Day: May 27, 2020

PGA TOUR LIVE: Relive some of this season’s top momentsPGA TOUR LIVE: Relive some of this season’s top moments

It’s two weeks until the PGA TOUR returns. That means it’s a good time to take a look back at what happened before golf shut down and re-acquaint yourself with the season’s top stories. During the coronavirus pandemic, the PGA TOUR is making PGA TOUR LIVE free and available for streaming, and adding new content every week. Currently the free content is limited to those in the U.S. There are features on two-time FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy, Payne Stewart, Ben Hogan and many more, plus tournament rewinds to get the juices flowing for the TOUR’s return next month. To get started, click here. Here’s some recent tournaments that are worth rewatching: PGA TOUR Rewind: 2020 Honda Classic: Sungjae Im is a fan favorite because of the way he flushes his irons and the impressive resume he’s amassed at just 22 years old. He was the 2018 Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year, 2019 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year and is this year’s FedExCup leader. He has four top-3 finishes this season, including his first career victory at The Honda Classic. Im’s ballstriking was crucial to conquering one of the PGA TOUR’s most penal courses. PGA TOUR Rewind: 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard: This is an equation that promises entertainment: a star-studded leaderboard on a crispy course that caused scores to soar. Tyrrell Hatton has been one of the best players this season and he held off Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, Im and Marc Leishman to get his first PGA TOUR win. PGA TOUR Rewind: 2020 Puerto Rico Open: The trio of Matthew Wolff, Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland have infused new energy into the game. Hovland joined his peers in the winner’s circle with his victory at the Puerto Rico Open. PGA TOUR Rewind: 2019 Presidents Cup: A thrilling comeback on an Alister Mackenzie masterpiece. The 2019 Presidents Cup is definitely worth watching again. The International Team’s ability to hang tough against a Tiger Woods-led U.S. side propelled many of its players to success in 2020. Leishman, Im, Cameron Smith and Adam Scott all won after returning to the States from Royal Melbourne. PGA TOUR Rewind: 2019 Safeway Open: Cameron Champ’s victory for his ailing grandfather was one of the most emotional moments of the season. Champ, 24, already has two PGA TOUR victories, proving that he’s much more than a long hitter.

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Phil wants more of ‘The Match’ with more celebsPhil wants more of ‘The Match’ with more celebs

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Big break: How long layoffs impact playersBig break: How long layoffs impact players

We are less than three weeks away from the PGA TOUR’s official return at the Charles Schwab Challenge. More than 90 days will have passed between the cancellation of THE PLAYERS and the TOUR’s resumption of play. When THE PLAYERS was canceled back in March, a cloud of uncertainty was hanging over golf and the world around it. Nobody knew when we would see the world’s best tee it up again, but both players and fans were certainly hoping it would be safe to do so sooner than later. We now have a clear schedule for the remainder of the year, with competition resuming 13 weeks after the THE PLAYERS was canceled. Let’s explore what impact this break might have on player performance. Needless to say, 13-week breaks are not common among PGA TOUR players. Overall, only around 2.7% of starts are made by players coming off a 13-week break. A lot can happen in that time. Back in 2000, Tiger went on a run of five wins, including three majors, in a 13-week stretch. Below is a chart showing the percentage of players in a given event, by weeks off entering the tournament. Fifty-two percent of a field played the week prior. As we might expect, there’s a clear relationship between performance and the number of weeks a player has been off. We can analyze how well players perform by comparing our estimate of their ability (how we would expect them to perform) to how they actually performed. Generally, players taking small breaks of two weeks or less are marginally better than expected, while longer breaks result in an average drop in performance of between 0.1 and 0.2 strokes per round. For context, a drop of 0.2 strokes per round is about the gap between 100th- and 135th-ranked players in the world. It’s a significant change, but not enormous. Additionally, the drop in performance after a 10-20 week gap is quite consistent across different levels of players. Top-50 players in the world are affected by a similar amount to those outside the top 50. The below bar chart shows how players performed against their expected performance after layoffs of varying lengths. Given how uncommon breaks of this length are, we can’t draw too many conclusions on who we might expect to perform well in the early weeks back. However, there are a few players who over the past five years have had multiple 10+ week gaps and performed better than expected on their return. Ryan Moore (+0.9 strokes per round) and Phil Mickelson (+0.6) top that list. The below table shows the players who have performed the best after long layoffs. Intuitively we might think that after an extended period without playing on tour that touch on the greens might be a little off, and putting would be the area to suffer. In reality, it appears to be the opposite. Taking a player’s performance in their ‘return’ event compared with their season average that year, putting is actually the only area that remains quite consistent, with the other areas all dropping by a similar amount.

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