Win probability: BMW Championship

It is a star-studded first page of the leaderboard through two rounds at the BMW Championship. This should come as no surprise to anyone, given the strength of this field. Here are the top 10 win probabilities according to our model: Rose and Schauffele lead the way with 16 and 15 percent chances of winning, respectively. The model estimates Rose to be about 1 stroke better per round than Schauffele, and therefore we expect Rose to cover the 2 stroke deficit he currently faces. Sitting just outside this top 10 is Tiger Woods, who we estimate to have a 2.9 percent chance at victory. It is likely surprising to many readers that our model is giving Finau a slightly higher win probability than Woods. However, take a look at their respective finish probabilities for a Top 20 and Top 5 finish: Tiger has a significantly higher probability of finishing in the top 20 than Finau. Our model actually rates Tiger slightly better than Finau in terms of expected score, but Tiger has been incredibly consistent this year (i.e. he has had a low standard deviation in scores). As a result, the model gives Tiger slightly less upside than Finau. It’s worth noting that we don’t allow for big differences across players in their predicted standard deviations (because past standard deviation only weakly predicts future standard deviation), but Woods has been a big outlier over the past year. Finally, here is a strokes-gained breakdown of Tiger’s round on Friday: It was an abysmal day on the greens for Woods; he finished last in the field of 69 on Friday in strokes-gained: putting. Despite the disappointing second round, Woods is still in excellent shape to advance to the season-ending TOUR Championship: our model estimates his chances at 97 percent. NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut�, “Top 20�, “Top 5�, and “Win� 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 BMW Championship, 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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