The top of our rankings remain unchanged as we turn our attention to the 2023 Masters. Even though Augusta National tends to favour elite players (more on this below), only 14 of the last 26 champions (54%) were in the DG Top 10 the week prior to donning the green jacket. While this number seems low, it is in line with our model's predictions this week—in 50,000 simulations of this year's Masters, the winner came from our current Top 10 56% of the time.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Scottie Scheffler	1	—	1	—
Jon Rahm	2	—	3	—
Rory McIlroy	3	—	2	—
Patrick Cantlay	4	—	4	—
Tony Finau	5	—	13	—
Xander Schauffele	6	—	7	—
Max Homa	7	—	5	1
Jason Day	8	—	35	2
Cameron Young	9	—	14	—
Viktor Hovland	10	—	9	—
Notables
Cameron Smith	20	3	6	1
Corey Conners	21	18	28	12
Rickie Fowler	32	3	55	4
Sam Ryder	44	19	106	32
Brooks Koepka	75	31	118	7
Gordon Sargent (a)	98	6	—	—
Ben Kohles	164	42	353	—
Fred Couples	447	9	—	—

Digits Of The Week

9.7%

The probability—according to our model—that one of the 18 LIV players wins the 2023 Masters.

Elitist Augusta

Our latest blog post uses data visualization to explore the validity of a few common Augusta National narratives.

One of the main findings is that elite players—those with an estimated skill of +2.0 or better—have over-performed our model's already lofty expectations by 0.37 strokes per round at Augusta since 2004.

Coming into this week, our model only classifies five players as elite: Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, and Tony Finau.

Player Feature

Corey Conners

age 31 yrs, 3 months

dg rank 21st — owgr rank 28th

weeks in dg top 100 177

dg skill +1.15 strokes-gained / round¹

style accurate driver, elite iron player

career wins
PGA Tour: 2
Korn Ferry Tour: 0
PGA Tour Latinoamerica: 0
Amateur: 4

player comps
2018 Kyle Stanley (similarity score²: 98.9)
2016 Russell Knox (98.9)
2010 Graeme McDowell (97.3)

Letzig's Insight
Conners has quietly become one of the best ball strikers on the PGA Tour in the last 5 years. He currently ranks 8th in our skill estimates of OTT + APP, nestled in between superstars Jon Rahm and Tony Finau. Conners is 10th in OTT alone despite being the shortest driver in the top 10 by 4 yards, a testament to his accuracy off the tee.

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.

Perplexing Letzig

Here are the players with the most cumulative strokes-gained over or under baseline—our model’s prediction—in the last four weeks.

"ELITE" PLAYERS
Rising
Cameron Young: +14.7 SG in 2 events; Scottie Scheffler: +6.6 SG in 2 events;

Falling
Will Zalatoris: -18.9 SG in 2 events; Joaquin Niemann: -11.3 SG in 2 events;

"SUB-ELITE" PLAYERS
Rising
Sam Burns: +14.0 SG in 3 events; Taylor Moore: +13.2 SG in 2 events;

Falling
Aaron Wise: -15.0 SG in 2 events; Maverick McNealy: -13.5 SG in 3 events;

"AVERAGE" PLAYERS
Rising
Matt Wallace: +22.1 SG in 4 events; Samuel Stevens: +21.0 SG in 3 events;

Falling
Martin Laird: -23.2 SG in 3 events; Trey Mullinax: -18.3 SG in 3 events;

Week That Was

Winner	Event	True SG	xWin
C. Conners	PGA — Valero Texas Open	+3.57	0.35
B. Koepka	LIV — Orlando	+3.32	0.042
B. Kohles	KFT — Chile Classic	+1.81	0.001
S. Imahira	JPN — Homemate Cup	+1.39	0.0
R. Van Velzen	AFR — Limpopo Champ.	+1.18	0.0
U. Coussaud	CHA — The Challenge	+0.99	0.0
C. Hillier	SAM — Aberto do Brasil	+0.96	0.0
T. Power	ANZ — The National	+0.67	0.0

Explainers: True SG, xWins

Brooks Koepka topped a bunched leaderboard at LIV Orlando. We estimate his 3-round True SG performance would be good enough to lead a PGA Tour event through 54 holes just 4% of the time.