DeChambeau builds 4-shot lead at THE NORTHERN TRUST

PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan wrote this letter to all employees and players this week and approved it for public distribution. This past weekend, I – like many of you, I’m sure – spent a lot of time trying to understand and process the civil unrest that has engulfed many cities across the United States, following the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The hardships and injustices that have and continue to impact the African-American community are painful to watch and difficult to comprehend. And as a citizen of this country and a leader of this organization, I must admit that I’m struggling with what my role should be. But I am not giving up. I’ve often heard that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. What can I say? What should I do? I’m certain many of you are asking those same questions. In the midst of that confusion, as usually happens, the PGA TOUR family steps up to shine a light of perspective and compassion. First, I had several meaningful and emotional conversations this weekend with colleagues and friends in the African-American community, who – once again – showed me that sometimes listening and making a commitment to understand are the only things you can offer, and that’s OK. And I learned that two of our PGA TOUR YOU groups – CORE and HONOR — took it upon themselves to work over the weekend on a unified message … reminding all of us at the TOUR of our shared values, offering help for those who may need it and providing perspective on how to be there for each other as we navigate this incredibly complex and painful issue, together. What I was left with was this: make no mistake about it – someone you know and care about is hurting right now, even if they haven’t told you that directly (and, of course, our work-from-home, socially distant way of living right now is not helping the cause). And if anyone at the TOUR is hurting, we should all hurt. That’s how a family works. To that end, please also spend a few minutes on THIS ARTICLE that expresses an important and powerful viewpoint from the African-American community, not only in relation to the recent tragic headlines, but also the fear and sadness created by the inequality and racism that still presides in the 21st century. Too often we just move on when we are not directly influenced by the news of the day. Yes, we have all been impacted by the global pandemic, but we should also be painfully aware and impacted by the dividing lines in our country. We might not know exactly what to do right now, but we shouldn’t be deterred. We should communicate and learn. We should talk to our family, friends and colleagues in an open and compassionate way. We should grow as individuals and as an organization. And, most importantly, we should demand better. Jay Monahan

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Through the first round of the Fort Worth Invitational, there are 76 players at par or better (T61). Here is how we are projecting tomorrow’s cutline, assuming course conditions are similar to Thursday’s: Even par: 78 percent 1 over par: 17 percent 1 under par: 5 percent It was a tale of two nines for Xander Schauffele on Thursday, shooting 4-under par on his front nine followed by 6-over par on the inward half. His probability of playing the weekend climbed all the way to 95 percent at the turn. Now, it stands at just 40 percent as Schauffele is currently two strokes outside the most likely cutline number for Friday. Here is how his cut probability evolved throughout Thursday’s play: It’s interesting how much a golfer’s performance on the first hole of the tournament can influence their finish probabilities. For example, Jim Furyk started Thursday with a 67 percent chance of making the cut. After making birdie on his first hole of the day (the 10th, which played to about par) his cut probability jumped to 76 percent! That is a big difference: 67 percent was the 40th highest pre-tournament cut probability, while 76 percent was the 18th highest. What explains this nine percent increase? The short answer is simply that the margins between the best golfers in the world are very small: just a single stroke per round separates the 20th ranked player from the 100th ranked in this field (in terms of expected scores), according to our model. When Furyk gains a stroke on his first hole of the tournament, he is effectively leapfrogging all the players with ability levels that are less than half a stroke better than his (because we are predicting a 2-round cut). This turns out to be about 20 players. This specific example is illustrative of the narrow margins in professional golf, and the difficulty in predicting (with certainty) where players will finish on the leaderboard any given week. Finally, here are some other notable cut probabilities heading into Friday: Rickie Fowler (3 under par, 97 percent), Jon Rahm (2 under par, 95 percent), Jordan Spieth (1 under par, 91 percent), and Patrick Cantlay (3 over par, 38 percent). NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cutâ€�, “Top 20â€�, “Top 5â€�, and “Winâ€� probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 10K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the Fort Worth Invitational, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

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