OWGR/LIV, Tom Kim, NBA Futures
OWGR Accreditation
LIV Jeddah concluded on Sunday with Brooks Koepka hoisting the trophy following 54 holes of riveting play. With his victory, Brooks moved from No. 33 to No. 35 in the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR).
Ok, the joke there was that LIV remains unaccredited. LIV events do not receive OWGR points, so LIV players’ rankings continue to plummet.
Garrett Morrison of The Fried Egg wrote about the considerations for LIV’s OWGR accreditation, which includes a discussion around OWGR’s inclusion criteria. I recommend reading it!
My radical personal view is that the OWGR should have sensible criteria that allows for entry tours to form. As soon as a new tour adheres to the criteria, the OWGR should accredit the tour swiftly.
In the meantime, every piece of OWGR’s inclusion criteria should be evaluated for sensibility.
LIV is not particularly close to meeting all elements of the inclusion criteria. So the controversy rages on:
To address this once and for all, “LIV deserves world ranking points because the events feature top players” is not an intelligent argument. What’s the definition of a top player?
We probably all agree that, by any definition, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith are elite players. But if Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, and a bunch of ten handicaps teed it up in a charity event, we’d all agree that the event doesn’t deserve OWGR points.
LIV golfers are not a bunch of ten handicaps. Yeah, I know. But we need rules in order to systematically evaluate strengths of fields worldwide. When golfers are hopping around different tours, we can evaluate relative skill level on each tour by comparing players’ performance to their baseline performance on each tour. If a golfer is beating everyone on Tour A but consistently finishes in the middle of the pack on Tour B, we can do some math to determine how much harder it is to win on Tour B than on Tour A.
But what if, hypothetically, someone created a 60-player tour where the golfers played exclusively on their own tour? For a decade, none of the 60 players ever play on another tour. In Year 1, we could reasonably estimate the strength of these 60-person fields by analyzing players’ results in relation to their performances on previous tours. But how would we evaluate the strength of this tour in Year 2? Or Year 10? The players are never playing against anyone but themselves. Are their skill sets decaying? Are these players still elite in Year 10? How would we know?
The point is that there is an obvious need for an accreditation process and adherence to rules. OWGR must have sensible criteria that allows for both innovation in the game and proper player evaluation within the global golf ecosystem. You can rank players just fine without having a 36-hole cut. You cannot rank players without mobility across tours.
Bryson, enough with the “We deserve ranking points because we’re good” argument. Focus on helping Crushers GC prepare to take down the 3 Aces in Miami.
Tom Kim
Tom Kim, the 20-year-old phenom from South Korea, has taken the golf world by storm. He’s won twice on the PGA Tour in his past five starts. One of his wins was by three strokes; the other was by five strokes, and he’d started the tournament with a quadruple bogey.
Kim currently sits at No. 15 in the Official World Golf Rankings. His meteoric ascent has many people in the golf world proclaiming him the next superstar. We…need to slow our roll.
Tom Kim is a tremendously talented golfer. So far in his young career, he’s shown signs of elite skill with his irons and with his putter. However, his game is missing the most reliable advantage in the sport: distance. Kim consistently gives up ~10 yards per tee shot to the field, which means he is giving up ~15-25 yards per tee shot to top players in the world.
Tom Kim can contend on golf courses like Sedgefield Country Club and TPC Summerlin because these courses are not highly correlated with power.
Check out Tom’s drive on Hole 13 during the second round of the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield:
Kim hit this tee shot 284 yards; the field averaged 267 yards off this tee. Kim gained 17 yards on the field off the tee on this shot. How? Kim hit driver on this hole while 70% of the field hit less club than driver. Kim’s accuracy with his driver enabled aggressive play, which ultimately resulted in a birdie.
