Stories to Watch Entering the 2022 PGA Tour Year

Jan 03, 2022

Twitter Spaces

I am really excited for the upcoming year. Our company is working with an elite group of golfers, and I have plans for creating much more content across different mediums. For starters, after each PGA Tour tournament concludes, I’ll be hosting a Twitter Space. This medium provides an opportunity to share takeaways/insights from the week and answer listeners’ questions live. If you’d like to participate in those, follow me on Twitter!

2022, Death of the Bounce Back Statistic

The year is 2022 and I am full of hope. And that starts, of course, with my chief hope of retiring the PGA Tour’s “Bounce Back Percentage” statistic.

Monahan’s dictionary defines Bounce Back Percentage as:

“The percent of time a player is over par on a hole and then under par on the following hole.”

Commentators and analysts often cite Bounce Back Percentage as a measure of a player’s resilience. Some people go as far as to include Bounce Back Percentage when predicting player performance in major championships. “Oh, Player A makes a lot of birdies following a bogey? He must be mentally tough.”

Unfortunately, such an inference fails to account for the difficulty of a hole. On the PGA Tour, players birdie Par 5s more than 40% of the time. Players birdie Par 3s and Par 4s less than 20% of the time. So if a player bogeys a hole preceding a Par 5, he is far more likely to “bounce back” than if the bogey precedes a Par 3, for example. Thus, the statistic contains information about the timing of bogeys and a player’s Par 5 performance. The statistic does not provide much insight into players’ resilience.

Here is an example from a round none of us will ever forget, Sebastian Cappelen’s Friday round at the 2021 Valero Texas Open:

Following each of his three bogeys (Holes 1, 4, and 7) on the front nine, in a valiant display of mental fortitude, Cappelen made three birdies. Such resilience! Or…it’s more to do with making bogeys on holes that precede some of the easiest holes on the golf course.

Look, it is not a coincidence that Bryson DeChambeau birdies Par 5s at the highest rate on Tour while also ranking near the top of the Bounce Back Percentage stat.

I’m not writing about this to ridicule the PGA Tour or media members covering golf. My point is that you should always view golf stats through the lens of performance relative to peers as opposed to raw scores. For example, the Tour could improve the value of the Bounce Back stat by changing the definition to something like:

“The percent of time a player loses at least half of a stroke to the field on a hole and then gains at least a half of a stroke on the field on the next hole.”

So Rest in Peace, Bounce Back statistic. And if you’re worth your definition, you will come back from this.

Bryson DeChambeau

When people have asked my advice for breaking into golf analytics, I always offer the same suggestion: Find a player with an extreme skill set, and investigate the holes on which he/she outperforms and underperforms. Then figure out why.

Bryson DeChambeau fits the bill. He is the longest hitter on the PGA Tour. Now some people will tell you that Bryson is as accurate as the most accurate drivers on Tour, but since he hits the ball so much farther than his competitors, he hits fewer fairways. In other words, some of his shots would find the fairway if he hit the ball 300 yards a little bit off line instead of 340 yards a little bit off line. This argument is, aptly, inaccurate. Wildly inaccurate. Even after controlling for length, Bryson ranks as one of the least accurate drivers on Tour in our database.

If you are curious about how straight the Top 10 players in the world hit the golf ball relative to the rest of the PGA Tour, here’s how we have those players bucketed:

Players who match DeChambeau’s driving profile will struggle on holes with penalty hazards. On holes with penalty hazards, DeChambeau must either swing driver and take on significant penalty risk, or he will elect to hit less than driver, which minimizes his distance advantage.

The data support this claim. On holes with zero penalty hazards in play, Bryson outperforms holes with penalty hazards in play by ~0.1 strokes per hole. I’d encourage you to observe Bryson’s performance and strategy on holes with penalty hazards in play off the tee. You’ll see a couple instances at Kapalua this week!

Also for your observational pleasure, DeChambeau is one of the best putters in the world inside 10 feet and struggles a bit from 15-25 feet. Interesting discrepancy to observe/analyze into 2022.

Justin Rose

Since 2012, Justin Rose has been ranked outside the Top 15 in the world at the end of just two calendar years, 2020 and 2021. People who are bearish on Rose for the upcoming season would likely argue that at age 41, he is aging out of the PGA Tour and has been trending in that direction.

I don’t think so.

At one point near the end of 2018, Rose was ranked #1(!) in the world. Then he made an equipment change and his performance gradually dropped off. Although Rose’s 2021 season did not meet his standards, I saw a lot of flashes in his game, both from a data and observational perspective. He also quietly registered two top 10s in major championships.

Rose is an excellent driver of the golf ball and one of the best putters on the planet. Don’t be surprised if he makes some noise on leaderboards in 2022.

Brooks Koepka

Brooks Koepka is the most disrespected golfer in the world, full stop. Koepka hits the ball long off the tee, putts above average, and hits some of the purest irons on Tour. Oh, and he has won four major championships, as many as any other active player on Tour under the age of 40.

Brooks Koepka is a victim of rankings culture. Much of the golf world’s perception is shaped by rankings like the Official World Golf Ranking or by Strokes Gained (or worse, FedEx Cup rankings).

Those ranking systems are a reflection of a player’s average performance. Major championship wins reflect a player’s ceiling. How well can a player perform at his peak? Koepka’s peaks are really tough to compete against, and he has the trophy case to prove it.

For much of last year, Brooks’ game was not sharp, especially with driver. And he still won in Phoenix, finished runner up at a World Golf Championship and at the PGA, and finished in the Top 6 in two other majors.

I would not be surprised if he hoists a major championship trophy (or two?) this season.

Hayden Buckley

Ok, I’ll give you one sleeper to watch. Hayden Buckley has earned status for this season, and I have a couple reasons to believe he will be successful on Tour.

The Fall swing is limited in terms of sample size, but Buckley’s data is eyebrow-raising. He has played five PGA Tour events since September. Three of those tournaments were poor finishes (two missed cuts and a t71 in Bermuda) and the other two were Top 10 finishes. I am impressed by his driving statistics from those tournaments.

Our models evaluate Buckley to have been the most accurate driver in the Fall by a wide margin. He also hits the ball a long distance. Even if Buckley’s accuracy regresses a bit, he could end up being an elite driver on the PGA Tour, which is a reliable skill for stacking paychecks.

I am hesitant to deduce too much from a small sample size like the Fall swing, but I have reason to believe Buckley’s results are not fluky. Formerly a first-team All-SEC selection, Buckley has a track record of winning tournaments both in college and on multiple development tours.

Let’s keep an eye on him this year.

Kapalua

The PGA Tour heads to Kapalua, Hawaii this week. In case you missed it in my last newsletter, I made a short video about the golf course they’ll be playing: