Every fantasy sport has its set of data that helps to try to project what’s going to happen. In professional golf, that’s done by a metric called Strokes Gained. Created by Mark Broadie, a professor at Columbia, it measures a golfer against others on a shot-by-shot basis. That’s compiled then for daily, weekly and yearly stats, or however long your database goes for. The database we will be working with for PGA DFS covers about 18 months worth of tournaments. While golf is typically about recent form, we like to understand players’ strengths and weaknesses to better understand where they might perform best. Let’s dig in.
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Strokes Gained Analysis
Strokes Gained Total
Criteria: at least two strokes gained
- Only 30 golfers in the field have gained at least two strokes total over the last year and a half of data. That number shrinks to just five when finding golfers that have done it at least eight times or more. Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Sungjae Im and Hideki Matsuyama are the five. Only McIlroyhas done it in at least 50% of his starts, making him one of the safest PGA DFS plays each week.
- On the flip side, 20 golfers in the field haven’t been able to gain at least two strokes total over the last period of time. Of them, nine golfers have accumulated at least 20 starts: Patton Kizzire, Aaron Baddeley, Peter Malnati, Martin Trainer, Austin Cook, Jimmy Walker, Danny Lee, Jim Herman and Michael Kim.Â
Strokes Gained Tee to Green – Combination of Off the Tee, Approach and Around the Green
Criteria: at least 1.5 strokes gained
- Justin Thomas kept his streak going last week and has now gained at least 1.5 strokes tee to green in 74% of his starts, the only golfer over 60%. There are only two other golfers that are over 60% in this category: McIlroy and Matsuyama.
- Most of the same names from the criteria above (strokes gained total) fit here as well. In addition to them, we also add in Kevin Chappell, who hasn’t gained more than 1.5 strokes tee to green in his eight starts since returning from his injury. That includes a 59 in one round.
Strokes Gained Ball Striking – Combination of Off the Tee and Approach
Criteria: at least one stroke gained
- Viktor Hovland continued his impressive ball-striking display, gaining another 1.25 strokes on average last week at the Charles Schwab, making it 11-of-12 in starts where he’s accomplished the feat. Aside from him, only McIlroy and Thomas have gained at least one stroke in over 80% of their starts.
- Of golfers that have made at least 10 starts, only Ernie Els, Luke Donald, Cameron Smith, Chris Stroud and Danny Willett haven’t gained over a stroked ball striking.
Strokes Gained Short Game: Combination of Around the Green and PuttingÂ
Criteria: at least one stroke gained
- Webb Simpson has been caught by Jordan Spieth now, with 55% of their starts ending with a least one strokes gained in the short game. Simpson had a terrible tournament all around last week and ended up missing the cut. Only four other golfers have gained at least a stroke in 50% of their starts: Luke Donald, Denny McCarthy and Brandt Snedeker.Â
- Eleven golfers have gained a stroke at least five times: the five I previously mentioned in this section, plus Wyndham Clark, Sungjae Im, Martin Trainer, Kevin Na, Billy Horschel, Bud Cauley, Matt Kuchar and J.T. Poston.Â
- A couple of golfers that are prominent features of DFS lineups these days haven’t been able to gain at least a stroke ball striking in their starts, Matthew Wolff, Ryan Palmer, Emiliano Grillo and Hovland among them. Hovland, who has gained at least 1.5 strokes ball striking in 94% of his starts, should have at least one win and a couple of top-fives, but it’s pretty clear this part of Hovland’s game is lacking quite a bit.
Strokes Gained Off the Tee
Criteria: at least one stroke gained
- In 10 weeks, I’m sure this category will change quite a bit with how good Bryson DeChambeau is off the tee now, but for now, McIlroy supreme. He’s gained at least one stroke off the tee in 62.5% of his starts, the only golfer to eclipse the 50% mark. Only five others have done it in at least one-third of their starts, including Corey Conners, Bubba Watson and Xander Schauffele.Â
- Sixty-two golfers this week haven’t done well off the tee at all and failed to gain at least a stroke. Among them most notably are Simpson, Collin Morikawa, Tyler Duncan, Kyle Stanley, Nate Lashley, Alex Noren and Jordan Spieth, who had his best off-tee performance in the previous five starts last week at Colonial. That resulted in a top-10 for Spieth and was a part of the winning Millionaire Maker lineup.
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Strokes Gained on the Approach
Criteria: at least one stroke gained
- The young superstar Morikawa gets all his strokes gained from this category, as he is one of only four golfers with over 10 starts that have gained at least one stroke with approaches The other four are Grillo, Thomas and Hovland.
- When struggling with your approach shots, it doesn’t matter how good or bad a golfer drives the ball; they will struggle to score. Nobody has felt that worse this year than Scott Brown, who hasn’t gained a stroke once in 30 starts. Cook and Patrick Rodgers aren’t far behind either with 23 starts and 27 starts, respectively, without attaining that number.
Strokes Gained Around the Green
Criteria: at least one stroke gained
- Most of the names on here from last week remain the same, like Spieth, Jason Day and Dylan Frittelli. Some new ones who have gained at least a stroke in 25% or more of starts, though, are Baddeley, Kim and Snedeker.
- On the negative side, 57 golfers this week have yet to gain at least one stroke around the green, up from the 50 last week. Some of those names on here are quite staggering: Horschel, Rickie Fowler, Charles Howell III, Abraham Ancer and plenty more.
Criteria: at least one stroke gained
- Three golfers now have gained a stroke or more putting in at least 10 starts: Clark, Spieth and McCarthy. Nine other golfers have done it in at least 30% of their starts, including DeChambeau, Rodgers, Charl Schwartzel and Graeme McDowell.Â
- We all witnessed what a cold putter can do to a golfer, as Morikawa threw away the tournament last week by missing short putts. He’s not alone, though, as 20 or so golfers have gone at least two starts without gaining at least one stroke putting. Some of those names include Matsuyama, Sergio Garcia, Branden Grace and Zach Johnson.Â
For more info on this, check out my “Fit& Form Podcast” coming out tonight to help you with all your PGA DFS needs!
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Related PGA DFS Content
- The Awesemo YouTube Channel – Weekly PGA DFS Picks & Strategy
- PGA DFS: Jason Rouslin’s Fit & Form Guide to the Charles Schwab Challenge
- PGA DFS: Strokes-Gained Analysis for the Charles Schwab Challenge
- DraftKings PGA DFS Picks CheatsheetÂ
- PGA DFS: DraftKings Millionaire Maker Charles Schwab Challenge Preview
- PGA DFS Rankings for DraftKings + FanDuel
- Ownership Projections for DraftKings + FanDuel (PREMIUM)
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- Alex ‘Awesemo’ Baker’s Top Golfers Tool — DFS Sim for DraftKings + FanDuel (PREMIUM)