Scottie Scheffler just surpassed the +2.5 skill mark for the first time, which is typically the level of performance required to be the best player in the world in any given season. Below we’ve plotted the evolution in skill of the 26 times a player (excluding Tiger, because he ruins the plot) has reached the +2.5 mark since 1995:

Players can appear in the plot more than once—Rory is in it 5 times—as long as there was at least a year between their reaching the +2.5 level. The main takeaway is how difficult it is to sustain this level of play for any length of time. Jordan Spieth was an unstoppable force in 2015 and to a lesser degree in 2017, but he’s struggled to maintain an elite skill level in the 5 years since.

Scheffler’s game appears rock solid right now, and it’s hard to imagine his game falling off anytime soon. But that’s also how it likely felt for most of the players included in the plot above. Success is fleeting in golf, and if history is any indication Scheffler’s time at the top will be shorter than we think.

Rankings Update

We don't need to tell you what's notable about our rankings this week because Twitter already has (thanks NLU).

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Jon Rahm	1	—	2	1
Scottie Scheffler	2	1	1	1
Rory McIlroy	3	1	3	—
Patrick Cantlay	4	—	4	—
Tony Finau	5	—	12	1
Xander Schauffele	6	—	7	1
Max Homa	7	—	6	1
Tyrrell Hatton	8	5	17	7
Viktor Hovland	9	2	9	2
Collin Morikawa	10	—	11	1

Ryder Cup Watch

With just under 7 months until the festivities kick off at Marco Simone, the likely combatants are starting to take shape for both sides. For the US, both the data and the eye test probably agree on 10 players who are likely to make it, while the final 2 spots are much less certain. Among the contenders to snatch one of the final positions are Sam Burns, Keith Mitchell, Rickie Fowler, Keegan Bradley, and Taylor Montgomery.

On the European side there are 5 virtual locks for the team in McIlroy, Rahm, Hatton, Hovland, and Fitzpatrick. The next tier of players includes Fleetwood, Lowry, and Rose, who are all over 50% to make the squad according to our model. Hojgaard (Rasmus), Smith, Noren, and Power round out the (likely) current European team.

You can explore the full forecast here.

Player Feature

Ludvig Aberg

age 23 yrs, 5 months

dg rank 126th — owgr rank n/a

weeks in dg top 100 0

dg skill +0.2 strokes-gained / round¹

style bomber, above-average putter (based on limited data)

career wins
Amateur: 9

player comps
2016 Xander Schauffele (similarity score²: 96.1)
2019 Sam Burns (92.3)
2018 Haotong Li (92.2)

Letzig's Insight
Aberg is ranked 2nd in our amateur rankings and 21st in our all-time amateur rankings (only includes data since 2010). As his top player comps show, there is a lot of uncertainty around his possible career trajectories. According to our Ryder Cup model, Aberg has an outside shot (10%) of making the European team this fall.

1 Relative to an average PGA Tour field.

2 Similarity scores are uniformly distributed from 0 (least similar) to 100 (most similar). Similarity is based on overall skill and playing style over the previous 3 seasons and a measure of career-long performance. Comps are restricted to players of the same age.

Week That Was

Winner	Event	True SG	xWin
S. Scheffler	PGA — THE PLAYERS	+4.83	0.986
J. Campillo	DPT — Magical Kenya Open	+2.31	0.004
L. Dobbelaar	ANZ — NZ PGA Champ	+0.93	0.0
S. Wears-T	AFR — Mediclinic Invitational	+0.92	0.0
W. Ormsby	ASA — Int'l Series Thailand	+0.81	0.0