WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational Strokes Gained Analysis

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 making PGA DFS picks 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: Number of starts over 2.0 and/or percentage of starts over 1.5

  • Rory McIlroy hasn’t gotten it going over the last six weeks. In my database he has 20 starts, and 75% of them have ended up with at least 1.50 total strokes gained on the field. In 14 of them, he’s ended up with more than two. Only Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama, Jon Rahm, Webb Simpson, Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele have done it in at least 50% of their starts.
  • Over the last six weeks, five golfers have done it three times, including Thomas, Schauffele, Tony Finau, Patrick Reed and Matthew Wolff. 

Strokes Gained Tee to Green – Combination of Off the Tee, Approach and Around the Green

Criteria: Number of starts over 1.75 and/or percentage of starts over 1.25 

  • In terms of gaining at least one stroke on the field tee to green, McIlroy leads at 70% of his starts, while Cantlay, Schauffele, Matsuyama, Thomas, Paul Casey, Sergio Garcia, Erik van Rooyen and Jon Rahm all average at least 50% of their starts doing so.
  • When we stretch out the metric to 1.75 strokes gained tee to green, Casey leads with six starts ending up in that criteria. Russell Henley and Ryan Armour have five, while a bunch of others have four, including Bubba Watson and Lucas Glover. 
  • Over the last six weeks, Watson has gained at least 1.25 strokes tee to green in four starts, the only one to do so, with Garcia, Viktor Hovland and Jason Day all doing it three times.

Strokes Gained Ball Striking – Combination of Off the Tee and Approach

Criteria: Number of starts over 1.25 and/or percentage of starts over 0.75

  • Hovland’s run of accomplishing this threshold ended in his last start. Still, he’s gained at least 0.75 strokes ball striking in 78% of his starts. That pales in comparison to Casey, who has done it in 85% of his starts. Only three golfers have gained at least 1.25 strokes ball striking at least 10 times: Casey, McIlroy and Collin Morikawa. 
  • Casey and Hovland have each gained at least 0.75 strokes ball striking in three of their starts over the last six weeks. Watson has done it four times, while Finau, Wolff and Corey Conners have done it three.

Strokes Gained Short Game: Combination of Around the Green and Putting 

Criteria: Number of starts over 1.25 and/or percentage of starts over 0.75

  • This is Jordan Spieth’s proverbial category, and he is the only one in the field who gained at least 1.25 strokes with his short game at least 10 times. Spieth, Brandt Snedeker, Webb Simpson and Christiaan Bezuidenhout are the only others to do it in at least 50% of their starts, not including Bernd Wiesberger, who only has four recorded starts and has gained at least 0.75 strokes with his short game in all four,
  • Over the last six weeks, only Thomas and Mackenzie Hughes have gained at least 0.75 strokes on their short game three times. Sixteen others have done it twice, including Tyrrell Hatton in both of his starts.

Off the Tee

Criteria: Number of starts over 1.0 and/or percentage of starts over 0.5 

  • McIlroy is joined by Cameron Champ and Watson as the only golfers to have gained at least one stroke off the tee at least 10 times. The percentage of the time a golfer has gained over half a stroke off the tee is led by McIlroy at 90%. Hovland, Rahm, Champ, Casey, Conners, Cantlay, Jason Kokrak and Tommy Fleetwood all have gained at least a half as stroke off the tee in 60% of their starts.
  • Watson and Bryson DeChambeau are the only golfers to gain at least a half a stroke in three starts over the last six weeks. They are joined only by Thomas in gaining at least one stroke off the tee multiple times over the last six weeks.

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Strokes Gained on Approach

Criteria: Number of starts over 1.0 and/or percentage of starts over 0.5

  • This is the Collin Morikawa category, as he joins Matsuyama and Henrik Stenson as the only golfers that have gained at least one stroke on their approaches nine times. But Casey has a better record in terms of gaining at least a half a stroke with his approaches, doing it in 80% of his starts, while McIlroy, Thomas, Cantlay Hovland, Conners and Simpson have done it in 60% of their starts.
  • Only Hovland and Finau have gained at least a half a stroke three times over the last six weeks. Fourteen golfers have done it twice, including Joaquin Niemann, C.T. Pan, Kevin Streelman, Shane Lowry, Max Homa, Nick Taylor, Tyler Duncan and Spieth.
  • Only Hovland and Morikawa have gained at least one stroke on their approaches multiple times over the last six weeks.

Strokes Gained Around the Green

Criteria: Number of starts over 1.0 and/or percentage of starts over 0.5

  • Five have gained over one stroke around the green at least five times: Spieth, Snedeker, Hughes, Keegan Bradley and Byeong Hun An. 
  • Seven golfers have gained at least a half a stroke around the green it the last six weeks: Rahm, Reed, Day, Garcia, Cameron Smith and Matt Wallace.

Strokes Gained Putting

Criteria: Number of starts over 1.25 and/or percentage of time gained over 0.25

  • Putters that have gained at least 1.25 strokes putting at least five times include, Spieth (9), Billy Horschel (7), Kevin Na (6), Reed (5), Sungjae Im (5) and Matt Kuchar (5).
  • Golfers that are consistently gaining at least a quarter of a stroke gained putting include Snedeker, Wallace and DeChambeau. It also includes Simpson, Rahm, Spieth, J.T. Poston, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Adam Hadwin and Brendon Todd, who have all done it at least 60% of the time.
  • Fitzpatrick, Hughes and Wolff have all gained at least a half a stroke putting three times in the last six weeks. They are joined by DeChambeau, Na, Hatton and Gary Woodland as golfers that have gained at least one stroke putting multiple times in the last month.

For more info on this, check out my “Fit & Form Podcast” coming out within the hour (Tuesday at 9 a.m.) to help you with all of this information and so much more!

The Strokes Gained Sheet

Click here for the full sheet!

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Author
Jason established his roots in the littlest state that could...Rhode Island. But after 29 years of bitter cold, and only being able to play golf 4 months a year, upended those roots and moved to Florida. Now four years later, Jason is a husband to Sarah and father of two boys, James & Myles. A dog and more specifically Lab lover (Bella), he dedicates his time to serve as the lead of PGA content at Awesemo.com. In the time he is not diving into the PGA stats and covering this week's current tournament, you can find him researching and trading stocks, on the golf course, at Disney World, on a hike, or somewhere in between. Want to chat? Have a question about Golf/Stocks or anything else? Hop on twitter and give him a message @dfsgolfer23. You can also contact Jason by emailing [email protected].

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