💨 The Data Hoylake

Scottish Open Review & Open Championship Preview | Stats, Trends & More!

Jul 17, 2023

Soak it in — the final Major Championship for 260 days (but who’s counting?). This one is different. It’s old, it’s got a ton of history and the style of golf is so unique — especially compared to our weekly viewing experience.

The Claret Jug will be handed out on Sunday and the history of our game will add another chapter. Goosebump SZN.

Good Luck
Rick

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup ☔

🪂 Rory’s “Putting Woes”

The discourse on Rory is often detached from reality. That’s because he’s in a different stratosphere as a golfer, only judged on wins and more specifically… Majors. Also, the “eye test” doesn’t always match up with his stat profile.

I think we can all agree that McIlroy missed a lot of makable putts over the weekend in Scotland, something that feels like it happens every Sunday. However, after 72 holes, McIlroy was actually a positive putter last week — to the tune of 1.50 strokes. That makes six consecutive starts where he’s gained strokes putting.

As far as I can tell, this is only the second time in his career that he’s gained strokes putting in six straight measured events.

The last time he accomplished that feat was for seven straight at the end of 2020, from the TOUR Championship and extending into Torrey Pines. His average finish during that stretch was 11.14 and he only notched one podium.

During this current run, he hasn’t finished worse than T9 including a win and a runner-up — average finish: 5.5

🏆 Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner 🐳

Big congrats to ‘jwaterboy1988’ who took down our very first RunGood League on SplashSports. They earned $900 with the lineup below.

The contest for the Open Championship is already live — $15 entry, three entry max.
🪙 Join: https://bit.ly/44KbAUB

🚒 Tight Rope Tommy

Fleetwood final round 72 in Scotland left us wanting more and feeling that disappointment for Tommy Lad yet again. We feel that disappointment a lot because Tommy disappoints a lot. Statistically, he’s one of the more volatile golfers on the TOUR — flashing greatness only to take it away the following day.

Over the last 50 rounds, Fleetwood has gained 5+ strokes in a single round 5x. That ceiling is on par with Brooks Koepka, Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy!

However, he only gains 2+ strokes in a single round about 38% of the time. Which is well below his peers of Schauffele (44%), McIlroy (50%) and Cantlay (56%).

Tommy’s floor is Adam Schenk but his ceiling is Brooks Koepka.

📞 Can You Hear Me Now?

I received an interesting call last week from my team at CBS Sports asking if they could auction off a “private Zoom call” with me on eBay as part of fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

I told them that it probably won’t raise much money, but I’m in — since it’s such a great cause. So that’s how we got here.

Private Zoom call to chat about anything you want — golf, business, Vegas restaurant power rankings, whatever. It’s your call and I’ll match the winning bid as a donation of my own.

📅 Auction Ends Tuesday (7/18) at 4PM ET
💵 Bid: https://www.ebay.com/itm/374804489903

❓ Trivia!

The Old Course at St. Andrews has hosted The Open more than any other venue — 30 times. The next most frequented course has hosted 24x, but the most recent is 1925.

Name the course.
(Answer at bottom of this post)

🗡️ Open Championship History

Let’s ease right into this, with the best Open Championship players since 2008, minimum of 12 rounds.

Jordan Spieth has gained 2.40 strokes per round over 36 rounds at this event. That’s the 5th best player/tournament performance of anyone in the world at any event with at least 36 rounds since 2008.

This will only be the second time in Spieth’s career that he enters The Open off a missed cut (2019 - Royal Portrush, T20) and the first time in his career that he will enter off consecutive missed cuts.

🎽 SWAG GIVEAWAY!

I bought a literal boxful of Open Championship swag and I’m giving it away. Just like last time, I’ll split it up in a few care packages and mail them out to readers.

If you are subscribed to this newsletter, you’re already entered! If not:

Thanks so much for the support, I love being able to giveback a little and this gear was too sweet to pass up!

😧 DraftKings With The Zinger!

There is a new wrinkle in the DraftKings pricing this week, where they’ve expanded the range of possible salaries.

