Who Wins the Most of any Modern Golfer?

Edition No. 27 | September 1, 2023

Hey,

Our question of the week in my home and at a few dinners this week has been as follows: “If you were pitted randomly against another person of your gender who is the same age and speaks the same language, and you had to play them in a game (any game — board game, feat of strength, cards, chess, whatever) with your life on the line, but you had to pick the game before you were matched up with them, what game would you pick?

Feel free to steal it for your dinner table or lunch with friends. My answer is at the bottom.

Onto the news.

One Thing I Loved

I pulled this chart as Hovland was stunting on everyone at East Lake. I have a few thoughts below on what stands out about it.

• To be clear here, these are OWGR events only, and not all wins are created equal. Rahm has three Spanish Opens, Hovland has a couple of Hero World Challenges and Fitzpatrick has a Nordea Masters. We’re comparing a caliber of player, though, where it’s presumed that most of this levels out over time.

• Rahm wins a lot. This checks out, though. Since January 1, 2017, this is what the worldwide strokes gained numbers look like.

1. Rahm — 2.25

2. Rory — 2.12

3. Cantlay — 1.96

4. JT — 1.92

5. DJ — 1.91

• Maintaining a 7% win rate for 300+ events like DJ and Rory have is insane.

• I have no idea how many wins Xander has. OWGR says nine, including three Tour Championships (one tie). PGA Tour says seven, including one Tour Championship (no ties). He has the strangest resume in pro golf.

• The thing we do with tournaments where we crown a 36-hole leader because we presume his or her pace will continue is the same thing we do with careers. Morikawa is going to have a strong career, and he’s going to win at a solid rate, but we got way out over our skis after he won two of his first eight majors and six times in his first ~60 events.

• Scottie could have won so many times this year. His numbers are absolutely preposterous. Let’s pretend like he won two more in 2023 (I could about five he could have won) to get to 10. Now he’s between Rory and DJ. His number is the one I think could change the most in the near future.

• Hovland might be who we initially thought Wolff was going to be and then presumed Morikawa was going to be. He has all the gifts, but he also has two things that we could not have known until this season.

1. The desire to increase his win opportunities. When you compress the ball like Hovland, you’re going to stumble into a few wins. What you’re trying to do is increase the number of opportunities you have to win tournaments. Let’s say a flusher like Hovland is going to be in the mix in 7 percent of the events he plays. You’re going to win half or less of those (I’m making up numbers here).

But if you improve your chipping and work on your course management then you increase that opportunity you have to win to, like, 10 percent or maybe 12 percent. Now all of a sudden you’re winning half of those and you’re a generational player. But it takes tremendous works and dedication. As Rory said, “Nothing but respect for how he goes about his business. True professional. For someone that's still so young, he's got quite an old head on those shoulders.”

2. He wants the ball. This is — and apparently this wasn’t clear on Twitter — a euphemism for "having that dog in you.” Hovland is so jovial, so low-key that I’m not sure whether anyone knew one way or the other whether he wanted the ball. He clearly does. And he’s going to make tha Norwegian announcing duo utter all the worst words they’ve got many, many times.

The Infirmary

I’m on a text thread where someone last week asked, “Which of us do you think is most likely to win a Payne Stewart Award at some point in our careers?” and the first response was, “I was talking to somebody else about that this week.”

Question of the Week

Which golfer changed your mind about them the most (good or bad) this year? You can read the responses here (there are some good ones … and also some amusing ones).

My answer has to be Hovland. Coming into the year, I thought he was good (obviously). I didn’t know he was this though. Potential perennial top five player in the world and major championship threat every time out. He didn’t have a major top 10 until the Old Course last year, and now I think he could be a three-time major winner (I mean, probably not .. but maybe!).

So while the leap hasn’t been that large, it has been meaningful and it seems sustainable. Honorable mention: Brooks, Brian Harman and Bryson.

This sent me.

From the Archives

I wrote a long special edition newsletter on Wednesday discussing JT and the Ryder Cup so we don’t need to dive back into that, but I did think this week about this clip from January 2016 when JT said he’d rather play for a winning Ryder Cup team than win a major championship.

By the Numbies

5: That’s how many Tour Championship appearances Sungjae Im has played. At 25 years old, that means he is younger than AND has more Tour Championship appearances than the following players: Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland, Tommy Fleetwood, Max Homa, Collin Morikawa, Matt Fitzpatrick, Cam Young and Sam Burns.

The point: We don’t talk about Sungjae Im enough.

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ I went on the Fried Egg Golf podcast with Garrett Morrison this week to discuss Viktor Hovland’s leap, Scottie Scheffler’s numbers and various other takeaways from the 2022-23 season. It was a blast, and Porath gave us a very kind and generous endorsement!

👉️ Normal “driving every green at the Old Course” stuff from Gordon Sargent. Also, this meme response after he drove a handful of greens was perfect.

👉️ Ethan Strauss on whether you can Moneyball sportswriting is really good.

👉️ Some (a lot?) of my favorite golf content these days is coming from newsletters, and Joseph LaMagna has one of the best. If you like this newsletter and enjoy following golf, you should absolutely be reading his newsletter.

👉️ The most notable stats of the 2022-23 season from Justin Ray is always a must read. Humorously, the best stat was about Tiger.

How is This App Free?

Claire’s fraternity content is undefeated.

I felt this one.

You may have to know the layers here, but Andy playing golf in Crocs and a Baker Mayfield jersey was incredible.

Love Your Work

I loved this clip. Even though we have [gestures at all of human history] as proof that material gain will not satisfy, we still often refuse to believe it. And while I would push back a bit on DP here that the gift of waking up and getting to do what you love to do every day is the ultimate goal, it is absolutely more aspirational than chasing money.

Money confounds us because it’s a simple arbiter of success. And when things like that provide clarity to what we care about (success, winning), we often overvalue them. We undervalue satisfaction and contentment because they are impossible to measure and often feel ambiguous.

Anyway, watch the clip. It’s meaningful and a good reminder to care about the right things.

My answer to the insane question off the top: Bananagrams or Pop-a-Shot. My wife’s answer is a crossword puzzle (she’s infuriating to play against).