FedExCup scenarios: Dell Technologies Championship

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When Kevin Na won the recent Shriners Hospitals for Children Open it was his third TOUR victory in a span of just 30 starts – after winning just once in his first 369. The term “late bloomer� is a little hard to define, but we know it when we see it. Here is what it’s not: longevity. Sam Snead, oldest-ever PGA TOUR winner – 52 years, 10 months, 8 days when he won the 1965 Greater Greensboro Open, now the Wyndham Championship – does not qualify as a late bloomer. He’d done too much blooming already. Ditto for Davis Love III, who is one of six others to win on TOUR in their 50s; Phil Mickelson, 49, who despite a recent slump has remained a threat to win; and Tiger Woods, who will turn 44 in two months and won last week’s inaugural ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP in Japan. Here are the Top 18 Late Bloomers of the last 40 years based on their ratio of late-career to early-career victories, but with special bonus points for near-misses on the big stage even while playing (or contemplating) PGA TOUR Champions. It’s a subjective list, and some of these players are still blooming, but all give us hope that our best is right around the corner, as well. 1. Vijay Singh: Notched all of his 34 TOUR wins after turning 30, and a staggering 22 of them in his 40s. Bonus points: Singh, at 56, was just a shot back through 54 holes at The Honda Classic last season before carding a final-round 70 for solo sixth place. 2. Kenny Perry: Won 11 of 14 tournaments on TOUR in his 40s. Approaching 50, racked up five combined wins in 2008 and ’09; made the U.S. Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams in those years, respectively, at 48 and 49; and lost ’09 Masters Tournament to Angel Cabrera in a playoff. 3. Steve Stricker: Unlike the two guys above him on this list, Stricker won a couple times in his 20s. He went through a much-chronicled slump in his 30s, though, winning just once more, before figuring it out and making up for lost time with nine more victories in his 40s. 4. Fred Funk: Took him a while to make the TOUR, but once he got there he made the most of it. Among eight total victories, had four in his 40s – including the 2005 PLAYERS Championship at 48 – and even won at age 50 at the 2007 Mayakoba Golf Classic. 5. Tom Watson: Collected none of his 18 TOUR wins in his 20s, but 16 in his 30s, and two in his 40s. It was what happened after that, though, that pushes him high up this list, as his timeless swing – developed well into his career – nearly won him The Open Championship at age 59. 6. Calvin Peete: Winless in his 20s, but five wins in his 30s and six more in his 40s. The famously straight driver was 41 when he won twice in 1985, including THE PLAYERS Championship. He turned 42 that July and went 2-1-0 for the U.S. Ryder Cup team. 7. Nick Price: He won just once in his 20s, but racked up an astonishing 94.1% of his 17 TOUR wins after turning 30. Flourished in his 30s with 13 victories (including three majors), and won thrice more in his 40s. Won 2002 Mastercard Colonial, now Charles Schwab Challenge, at 45. 8. Ben Crenshaw: At 43 he won 1995 Masters just days after serving as pallbearer at the funeral of his longtime instructor, Harvey Penick. After winning once in his 20s, Crenshaw notched seven of his 12 wins in his 30s and four in his 40s; all told, 91.7% of his wins after turning 30. 9. Mark O’Meara: Peaked at 41, when thanks partly to the influence of pal Tiger Woods he won the Masters Tournament and Open Championship, his only two majors. Bonus points: O’Meara lost the first four playoffs of his TOUR career, but won the last three. 10. Tom Kite: Long considered the best player never to win a major and one of the game’s hardest workers, he was 42 when he broke through at the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Of his 17 total TOUR wins, he won none in his 20s, 11 in his 30s, and six in his 40s. 11. Loren Roberts: Captured three of his nine TOUR victories in his late 30s and six in his 40s. In 2000, he turned 45 and had three top-10 finishes in the majors, including a T3 at the Masters. 12. Hale Irwin: Did not win in his 20s, but made up for it with six victories in his 30s and four in his 40s, including the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah at a record 45 years of age. 13. Jeff Sluman: Authored two of his six wins in his 30s, including the 1988 PGA Championship at Oak Tree, and four in his 40s. 14. Zach Johnson: Played for Drake University and was equally unknown on the mini-tours until his 30s, when he racked up 11 (of 12) wins including a Masters and Open Championship. 15. Bubba Watson: Didn’t win at Georgia or on the Korn Ferry Tour, but has notched all 12 of his TOUR victories, including two Masters titles, since turning 30. 16. Kevin Na: He’s an old 36, having turned pro at 17. When he won the recent Shriners Hospitals for Children Open it was his third TOUR victory in a span of just 30 starts – after winning just once in his first 369. 17. Pat Perez: One win (2009 CareerBuilder Challenge) before turning 40, but two in the last three seasons. Perez, 43, comes into THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES after posting top-10s there the last two years, and finished third at the recent Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. 18. Paul Casey: The 42-year-old Englishman was stuck on one TOUR win for nine years but has won the last two Valspar Championships. Has said he may be playing the best golf of his life.

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This month, we are providing predictions for the 2017 FedExCup Playoffs, the four-tournament run that begins this week at THE NORTHERN TRUST. The predictions are probabilistic; using 30,000 simulations from our statistical model, for each player in this week’s field, we calculate their probability of advancing to the Dell Technologies Championship, the BMW Championship, the TOUR Championship, and finally, of being crowned the 2017 FedExCup Champion. Additionally, we provide predictions for this week’s event at Glen Oaks Club. Let’s get right to the predictions. (For those interested, details on our model are provided after the tables). We have taken into account those players who have publicly stated their intentions to not play in certain Playoff events. Here are the relevant probabilities for the 30 players with the highest probability of winning the 2017 FedExCup: The results are pretty interesting. First, the top 3 players (Hideki Matsuyama, Dustin Johnson, and Jordan Spieth) capture the lion’s share of the win probability for the FedExCup (52.1 percent!). This is really high; for context, at a major championship, the top 3 win probabilities would typically add up to about 14-17 percent. Second, while a player’s starting rank is clearly important, there are some players who are further down in the rankings that have fairly high win probabilities (Jason Day, Roryt McIlroy). This is mainly due to the fact that to win the FedExCup, you likely have to win an event along the way (and a player like McIlroy is more likely to do this than some of the players currently ranked above him in the FedExCup). Third, notice that the top 10 players in the current FedExCup rankings are guaranteed a spot in the TOUR Championship. Next, we highlight the players who are near the bubble for advancing to next week’s Dell Technologies Championship. Specifically, here are numbers 83 to 118 in the current FedExCup standings, ordered according to a player’s probability of advancing to next week: Notice that all players ranked 83rd or better in the current standings are guaranteed to advance to next week. According to our model, there are 10-12 spots that are really up for grabs (depending how much of a sure thing you feel 90 percent is). Finally, we have also predicted each player’s probability of winning, finishing in the top 5, finishing in the top 20, and making the cut at THE NORTHERN TRUST. Here are the 25 players with the highest win probabilities this week: To view the full interactive tables for the FedExCup Playoffs predictions, click here and for THE NORTHERN TRUST, click here. Now, a bit about our model and how we simulate a round of golf. If you understand how to simulate a single round, then it’s not a big step to understanding how we simulate the FedExCup. Keeping things as simple as possible, our statistical model can be thought of as proceeding in two steps. First, we assign each player an expected score, based off of various characteristics of the player. For example, two-year scoring average is one input, as is the player’s performance at his previous event (although the former is much more important than the latter). Second, to simulate a round of golf with our model, we add a mean-zero random term to each player’s expected score. So, while Rory McIlroy has a better expected score than most other players, in some simulations he will lose to players who have worse expected scores than him because he got a bad draw of his random term (or the other golfers got very good draws). Additionally, players who are more consistent are given less variation in their random term. We perform many simulations, and from these we can calculate the desired probabilities (ex: McIlroy’s win probability is defined as the fraction of simulations where he was the winner). The full details on our statistical model for predicting PGA TOUR events can be found here. Brothers Matt and Will Courchene grew up in a Canadian household full of golf fanatics. In 2016, they launched a DataGolf blog in hopes of contributing fresh and unbiased insights to the sport. Matt, a PhD student at the Vancouver School of Economics, focuses on applied econometrics and causal inference, while Will, who has a Masters of Economics from the University of Toronto, focuses on statistical modeling and data visualization.

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