Scottie Scheffler checks in at $12,500 which is the highest non-TOUR Championship salary since I’ve been tracking this information — about five years.

It’s only the 8th salary of $12,000 or more during that same stretch. Not that it means anything but 5/7 of those “other guys” went on to miss the cut.

They also allowed the salaries to go down below $6,000 something that we haven’t seen outside the TOUR Championship.

🐸 How Often Are You Good?

Gaining strokes to the field is a really easy way to determine how good a golfer was in a specific round. How often that golfer accomplishes the feat helps illustrate consistency and staying power.

Below is a scatter plot that shows the frequency in which golfers in this field have gained strokes at The Open, dating back to 2008.

Some takeaways:

Cam Young has gained strokes in 100% of his Open rounds, but he’s only played four rounds.
Patrick Cantlay has the highest non-Cam rate (85.71%) with 14 rounds under his belt.
Jordan Spieth has gained in 80.56% of his 36 rounds which is staggering, but I didn’t realize how close some others were.
- Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Adam Scott are all in the same ballpark — they’ve played more rounds than Spieth but are just gaining to the field a small percentage less often.

🌏 The Driving Challenge at Royal Liverpool

One of my favorite and most valuable habits has been mapping golf courses on Google Earth. It started as a process to help some of my tour level buddies to better understand the golf course, sightlines, etc. But it’s turned into something much bigger than that.

Going hole-by-hole and understanding the challenges has taught me a ton, even if it’s from 2.5D and 1,000 feet in the air.

The most notable “feature” around Royal Liverpool is how demanding the tee shots are going to be. There are countless holes with trouble lurking directly in the landing areas and fairways that are between 20-30 yards wide. The third hole is an awesome example of the challenge that lies ahead.

That red area is internal OB, created by a literal wall that stands about two feet high. Golfers will need to commit to their line and execute perfectly. The more you want to cut off the dogleg, the farther you’ll need to hit it. Anything a hair right of your line is going to be OB. There isn’t really a bailout left considering it’s lush rough on the opposite side of that narrow fairway.

The corner is 240 yards, the second line is 260, the third is a 300 yard carry and the final line is 310 yards. Now throw in a prevailing wind that will corner into golfers and it’s going to be a tee shot that requires every bit of focus and execution.

And this is one of many tee shots just waiting to punish golfers this week. I don’t see a way around the winner having a stellar driving week.

🐊 Long, Straight & Consistent

Below is a table that shows how often a golfer gains “x strokes” off-the-tee. Rory McIlroy is gaining 1+ strokes off-the-tee in 62% of his rounds — over the last 100.

That’s insane. It’s twice the rate of Justin Thomas who gains 1+ OTT at the 10th most frequent rate in the world.

I believe The Open winner comes from this group.

🏰 The Scheffler Streak

Since the start of “The Streak”*, Scottie Scheffer has gained 197 strokes from tee-to-green in total — the most of anyone on TOUR.

Rory McIlroy is next, gaining 95 and Patrick Cantlay is third, gaining 94.

That means that Scheffler has gained more strokes from tee-to-green than the next two best players in the world COMBINED. And with eight strokes leftover.

*19 straight Top 12 finishes for Scheffler, dating back to the 2022 Mayakoba Championship.

🎥 Live In Primetime!

The RickRunGood Live Chat will take place on Wednesday at 3PM ET. I’ll dive into any topics you want, see you there.

📺 Watch: https://youtube.com/live/IcWQYiDhA_0

⚠️ In Case You Missed It

🏀 Steph Curry has a knack for burying shots from long distance, which is exactly what he did at the American Century Championship Pro-Am.

📽️ Imagine taking a drone to a golf course that is 154 years old! That’s what Golf Digest did, in their latest edition of “Every Hole at…”

👁️ The new Sphere in Vegas has been turned on and it’s keeping a close eye on golfers at The Wynn.

🏆 I’ve added “SG The Open” to the RickRunGood Custom Model so you can model with Open Championship history.

📄 Rory calls a resume a “CV” and he has lots of National Championships on it.

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Trivia Answer:
Prestwick