Workday Charity Open: 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 PGA DFS 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.

Don’t forget to check out the PGA DFS Strategy Show for the Workday Charity Open with Ben Rasa and Timothy Frank. And we’ve got Ben and Jason Rouslin tomorrow for Live Before Lock.

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Strokes Gained Analysis

Strokes Gained Total

Criteria: At least two SG

Justin Thomas reigns supreme here with 45% of his starts ending up in at least two strokes gained total, and he is the only golfer over 40%. Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Justin Rose and Hideki Matsuyama are the only others to accomplish this feat in at least 30% of their starts. A couple of names that you wouldn’t expect to see here are Kevin Streelman, Jason Kokrak and Maverick McNealy, all with about 25% of their starts ending in at least two strokes gained total.
Sungjae Im whose done it seven times in 35 starts. Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed have done it six times, Spieth in 24 starts, Reed in 25.
Patrick Cantlay, however, leads in terms of average strokes gained total, with almost 1.926 per start over the 17 starts in the database. He’s also just one stroke gained away from Matsuyama in terms of total strokes gained in my database, but has done it in seven fewer starts.
Twenty-two golfers this week have yet to accomplish this feat and have competed at least six times. A few of the names are Peter Malnati, Austin Cook, Danny Lee, Jimmy Walker and Martin Trainer.

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

Criteria: At least 1.5 SG

Matsuyama, Thomas and Cantlay are top-three on the board here, accomplishing this goal at least 50% of their starts. Right behind them are Xander Schauffele, Viktor Hovland and Byeong Hun An, all of whom have accomplished this in at least 40% of their starts.
Matsuyama leads this category in terms of average per start, just edging out Thomas with both of them gaining about 1.6 strokes per start.

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

Criteria: At least one SG

Hovland adds another start to his belt where he gained at least a stroke ball striking, making it 14 of 15 starts. Matsuyama and Thomas join him as the only golfers to do it in at least two-thirds of their starts. Kokrak, Corey Conners, Emiliano Grillo and Joaquin Niemann have all done it in at least 50% of their starts.
Matsuyama edges out Conners and Kokrak in terms of total strokes gained ball striking in my database, while Hovland leads in terms of average at 1.562 strokes gained per start.

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

Criteria: At least one SG

Four golfers in the field have gained at least one stroke from short game in at least 50% of their starts: Luke Donald, Denny McCarthy, Brandt Snedeker and Jordan Spieth, with Patrick Cantlay falling just 3% short of the mark. McCarthy leads with 14 starts in which he accomplished this feat.
Snedeker edges out Spieth by .05 in terms of average strokes gained with the short game, and they are the only two at over 1%.
Ten golfers in the field haven’t gained at least one stroke from short game in the database. A couple of the bigger names are Hovland and Grillo.

Strokes Gained Off the Tee

Criteria: At least one SG

Cameron Champ has gained at least a stroke in 11 starts, or 42.31%, just enough to edge out Xander Schauffele who has done it in eight starts, 42.11%. Conners, Koepka and Bubba Watson round out the top five and are the only golfers to accomplish this in at least 33% of their starts.
Hovland leads the field in terms of average strokes gained at .8, while Kokrak has accumulated the most strokes gained in this category at 16.359 over his 25 starts.
Fifty-seven golfers in the field will be looking for their first start in which they gain over a stroke off the tee. These include Rose, McNealy, Jason Day, Collin Morikawa and Keegan Bradley.

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Strokes Gained on Approach

Criteria: At least one SG

It is no surprise to see Hovland leading the pack in this category with seven of his 15 starts ending in at least one strokes gained on the approach. Cameron Percy is 5-for-11, and Grillo is 10-for-22. He’s the only one to accomplish this feat at least 10 times.
Morikawa leads the field in terms of average strokes gained per start at .78 with Hovland, Cantlay, Matsuyama and Grillo all right on his tail.
Only 11 golfers haven’t gained at least a stroke on the approach in this database. Rickie Fowler is the biggest name.

Strokes Gained Around the Green

Criteria: At least .5 SG

Thirteen golfers in the field have gained at least a half stroke around the green in this database. Some of those names are Im, Snedeker, An, Reed, Spieth, Donald, Matsuyama, Rory Sabbatini, Ryan Armour, Si Woo Kim, Bud Cauley, Aaron Baddeley, Dylan Frittelli and Luke Donald. Donald actually leads the percentage of starts over .5 at 66.7%. He also leads the average, at .65, while Rob Oppenheim and Snedeker are the only other two to average at least a half a stroke per start.
Only three names haven’t gained at least a half a stroke around the green in any of their starts in the database: Hovland, Mark Anderson and Ted Potter, Jr.

Strokes Gained Putting

Criteria: At least one SG

As good of a putter as Spiethis, he isn’t even within .2 strokes of McCarthy. McCarthy has gained at least one stroke with his putter in 15 starts, over 50%. No one else in the field has done that, not even Spieth, who’s done it in 11 starts or 46%. They are the only two golfers to average more than three-quarters of a stroke putting, while McNealy, Patrick Rodgers, Vaughn Taylor and Billy Horschel are the only other ones to gain at least a half a stroke per round.
It’s tough to win on the PGA Tour if you can’t putt, and no one knows that better than Morikawa and Matsuyama. Neither has gained at least one stroke putting in any of their starts, and if they did, they’d likely be multiple winners on the season. A couple of other names that haven’t putted well are Grillo and Russell Henley.

For more info on this, check out my “Fit & Form Podcast” coming out tonight 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 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].