The Open Championship - SG Recap

We’re going to sound like a broken record, but as we like to say internally, “It’s just math!”

The Open Championship was held this past week at Royal Portrush where Scottie Scheffler won his 4th major and personally got the 3rd leg of the Grand Slam. Congrats to him. Once again, as an analytics company, we are keenly interested in seeing which Strokes-Gained category was the most impactful on where players finished. Once again, it wasn’t even close!

Strokes-Gained Approach was the most impactful SG category for determining where a player finished in the event. Of those who finished T30 or better, here is a breakdown of the percentage of players who had positive Strokes Gained for each category:

• Approach: 79%

• Off-the-Tee: 67%

• Putting: 60%

• Around-the-Green: 45%

This makes it a 4-for-4 sweep in Major Championships this year where Strokes-Gained Approach was the most important factor in determining where a player finished in the event. In regards to The Open, it wasn’t even close.

Drive for show, but hit your irons close for dough - that’s the real nursery rhyme we should be telling our kids at night!

I’ve had some people reach out to me and question this data. For certain generations, it goes against everything we believed during what I’ll call the “Pre-Analytics Era” of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000’s. The numbers however are hard to refute.

At TUGR, we take an unemotional approach to the data and simply try and give you the tools for the highest likelihood of success. In the end, a great iron player who is an average putter will consistently beat a player who is an average iron player but a great putter.

Tournaments

We are right at peak junior golf tournaments for the summer. It feels like this summer there were even more events than last year. The U.S. Junior is always a good benchmark for the summer calendar. Last year, TUGR called more correct matches than other major ranking systems in the match play portion. We look forward to running the analysis at the end of this week.

TUGR continues to be consistently the most predictive ranking system in the game. By using pre-tournament ranks, we can predict the outcome of an event closer than any other system. It’s for the reason, among others, that coaches from all over the country use the TUGR Recruiting Platform.

We are continually asked, “Do coaches use TUGR?” The answer is an emphatic “YES”. I speak with coaches regularly going through the analytics of specific recruits and using our tools to help them find players. Coaches all over the country use TUGR.

Rankings are updated: http://tugr.org

I believe we are 95% caught up on requests, but as always reach out with any updates that are needed to your profile.

Thanks,

Jeff