up to 4th.

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Trivia Answer:
Jordan Spieth (2015)