The Ryder Cup teams are set and, what is arguably one of the greatest sporting events in the world, will take place in New York in a couple of weeks. I attended the 2021 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits on that Friday, and couldn’t believe the energy and atmosphere. It was nothing short of electric!

Now that both teams are filled, did the captains pick the right players?

Let’s dive into the numbers. History and research shows that rankings using Strokes-Gained methodologies (a.k.a. TUGR) are the best predictors of what will happen in the actual event when compared to other ranking methodologies. This will be our baseline.

Team USA

Remember a few weeks ago in this newsletter, we predicted that both Sam Burns and Patrick Cantlay would be picked, even though they were both outside the magic number on the Ryder Cup rankings (15th and 16th). Why did we feel so strongly about this?

Because they were both inside the number on TUGR!

In fact only 2 players outside of the Top-12 Americans were left off the team. Those two players: Keegan Bradley and Denny McCarthy. Keegan would have been picked by any captain other then himself, and McCarthy was #12 on the list. TUGR got 11 of the 12 correct when taking out Keegan. Not bad! Cameron Young is the 18th best American right now and arguably one of the hottest players on the planet right now. It’s a similar strategy to 2016 when Ryan Moore was picked over Bubba Watson even though Moore was way down the list.

All in all: It’s about as good of a team as Keegan could have picked.

Team Europe

Luke Donald took a different route. He went with Ryder Cup experience over form. 3 players inside the Top-12 Europeans were left off the team: Aaron Rai, Harry Hall, and Alex Noren, with Noren no stranger to the Ryder Cup, and Harry Hall being another hot player as of late.

All-in-all: Europe is going with chemistry and experience over what the numbers say.

Team Breakdown

Which team has the advantage:

• Two different strategies.

  • Keegan went almost straight down the line 1-12.

  • Luke passed over arguably hotter and better players for experience.

• The Top-3 players on each team are pound-for-pound pretty equal. Scottie, Bryson, and Henley stacked up against Rory, Rahm, and Fleetwood. I’d expect those 6 to play at least 4, if not all 5 sessions. Research shows, the more sessions you play, the more likely you are to have a winning record (not the other way around as was the theory before people actually looked at the numbers). If either captain wants to have the best chance of winning, their top-3 players should go the distance.

• The Bottom-9 skew toward the Americans pretty handily, especially with Strokes-Gained Putting and Strokes-Gained Overall.

• Average TUGR Ranks:

  • Americans: 14

  • Europeans: 22

• Where does Europe have the edge:

  • Strokes-Gained Approach, by about 1.4 shots per round

As you ALL should know by now from our previous newsletters, SG Approach is the most predictive stat when predicting who will win.

Ultimately, these matches are generally close. All 24 players (except 1) are Top-50 TUGR-ranked players. It all comes down to who executes when the pressure is high!

Junior Golf Update

On the junior front, TUGR Junior keeps growing in many ways. We continue to capture even more tournaments than we did last year, expanding our reach with amateur, invitational, and even some high school tournaments. Collectively, this means we rank more players and more events than other rankings systems.

The future of TUGR is really bright. We have big plans that will be rolled out in the coming months and we’re excited to bring new things to junior golf! Stay tuned!

Rankings are updated: http://tugr.org

Reach out with any questions, thanks,

Jeff