PGA DFS: Strokes Gained Analysis for the Wyndham Championship

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.

Strokes Gained Analysis

A vastly different field this week for the Wyndham Championship than last week’s major, so this article should look a lot different after two weeks of virtually the same names. The data set I’m using is roughly 50 events.

Strokes Gained Total

Criteria: Number of starts over 2.0 and/or percentage of starts over 1.5

Entire Dataset: Webb Simpson leads four golfers that have gained at least two strokes total. The other three are Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed and Sungjae Im. Simpson is the only golfer in the field to gain at least two total strokes in 50% of their starts with three others at 40%. Justin Rose, Paul Casey and Harris English all have at least 20 starts, whereas Kristoffer Ventura has done it in 42% of the time in 12 starts.
Last Eight Weeks: Only two golfers have gained at least 1.25 total strokes four times, Reed and Brendon Todd. In comparison, Sepp Straka and English are the only two golfers to have gained 1.75 or more three times.

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

Entire Data Set: Seven is the maximum number of starts any golfer has gained at least 1.75 strokes gained tee to green, and a few of those golfers we’ve already mentioned like Reed, Im and Casey. Others are J.T. Poston, Russell Henley and Jason Kokrak. Only Casey and Sergio Garcia have done in it in 50% of their starts.
Last Eight Weeks: Only Henley has gained at least 1.25 tee to green four times, while Casey, Garcia, Koepka, Si Woo Kim and Dylan Frittelli has done 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

Entire Data Set: Casey is the only golfer in the field to have gained at least 1.25 strokes ball striking double-digit times, with thirteen, as Corey Conners and Jason Kokrak trail with nine. Casey is also the only golfer with at least 10 starts to have gained at least 0.75 strokes in 80% or more of his starts. Schwab has done it in all three of his. Conners and Doc Redman are the only other two that have done it 50% of the time.
Last Eight Weeks: Six golfers have gained at least 0.75 strokes four times: Casey, Koepka, Henley, Luke List, Sam Burns and Sebastian Munoz.

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

Entire Data Set: Jordan Spieth is the only golfer to have gained at least 1.25 strokes gained on his short game double-digit times. He, Brandt Snedeker and Luke Donald are the only ones to gain 0.75 in at least 50% of their starts.
Last Eight Weeks: Six golfers have gained at least 0.75 strokes four times: Todd, Horschel, Donald, Charles Howell III, Brian Harman and Michael Kim.

Off the Tee

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

Entire Data Set: Conners has been the most consistent off the tee, gaining at least one stroke in nine starts. Keith Mitchell isn’t far behind, doing it eight times, with Jhonattan Vegas doing it seven. Kokrak has gained at least one half a stroke in 67.85% of his starts. Garcia, Mitchell, Redman, Tom Lewis, Tommy Fleetwood and Vince Covello accomplished this in at least 50% of their starts.
Last Eight Weeks: I’m looking for people how have been incredibly consistent off the tee in the previous eight weeks, so the parameters are lowered to just gaining 0.25 strokes. Kokrak, Conners, List and Xinjun Zhang have done it five times.

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Strokes Gained on Approach

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

Entire Data Set: Russell Knox is the golfer that gets the hottest with his irons, gaining over one stroke at least 10 times. Conners, Casey, Henley, Simpson, Kyle Stanley, Jason Dufner and Jim Furyk have done it eight times.
Last Eight Weeks: Obviously, an important stat this week is the strokes gained on approach, and during the previous eight weeks, Casey, Henley, Kim and Shane Lowry have gained at least a half a stroke four times. A bunch of other golfers have done it three times, including Frittelli, Burns, Joaquin Niemann, Lucas Glover, Sam Burns, Ryan Moore and even Spieth.

Strokes Gained Around the Green

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

Entire Data Set: One might think that since this is a short game category that Spieth would reign supreme, but he doesn’t. Bud Cauley has gained at least one stroke around the green eight times, the only one to do so. Frittelli has done it seven with Spieth and Harman checking in with six.
Last Eight Weeks: Since not a ton of greens are missed this week, we just need golfers that have been performing well each week relative to the field. We are looking for golfers gaining at least 0.25 strokes. Harman leads with six times. Michael Kim has five. Donald, Frittelli, Si Woo Kim, Garcia, List, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Matt Wallace have all done it four times.

Strokes Gained Putting

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

Entire Data Set: With low scoring expected, we need to find a couple of golfers that can get hot with their putter. I’ve upped it to 1.25 strokes gained putting as the parameter I’m looking for here. Denny McCarthy has done it 11 times, Spieth nine times, Horschel seven times. Seven others have done it six times: Im, Burns, Brian Stuard, Patton Kizzire, Wyndham Clark and Patrick Rodgers
Last Eight Weeks: Over the last six weeks, there’s only been a handful of golfers gaining at least one stroke putting twice, and no one in the field has done it three times. The six that have done it are Reed, Rodgers, Todd, Redman, Rose, Aaron Baddeley, Troy Merritt and Kevin Kisner.

For more info on this, check out my “Fit & Form Podcast,” which should be out by 4:00 pm Tuesday! I analyze this information, and so much more! A great way to get introduced to the strokes gained metric if you haven’t already.

The Strokes Gained Sheet

Click here for the full sheet

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Author

Jason Rouslin

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].