The Keys To The Bracket
WGC Match Play | Stats, Trends & Things You Don't Need To Know
Austin Country Club
Par 71 - 7,108 Yards
Stop What You’re Doing…
and watch this video. Seriously — this week is so incredibly unique that you need to ensure you have the right strategy when it comes to building lineups. Around 41% of lineups last year were built sub-optimally and had little chance of winning all the money. Don’t be in that 41% this year.
Biggest Bracket Challenge Ever
Last season, the RickRunGood Bracket Challenge was the largest private bracket challenge on PGATOUR.com. I want to do it again … and this time even bigger! I want to show the PGA TOUR that we, as a fantasy community, can show up in big numbers.
I’m putting up prizes for the winners which can be found below and CBS Sports also kicked in a $100 Paramount+ Gift Card to the winner!
Sign up: https://bit.ly/3qos7Mq
PW: tiger
The Real Group of Death
When the brackets come out, everyone wants to assign a “Group of Death” — the hardest group on the board. I figured that I should use the Strokes Gained metrics to determine the toughest groups. Here’s each group, in weighted Strokes Gained over the last 20 rounds.
Group 5 — that’s Scottie Scheffler, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood and Ian Poulter. Formidable to say the least. If you go back a little further, to 50 rounds, you’ll see another group at the top.
Group 4 — That’s Patrick Cantlay, Sungjae Im, Seamus Power and Keith Mitchell.
Volatility Is Your Friend
There are two tweets that I think are important this week to remind you that this is … kind of a crapshoot! Especially for the first three days and who is going to win each group. First from me — the Number of Top Seeds to advance from Group Play:
2021: 1
2019: 5
2018: 5
2017: 5
2016: 8
Second, from Justin Ray. Who breaks down each golfer “tier” to make it out of the group stage.
The way to read this tweet — that the “D” player, who are seeds 49-64 have historically won their group at the same rate as the “B” player and only 6% less often than the “A” player.
Dye Strikes Again
Pete Dye has such a portfolio of courses on the PGA TOUR schedule that we can slice up the results on his courses in a bunch of different ways. At under 7,200 yards, Austin Country Club will ask for a lot of shots from 150 yards and in — much like many Dye courses. Here are the best players on Pete Dye courses, under 7,200 yards:
Paging Lady Luck
We can build lineups optimally all day long, but let’s be real — there’s a ton of luck involved in the Match Play event. You could play awesome and lose to someone better or you could play poorly and beat someone playing even worse. The Strokes Gained metrics* from last year are the perfect example of that.
A few things to point out —
Patrick Cantlay gained the 2nd most strokes to the field and didn’t make it out of his group.
Billy Horschel finished 12th in SGTOT and won the event.
Kuchar finished 3rd in SGTOT and 3rd in the event (kismet).
*These are official strokes gained numbers and yes, they could be a bit wonky considering that golfers are playing a different number of holes. Still an interesting visual nugget.
Good Luck
Rick