We looked at which players have been paired together most since 2017 on the PGA Tour (excluding the team event at the Zurich Classic). Some of these pairings are expected, while others might surprise you.

Superstars
1. McIlroy / Thomas: 41 rounds played together
2. Fowler / Rahm: 38
3. D. Johnson / Spieth: 33
4. D. Johnson / Thomas: 33
5. Thomas / Spieth: 32
6. Cantlay / Rahm: 29
7. Thomas / Rahm: 28
8. McIlroy / Schauffele: 28
9. Fowler / Matsuyama: 27
10. Rahm / Schauffele: 26

Fowler / Rahm was probably the main surprise here.

Non-Superstars
1. Horschel / Kisner: 25
2. Pan / Tway: 23
3. Armour / Garnett: 20
4. Z. Johnson / Snedeker: 20
5. Hughes / SW. Kim: 20
6. Kang / Frittelli: 19
7. Harman / Henley: 19
8. Walker / Dufner: 19
9. Kang / Tway: 19
10. Laird / Werenski: 18

Sung Kang had 4 appearances in the top 100 most common pairings, the most of any non-superstar. Not sure what the explanation is there...

Tiger Pairings
1. Thomas: 22 rounds played with Tiger
2. McIlroy: 17
3. Leishman: 11
4. Reed: 10
5. Spieth: 10
6. Koepka: 9
7. Matsuyama: 8
8. Fleetwood: 8
9. Rose: 8
10. Fowler: 7

Leishman feels like a misfit here, but back in 2018 the Tiger / Leish pairing was a PGA Tour staple: 9 of their 11 rounds played together were during that season.

Rankings Update

Wyndham Clark's win at the Wells Fargo Championship made him this week's big mover as he jumped 18 spots all the way into the DG Top 10. Not only did Clark win, but he did it against an elite field and in dominant fashion—finishing 4 strokes ahead of second place (Xander Schauffele) and 7 strokes ahead of third. This win comes after eight months of consistent play but only a handful of decent finishes to show for it—which is why his OWGR ranking was, and still is, relatively low.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Jon Rahm	1	—	1	—
Scottie Scheffler	2	—	2	—
Xander Schauffele	3	3	5	—
Patrick Cantlay	4	1	4	—
Tony Finau	5	1	11	—
Rory McIlroy	6	1	3	—
Sungjae Im	7	—	18	1
Tyrrell Hatton	8	7	17	1
Justin Thomas	9	3	14	1
Wyndham Clark	10	18	31	49
Notables
Viktor Hovland	16	5	12	—
Rickie Fowler	18	6	50	3
Tommy Fleetwood	21	13	21	4
Adrian Meronk	61	43	46	17
Alex Noren	64	14	56	4
Harris English	68	46	36	9
Kurt Kitayama	98	26	20	—

Adrian Meronk won the Italian Open at Marco Simone, this year's Ryder Cup venue. He was already a strong candidate to make Luke Donald's squad, but this victory might make him impossible to pass up.

Kurt Kitayama has been quietly struggling since his breakout win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March. He managed to make the quarterfinals at the Match Play, but otherwise has missed 4 of 5 cuts—with the only made cut coming at the Zurich Classic.

Ryder Cup Watch

With the Italian Open behind us, the next time we see Marco Simone G&CC will be in late September when it plays host to the 2023 Ryder Cup. Here's an update on how the teams are shaping up according to our model:

Team Europe
Right now there are 6 virtual locks (all > 86% to make the team) in Rahm, McIlroy, Hovland, Hatton, Fitzpatrick, and Fleetwood. Lowry, and Rose—while not locks—are both likely to be on the squad given their overall skill and previous Ryder Cup experience. This leaves a pool of 9 players battling for the final 4 spots, all of whom have at least a 1 in 5 chance of making the team. Among them is last week's winner Adrian Meronk (50%), 6-time Korn Ferry Tour winner Stephan Jaeger (52%), Swedish amateur Ludvig Aberg (31%), and both Hojgaard brothers (Nicolai 34%; Rasmus 20%).

Team USA
Things are less open-ended on the American side as 8 players (can you name them without looking?) have over a 65% chance of making the team. The next group of players, each with a > 40% chance, includes Sam Burns, Rickie Fowler, Max Homa, and newly-minted PGA Tour winner Wyndham Clark. These 12 players—at least for now—would be the (fairly) clear-cut selections if our model was in charge of picking the team. On the outside looking in we have Sahith Theegala, Keegan Bradley, Russell Henley, and Matt Kuchar, each with a 1 in 4 or better chance of making the team.

In terms of the matches themselves, our probabilities have moved from 61% USA, 32% Europe, 7% Tie to start the year to 64%, 29%, 7% currently. You can explore the full forecast here.

Player Feature

Matt Kuchar

age 44 yrs, 11 months

dg rank 23rd — owgr rank 48th

weeks in dg top 100 832

dg skill +1.21 strokes-gained / round¹

style accurate driver, elite short game

career wins
PGA Tour: 9
European Tour: 1
Korn Ferry Tour: 1

player comps
2021 Ian Poulter (similarity score²: 99.1)
2021 Pat Perez (85.2)
2021 Zach Johnson (80.7)

Letzig's Insight
The typical aging curve for a professional golfer shows a steep decline in performance starting in their early forties. Kuchar looked to be on that path in 2021 and 2022, which saw him average 5 fewer yards of distance off the tee and lose strokes on APP+OTT for the first time in his PGA Tour career. But it’s been a resurgent 2023: Kuchar has gained those 5 yards of distance back, and his short game has been among the best in the world (we rank him 6th in ARG+PUTT). The result is a return to the DG Top 25 for the first time since August 2020.

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
W. Clark	PGA — Wells Fargo	+5.18	0.996
C. Jung	ASA — Maekyung Open	+3.37	0.049
A. Meronk	DPT — Italian Open	+3.23	0.127
S. Ames	SNR — Mitsubishi Electric	+2.09	0.001
M. Rottluff	CHA — UAE Challenge	+1.51	0.0