Not all holes on Tour are shaped like Hole 13 at Sedgefield. On holes where every player in the field is bashing driver (see Torrey Pines), Kim will be playing from far behind the best golfers in the world. Consider that, in the FedEx St. Jude Championship, Tom Kim and Will Zalatoris pulled driver on 34 common holes. Zalatoris gained ~25 yards per drive on Kim, outdriving him on 31 of the 34 tee shots. On Hole 13 displayed above, Zalatoris lost 17 yards to Kim because Will hit less than driver off the tee.
Expectations should be tempered for Kim’s next twelve months. As he moves onto golf courses that demand distance off the tee, like many major championship venues, Kim will need to putt lights out to vault himself into contention against the best players in the world. And putting can be quite unpredictable.
Unless Tom Kim decides to start speed training (I highly recommend!), I expect his statistical profile to regress towards a profile like pre-LIV Abraham Ancer. Hanging around 15th-25th in the world is a reasonable forward-looking expectation. It’s hard to be a Top 10 player in modern golf while playing from way behind your competitors.
To those who have been promulgating that the sky is the limit for Tom Kim, bookmark this section of Finding the Edge and revisit it in a year.
NBA Futures
The NBA season kicks off tonight, so let’s bet on a couple team win totals. Ok, a couple factors to keep in mind as we enter the new NBA season. First, parity in sports continues to increase. NFL teams understand the benefits of being pass-heavy and getting aggressive on fourth down. Golfers understand the importance of generating speed. NBA teams understand the importance of spacing and efficient three-point shooting. Edges are harder to find than they were ten years ago. In theory, this should bring the top and the bottom of the NBA closer together.
The counteracting force is Victor Wembanyama, a generational prospect eligible to be drafted next spring.
Wembanyama is 7-foot-3, skilled, athletic, and has an 8-foot wingspan. Teams are going to shamelessly tank for him.
One tanking candidate is the Utah Jazz. Since joining the Jazz a little less than a year ago, executive Danny Ainge has stripped the team down. As the season progresses, Ainge will likely continue stripping the team down to increase his chances of landing Wembanyama.
(I know some NBA players read Finding the Edge so if Utah trades for you in a few months, no offense. Utah probably traded for you so they can win. )
I’m taking under 25.5 wins for the Utah Jazz. Generally four or five teams finish the season under 25.5 wins, and I like Utah’s chances of being close to the bottom.
I’m also taking the Clippers over 52.5 wins. The most important lesson I learned from the 2021-22 NBA season was the importance of effective perimeter defenders. It’s impossible to have too many. The Los Angeles Clippers are absolutely loaded with perimeter defenders (Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, Robert Covington, Nicolas Batum, etc.).
In the age of spacing and speed, you better have elite perimeter defenders that can switch and defend multiple positions. The Clippers fit the bill. Plus they play Utah four times, so they’re starting the season 4-0.
Generally five or six teams finish the season over 52.5 wins, and I like LAC’s chances of being close to the top.
Despite the expected parity in the NBA, I’m expecting such shameless tanking for Wembanyama that I can stomach betting the over on a high team total and the under on a low team total.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make two irresponsibly large wagers that probably have negative expected values and justify it in the name of newsletter content.
This newsletter is not just free. I pay to write it!
Feedback/Contact
Twitter: @JosephLaMagna
Email: Joseph.LaMagnaGolf@gmail.com
Other Recent Content
It’s fun getting worked up over OWGR accreditation and perimeter defense, but none of that really matters compared to situations like this (and Peng Shuai):
I wrote a piece for The Fried Egg on Sungjae Im that pairs well with the above section on Tom Kim
Great DataGolf piece/visualization showing how Korn Ferry Tour players fare post-graduation
Barkley getting Dustin Johnson money:
Everybody wins on a Barkley contract extension:
The following two tweets encapsulate modern discourse around “Analytics” well:
“Analytics” is simply evidence-based decision making. The worst thing that ever happened to intelligent decision making in sports was terming it “Analytics.”
Saw a great life hack so I’m passing it along to you:
