The Junior Invitational

Last week was the annual Junior Invitational at Sage Valley, considered one of the top junior events of the year. This year’s field didn’t disappoint with 15 of the top-20 TUGR ranked junior boys in attendance. Congratulations to Miles Russell and Aphrodite Deng for their wins.

This event marks a very important example of why the TUGR process works so well. Heading into the week, Joshua Bai was the 5th ranked overall player in the TUGR rankings. Unfortunately, he doesn’t even appear in other ranking systems. Yet, he’s consistently competing with, and often beating, the best players in junior golf. How is that? How does TUGR know about Joshua, a University of Florida recruit, and can accurately rank him, while other systems can’t?

The answer goes back to the TUGR process. We capture as many events as possible; i.e., junior, amateur, qualifiers, Monday qualifiers, 1-day events, and more. By using a Head-to-Head methodology, we can accurately rank any event without having to put guardrails around the process.

(For example, I was emailing with a parent this week and showed how TUGR had captured 9 of their child’s events over the past 12 months, whereas another system had only captured 7 and an even different system had only captured 4.)

Joshua’s resume is impressive, but primarily consists of amateur events, such as: The Western Am, The Southern Am, The North and South Am, The Northeast Am, The Sunnehanna Am and so forth.

All of these events are captured in the TUGR ecosystem because we know many juniors play more than just junior events.

As a top-10 ranked player, his profile is wide open for anyone to see - check it out: 

_{Joshua’s Profile}

When we talk about why TUGR’s process yields the most accurate and predictive outputs in the game, it’s because of examples like this that consistently highlight a better approach. Lev Grinberg is another example. A top-5 player in TUGR, but unfortunately, not on the map of other rankings because he primarily plays in Amateur (and pro) events.

Future Enhancements- Hear From You

At TUGR, we’re always looking toward the future and how we can continue to deliver on our three platforms for Rankings, Analytics, and Recruiting. We have tons of ideas, many of which are in the works, to enhance each of these platforms.

We’d love to hear from you. Are there features, views, charts, graphs, or tools that you would be game-changing for you? If so, please email us at [email protected] to give us your feedback.

Like I said, we have a long list of upgrades and enhancements we’re continually working on and will be rolling out over the course of this year, but we’d love to hear if there was anything top of mind. Nothing is off limits!

Our mission is to fuel better decisions, lower scores, and epic days on the golf course. TUGR is meant to be an extension of your team. Each aspect of the platform, be it the Rankings, Analytics, or Recruiting sites are meant to give you the tools and insights to improve.

Rankings updated: http://tugr.org

Thanks,
Jeff