Ryder Cup
Stats, Trends & Things You Don't Need To Know
Course: Whistling Straits
Par 71 - 7,355 Yards
Bentgrass Greens
The Driving Debate
For weeks, data analysts have been trying to determine what’s more important: Driving Distance or Strokes Gained Off-the-Tee? Obviously SGOTT encompasses distance and the reason that it’s so important to figure out is because the results you find can certainly be skewed depending on the stat you choose.
Using Driving Distance, 8 of the top 12 spots belong to Americans.
Using SG Off The Tee, 5 of the top 8 sports belong to Europeans.
Now, the RickRunGood.com Key Stats Model does indeed give the nod to distance, but you certainly don’t want to overlook SGOTT completely with the way the rough seems to be cut down just off the fairways at Whistling Straits.
Using the Custom Model, we can try to make a hybrid rank. I’ve allocated 50 weights to SGOTT and 50 to Driving Distance, knowing that will give Distance more weight since it’s already factored into SGOTT. Then, I closed up the timeframe and ran it for the last 24 rounds and voila!
Bryson DeChambeau
Brooks Koepka
Jon Rahm
Rory McIlroy
Sergio Garcia
Justin Thomas
Dustin Johnson
Viktor Hovland
Patrick Cantlay
Xander Schauffele
That’s 6-4 for the Americans, but since we’ve already come this far … why stop now? The way the Custom Model works is that it assigns a value based on the weights and not just a simple rank. That tells us how much better Bryson is in this exercise than everyone else (note: a lot). So if we add up the values of every single player in the event:
America: 660.86
Europe: 539.12
I hope that helped.
Guess The Pairings
I suppose this is a great chance to make a fool of myself and try to guess the main pairings for each team. Obviously these can change throughout the week and I expect the European side to do much more shuffling.
United States
Bryson DeChambeau & Scottie Scheffler
Justin Thomas & Jordan Spieth
Patrick Cantlay & Xander Schauffele
Dustin Johnson & Collin Morikawa
Daniel Berger & Brooks Koepka
Harris English & Tony Finau
Europe
Jon Rahm & Sergio Garcia
Rory McIlroy & Ian Poulter
Paul Casey & Lee Westwood
Viktor Hovland & Matt Fitzpatrick
Tyrrell Hatton & Shane Lowry
Tommy Fleetwood & Bernd Wiesberger
If That Wasn’t Nerdy Enough…
Let’s take the best attributes from each player and find out which team is best. Using the four main strokes gained metrics, I’ll take the best aspect from either player to construct this SUPER PLAYER.
Consider This
The Europeans are underdogs, up to +220 at some places right now. If you can find a “Margin of Victory” bet, you can likely secure Europe winning by 1-3 for +400. If the Europeans do win it’s likely to be by a small margin and not a blowout. Here’s a few extra bucks if it plays out that way. (This is available at Caesars and if you sign up through me, they will give you up to $5,000 in free bets.)
Good luck, peeps — enjoy the week.
Rick