🍷 Uncork Some Stats
Fortinet Championship Preview | Stats, Trends & More!
We are back, baby! Uncork a bottle of wine and enjoy the sights and sounds from Napa as the new season fall kicks off!
I’m headed off to Rome next week for the Ryder Cup, so bare with me on the content schedule. I’m looking forward to being your boots on the ground in Italy.
Chat soon.
Rick
PS — There are over 15,000 (!!) nerdy golf people who read this newsletter. You can join them by subscribing below.
👁️ Eyes on Norrman
Vincent Norrman could be on the path to stardom. The 25 year-old is built to be the modern golfer — checking in with 121 MPH club speed, 14th on TOUR. Those numbers have allowed him to gained 4+ (!!) strokes off-tee in three of his last five measured starts.
He’s also well-versed with a wedge & short-iron in hand, ranking 25th from 125-150 yards, 70th from 150-175 yards and 40th from 175-200 yards. He dismantles par-5s, ranking 3rd in Going for the Green and 7th in par-5 scoring. Everything above is the blueprint for modern PGA TOUR golf success.
His win at the Barbasol Championship, six starts ago, flew under the radar. However, he just notched another victory at the Irish Open. That field strength was similar to winning the Honda Classic.
Don’t let Norrman too far out of your sights for awhile.
🏆 Make The Call!
The Ryder Cup teams are set! Here’s how they stack up:
🤷♂️ Narrow Fairways, No Big Deal
The North Course at Silverado has some of the most narrow fairways that we will see on the TOUR schedule. It’ll create a situation where the driving accuracy percentage for the field looks very similar to my own stats. But don’t be fooled.
The penalty for missing the fairway isn’t very big. Take an example from no. 1 below:
Yes, of course playing out of the fairway is better but only led to a 0.129 stroke gain for those who found the short-grass. Missing in the left rough, by contrast, only cost 0.07 strokes to the field.
There are a few exceptions where fairway bunkers can jack up these numbers, but the real disparities come on the second shot. The left bunker on no.1 is a massive penalty, costing players nearly a full stroke to the field if they find themselves there.
The misses are compounded since there are so many wedges into these greens that if you 1) miss them and 2) miss them in the worst spots — those losses can start to pile up.
Inaccurate bombers who can dial in wedges are the biggest beneficiaries of this stat profile.
🕵️ Who Fits The Profile?
The next natural question is … “okay, who are the inaccurate bomvers who can dial-in wedges?”. Over the last 50 rounds, I added 50/100 weights to Driving Distance along with 25/each on two wedge buckets. Justin Thomas (oh boy) is number one — carried by his strong wedge play.
The rest of the top ten make sense as well — Homa is included (twice a winner) along with Stewart Cink and Jimmy Walker who have both won here.
😤 The Putter Ain’t The Problem!
If you’ve laid eyes on Justin Thomas over the past 12 months, it’s easy to notice how many putts he misses. It’s … a lot! And while that’s a problem it’s not *thee* problem or the reason why Thomas has fallen to 24th in the OWGR and missed the playoffs last year.
Thomas has always been a bad putter. Statistically, Thomas lost as many strokes in 2023 as he did in 2019 — a year where he had (7) Top 10s in 20 starts, a win (BMW) and finished third in the FedEx Cup.
The big problem is that Thomas is no longer an elite approach player. Over the last 400 rounds (min 150), Thomas (+0.75) is the third best approach player in the world — behind Collin Morikawa and Tiger Woods.
But in the last 50 rounds, that rate plummets to +0.30/round, tied with David Lipsky and Dylan Wu. Nearly half a shot per round worse than his long-term baseline.
Half a shot per round is the difference between being Brooks Koepka or being Alex Noren. And Thomas is losing that amount in one facet of his game.
The “good news” is that if he fixes that one thing, he’s probably back to winning multiple times a year. But fixing that one thing is easier said than done.
🏗️ Few Website Updates
The last two weeks have allowed me to make a few additions to RickRunGood.com, with plenty more coming in coming weeks/months. My goal is to practice “kaizen”, a Japanese term for “continuous improvement”. If I can make the website 1% better everyday, I’m going to do it. Here’s a few things you’ll notice this week:
3-Ball Matchup Calculator
One of the most requested features, the H2H Matchup Tool now includes single round three-balls. You can input any three golfers that you’d like, along with the number of rounds to consider. The tool will provide the simulated winning odds for each golfer.
Rolling Reports
Quickly see the ranks and averages for the last 12 rounds, last 24, 36, 50 and 100 rounds for each golfer. Also, you can choose your own number of rounds to compare. Found on the Power Rankings tool > under “Rolling” tab.
SG Distribution Breakdown
The Strokes Gained Distribution Tool now allows you to see the rate of gaining/losing strokes for each SG Metric. For example, how often Rory McIlroy gains 1+ stroke off-the-tee.
More Data
There was a lot of database work done behind the scenes and you’ll notice how much more data is flowing into the tools now. Previously the PGA TOUR data went back to 2008, now it goes back to 1996 (Tiger Era) with more to come.
🍷 Enjoying The Aroma
Despite consecutive wins, Max Homa does not top the list of best course history at Silverado. That honor goes to Chez Reavie who has missed just one cut in nine trips and has earned (7) Top 33 finishes in his last eight.
