🏄♂️ It's Maui Or Never
Sentry Tournament of Champions Preview | Stats, Trends & More!
🏄♂️ It’s Maui Or Never
Sentry Tournament of Champions Preview | Stats, Trends & More!
Welcome back! The shortest offseason in all of sports has come and gone, now it’s time to hunker down and enjoy some golf action.
It’s such an honor and a privilege to be able to do this for a living and it wouldn’t be possible without you — it’s that simple. I do my best to advance the industry anyway that I can and to also continually make as many improvements to RickRunGood.com has humanely possible.
One of the updates is the cadence of this email newsletter. Previously, I would send it on Wednesday mornings with a preview of the week ahead. That will still happen and there will be a Monday email that recaps the week prior and give a first look to the week upcoming. Review and checking to see what went right/wrong is an underserviced area of the industry — I hope to fill that gap.
Below, intertwined between stats for this week, you’re going to see updates that I’ve made to the site in the offseason and also some fun and exciting leagues that you can enter. I really hope you enjoy!
Rick
🏋️♂️ Hawaiian JT
Despite winning a major, Justin Thomas probably feels like he left some meat in the bone in 2022. The PGA Championship was his only victory but he certainly didn’t disappoint his fantasy owners. Over the last 100 rounds for everyone in this field, it’s JT who has scored the most fantasy points per round (20.58).
His routinely high finishes along with the 3rd best eagle rate and second best birdie rate is the recipe for fantasy success.
It also helps that he must really love those Hawaiian vibes, playing 13 different events on the islands in his career. He has (3) wins, (4) more Top 10 finishes and sports a 1.68 strokes gained per round rate.
☔Darts From Hoge
Tom Hoge will be making his TOC debut this year, thanks to victory at Pebble Beach last season. If you haven’t noticed yet, Hoge never misses the center of the clubface and finds himself in position for birdie more frequently than his peers.
Opportunities = birdie putts from 15’ or closers
Plus Opportunities = birdie putts from 10’ or closer
These two stats can now be found on RickRunGood.com (Power Rankings) and Hoge headlines over the last 36 rounds. That’s right — he’s gained more opportunities and plus opportunities than everyone in the field over the last 36 rounds.
During that stretch, he’s given himself 6.33 opportunities per round and 4.00 plus opportunities per round.
⛔ Safety vs. Upside
Golf is the perfect example of “there’s a lot of different ways to get it done”.
You could be the best putter in the world but if you’re always putting for bogey, it won’t matter. You could be the best driver of the ball but if you can’t hit a wedge, it also won’t matter. You could be the best in the world on Thursday but if you give it all back on Friday, guess what —- it won’t matter.
Some guys are solid options every single day while others catch lightning in a bottle once every 12 rounds. Let’s look at an example from the new Strokes Gained Distribution tool at RickRunGood.com (Power Rankings, Golfer Profiles).
Aaron Wise gains strokes to the field at a very high rate. He’s gained strokes in 75% of his last 36 rounds, which is the same rate as Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele. However, he hasn’t tapped into that real upside that helps golfers win. He only gains 2+ strokes in 33% of his rounds (Rahm is 52%), only gains 3+ strokes in 16% of rounds (Rahm is 47%) and only gains 5+ strokes in 2.78% of his rounds (Rahm is 14%).
Wise’s 5+ SG upside is the same as Billy Horschel, Chez Reavie, Scott Stallings and Sepp Straka. That’s a far drop from the Rahm and Xander comps above.
The bizarro Aaron Wise is Sahith Theegala. He’s not very likely to gain strokes (only 58% of the time) but when he does, he really does — gaining 5+ in 11.11% of rounds.
Theegala’s floor is similar to JJ Spaun but his upside is similar to Patrick Cantlay.
🏆 Last Spots Remain: One & Done
It’s a new year, so there’s a new One & Done league — and this one is massive!
For the first time ever, there’s a guaranteed prize pool and it checks in at $100,000. Because it’s guaranteed, the number of entries cannot be changed. We are already over halfway full and that won’t last very long! Sign up now!
Pick One Golfer Per Week (very low effort)
$100 Single Entry (level playing field)
$15,000 to first, flat payouts — 165 paid spots out of 1,100 (15%).
Custom Championship Belt to Winner
Live Scoring
Text Reminders To Enter Picks
Lots of fun!
🃏 Debutant Wildcards
There are two golfers making their TOC debut who have the upside to actually win it. I’m referring to Tom Kim and Matt Fitzpatrick.
They rank #1 (Kim) and #2 (Fitzpatrick) in SG PUTT on Bermudagrass since 2020. Obviously Kim has a much smaller sample size, only 18 measured rounds, but that doesn’t change the results.
Fitzpatrick has barely taken a week off, playing seven (!!) times after the TOUR Championship. Four of those finishes were T13 or better — highlighted by a runner-up in Italy and a 5th place finish in Dubai.
Kim backed up his first win (Wyndham) with a second victory in Vegas just three starts later. He played the three no-cut premier events (Hero, ZOZO, CJ) after that and gained a total of 10.7 strokes to the field in the process.
🍀 Breakout Star in 2023?
I’m starting to lean more on fantasy percentile — essentially where did each golfer rank in fantasy points for the field that he was in. It removes the problems of having a birdie-fest vs. the US Open and removes the size of field, no cut events and all these other things that make comparing results difficult.
Finishing in the 90th percentile of fantasy points in a given week is a “Star” week — one that certainly was worth investing in.
Since the start of the 2022 season, there are five golfers in this field who were a “Star” on 9+ occasions. The names, you’d expect — Scheffler, Cantlay, Fitzpatrick, Hovland and … Seamus Power.
That’s right, Seamus Power. He played more events but so did a lot of other guys. He finished in the 90th percentile of fantasy scoring nine different times including in each of his last three starts of 2022. These are good signs heading into the New Year.
🚨 Shameless Plug
Obviously many of you know that I own and operate RickRunGood.com which is a giant golf database designed for DFS and betting. I’m a power user of the site and I’m constantly making as many improvements as possible.
I truly believe it helps the research process and getting a better data-driven analysis of each course and each golfer. I really enjoy it and I know you will too. If this sounds nice, please consider signing up.