OWGR, Angles, Returning the Serve
OWGR
Since we last spoke, important changes to the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) calculation methodology have been deployed.
I’d characterize the old and new methodologies as follows:
Prior methodology: Awarded rankings points to tournaments based on strength of field, with a bias towards over-rewarding top-heavy fields and a points floor provided to weak-fielded tournaments
Current methodology: Awards rankings points to tournaments strictly based on the strength of the entire field. Zero points floor.
The new methodology distributes points strictly according to merit.
To build your understanding of how the new methodology works, let’s look at how the OWGR allocated points to the first two events of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
The first event of the Playoffs, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, featured 120 of the top players on the PGA Tour. The second event, the BMW Championship, featured 68 of the top players on the PGA Tour. For simplicity, assume that the 120-player field was just the BMW Championship field plus an extra 52 players.
For winning the FedEx St. Jude Championship, Will Zalatoris earned 67 OWGR points. Patrick Cantlay earned 51 OWGR points for winning the smaller-fielded BMW Championship. Within the context of the OWGR system, the 16-point difference is significant.
Field size matters. It is much harder to win a golf tournament with 120 strong players than it is to beat 68 strong players. The new OWGR methodology seeks to reward strictly according to merit; thus, it allocates more points to the larger field.
Cam Smith, World Ranked No. 2, did not play the 68-person BMW Championship. The table below displays how many points would have been allocated to first place if Cam Smith had played instead of Trey Mullinax, the lowest rated player in the BMW Championship field:
So even if we’d strengthened the 68-person field, Cantlay would have earned only ~2 more points. If we’d deepened the field to 120 players, Cantlay would have earned 15-20 more points with a victory.
Limited field tournaments cannot rack up hefty OWGR point totals, which feels relevant given the current landscape of professional golf:
Is the new OWGR methodology good? Depends who you ask.
If you operate a tour with strong, deep fields that allows for mobility amongst competitors, yes, the changes are good.
If you operate a closed tour with locked-in player contracts and small fields…no, the changes are not good. They’re a disaster.
Do Angles Matter in Golf?
Yes. A golf ball bounces and rolls, so by definition, a player’s angle to the hole matters. However, players hit the ball so high and with so much spin that the ball ends up pretty close to where it lands. Angles matter; they just don’t matter very much.
From the fairway, an advantageous angle is rarely worth as much as 0.1 strokes on the PGA Tour. From the rough, an advantageous angle is rarely worth as much as 0.15 strokes on the shot. Each of these values is significantly lower than the PGA Tour average value of being in the fairway versus being in the primary rough, which is worth ~0.3 strokes.
The value of having an advantageous angle is much lower than the importance of finding the fairway.
If you were to design a hole to challenge my statements above, what would it look like? Maybe something like Hole No. 5 at Wilmington Country Club, site of the 2022 BMW Championship.
If proper angles provide a significant advantage, scoring from the right side of the fairway should be easier than from the left side of the fairway on this hole, right?
But alas:
Now in theory, scoring from the right rough should be slightly better than scoring from the left rough. Shots bounce and roll more from the rough than from the fairway, so it is intuitive that angles matter more from the rough.
Though sample size is limited, scoring from the right rough was better than scoring from the left rough in the 2022 BMW Championship by approximately 0.3 strokes. With more observations, I’d expect this number to drop much closer to 0.15 strokes.
Do PGA Tour players understand this stuff? Yes.
Below is PGA Tour player J.T. Poston’s tee shot on Hole No. 5 during his second round. This shot, just barely right of the center of the fairway, represents the median shot line for all tee shots hit in the 2022 BMW Championship on this hole.
In aggregate, players basically aimed down the center of the fairway with a slight tilt right of center.
Painting in broad strokes, you are better off thinking about optimal tee shot strategy as “How do I maximize my chance of hitting the fairway?” as opposed to “How do I secure the best angle?”
PGA Tour players generally understand this pretty well.
Tennis Return Strategy
Where should elite tennis players position themselves when returning a serve? A recent paper from Stephanie Kovalchik leverages Hawkeye ball positioning data to derive insights about return strategy.
Her paper compares return strategies among four of the top male tennis players in the world.
For example, Daniil Medvedev positions himself much farther back on the return (*when he’s not banned from competing based on his birthplace*):
Than Novak Djokovic does:
Presumably, optimal positioning shifts quite a bit depending upon the opponent and surface type. I’d imagine players have a robust innate understanding of optimal positioning. But data can help!
When predicting a sport, half the battle is understanding these edges. The other half is understanding which players understand these edges.
Something for you to watch as the U.S. Open gets underway!
PGA Tour Schedule
While the PGA Tour faces an existential threat, I went on The Fried Egg Golf Podcast with Andy Johnson a couple weeks ago to discuss how to combat LIV Golf. Recommended listening.
Last week, the PGA Tour announced wholesale changes to the schedule, many of which align with our discussion:
We reconvened to evaluate the announcements here.
The best ideas will win. They always do.
Feedback/Contact
Twitter: @JosephLaMagna
Email: Joseph.LaMagnaGolf@gmail.com
Other Recent Content
I went on the Inside Golf Podcast with Andy Lack to discuss my work and golf data. Plenty of topics discussed from which you can glean insights.
Congrats to Rory on winning the Tour Championship! A deserving champion:
Don’t gift walks:
Finding the Edge favorite Bob Voulgaris bought a soccer team. They’re going to win:
Little League videos featuring a player congratulating his opponent on blasting a home run 350 feet over his head are banned from my page. Thirsty, camera-aware coaches are banned too. Woke Iowans are allowed:
