Inside the Field: The Honda Classic

TUCSON, Ariz. – The 2019 Cologuard Classic tournament announced today that more than $600,000 was raised from the PGA TOUR Champions event that will soon benefit Southern Arizona youth amateur athletics, and colorectal cancer research and advocacy. The tournament’s charitable efforts were heavily focused on raising awareness of colorectal cancer and the importance of early screening and detection. Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men and women combined in the United States.1 When caught early, 90% of colorectal cancers are treatable.1 As part of the initiatives onsite, the Cologuard Classic kicked off tournament week by hosting the Get Your Rear In Gear 5k run/walk in partnership with the Colon Cancer Coalition. This year’s event had more than 700 participants and the funds raised will support colorectal cancer education and screenings benefiting the local community. Also, the tournament hosted a Dress in Blue Day presented by the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. It was an enormous success as thousands of fans, volunteers and golfers created a sea of blue with their attire – from hats to shirts, and even shoelaces. Additionally, the Cologuard Classic Celebrity Challenge played during the tournament’s second round, generated further awareness for the cause. Former athletes Oscar De La Hoya and Chuck Cecil defeated actors Alfonso Ribeiro and Greg Kinnear in front of a lively and energetic crowd. Following the round, Exact Sciences, makers of Cologuard, made a $50,000 donation in the names of De La Hoya and Cecil to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. De La Hoya announced Golden Boy Promotions, his boxing and mixed martial arts promotions firm, would match the donation for a total of $100,000 to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. The 2019 Cologuard Classic had an estimated $25 million economic impact on the Southern Arizona economy. For the Cologuard Classic and surrounding events, this included the expenditures of visitors; media from outside Arizona who covered the event; the organizational spending by the Conquistadores; media and event production companies; diverse organizations and businesses involved in operations; event production and activation of sponsorships; and the weekend coverage to national and international audiences on Golf Channel. The 2020 tournament will mark the third year of the Cologuard Classic, named after Wisconsin-based Exact Sciences’ noninvasive at-home colon cancer screening test for average-risk individuals 50 years or older, and the sixth year the Conquistadores have partnered with the PGA TOUR Champions. Next year’s tournament activities will take place February 23 – March 1 at Omni Tucson National Resort and will feature a 78-player field competing for a $1.7 million purse with $255,000 and 255 Charles Schwab Cup points for the winner. For up-to-date information on next year’s Cologuard Classic follow cologuardclassic.com, at facebook.com/CologuardClassic, on Twitter @CologuardGolf and Instagram @Cologuard_Classic. The Tucson Conquistadores, Inc. review funding requests from organizations and determine contributions including scholarships on a monthly basis. The deadline for applications is the 24th of each month, with requests reviewed and applicants notified by mail around the 15th of the following month. More information on charitable funding can be found on the Tucson Conquistadores’ website, www.tucsonconquistadores.com/funding-info-application. 

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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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