Since 1995 there have been 112 Major Championships played with 69 different winners. The champions range from the expected (2000 Tiger Woods), to the unbelievable (2005 Michael Campbell), to everyone in between.

The average Major Champion has an estimated skill of +1.5 strokes-gained per round—this would typically map to the 10th-15th best player in our rankings. Of the four Majors, The Open Championship has the lowest average skill of its winners at +1.3 while The Masters has the highest at +1.6.

Can you guess every square on the plot? Answers are here.

Does Oak Hill Play Favourites?

Historically the PGA Championship has played like a beefed-up version of a regular PGA Tour stop: the courses are longer, the rough is thicker, but the overall style of play is similar. When we analyzed the course fit of past PGA Championships, we found that the top players separated themselves more at PGA venues than the typical PGA Tour course. Drilling down to the specific skills that were favored, we found that driving distance was the most important driver of this increased separation.

The host of this week’s PGA Championship, Oak Hill, has been an important exception to this narrative. Oak Hill has hosted two PGAs, in 2003 and 2013. A quick look at the top of these leaderboards—Shaun Micheel won in 2003 and Jason Dufner won in 2013, neither of whom are bombers—suggests that Oak Hill might not be a course that can be simply overpowered. To provide a more complete picture, we looked at how the top 15 finishers in PGA Championships ranked in terms of their driving distance (DD) and accuracy (DA) heading into the tournament:

Average DD rank of Top 15 at full-field PGA Tour events: 55.7
Avg DA rank of T15 at full-field PGA Tour events: 60.9

Avg DD rank of T15 at non-Oak Hill PGAs: 50.0
Avg DA rank of T15 at non-Oak Hill PGAs: 64.3

Avg DD rank of T15 at 2003 Oak Hill PGA: 60.8
Avg DA rank of T15 at 2003 Oak Hill PGA: 46.0

Avg DD rank of T15 at 2013 Oak Hill PGA: 64.1
Avg DA rank of T15 at 2013 Oak Hill PGA: 44.6

We see that at a typical PGA Tour event a player’s driving distance rank is a better predictor of performance than their driving accuracy rank, and at non-Oak Hill PGA Championships this relationship is strengthened. However, in 2003 and 2013 at Oak Hill, this relationship was reversed: possessing accuracy was a much better predictor of success than distance.

Since 2013 Oak Hill has undergone a significant renovation which lengthened the course from 7160 yards to nearly 7400. Fairways were also widened and there was extensive tree removal. It seems likely that these changes will lessen the advantage of accurate players and increase the advantage of bombers. Early reports this week from media and players suggest that length will be essential to contending at this new version of Oak Hill. However, course fit is a tricky thing to predict, and we are still expecting that at least part of the historical driving accuracy advantage will be retained this week.

In our predictive model for the PGA Championship, we’ve hedged our bets a bit and are using a course fit profile for Oak Hill that combines the historical data from 2003 and 2013 (which favored accuracy) with the overall course profile we’ve estimated from past PGA Championships (which favored distance). As a result, it’s the best players in the field–especially those that drive it somewhat accurately–who are getting the largest course fit boosts this week.

Rankings Update

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Jon Rahm	1	—	1	—
Scottie Scheffler	2	—	2	—
Xander Schauffele	3	—	5	—
Patrick Cantlay	4	—	4	—
Tony Finau	5	—	12	1
Rory McIlroy	6	—	3	—
Sungjae Im	7	—	18	—
Tyrrell Hatton	8	—	17	—
Jason Day	9	6	20	15
Justin Thomas	10	1	13	1
Notables
Dustin Johnson	19	8	82	1
Joaquin Niemann	29	6	28	2
Si Woo Kim	35	9	36	6
Brooks Koepka	37	4	44	1
Vincent Norrman	139	26	301	53
Austin Eckroat	144	44	115	95
Marty Dou Zecheng	241	67	166	57
Simon Forsstrom	306	94	242	187

Digits Of The Week

5.7%

The percentage of PGA Club Professionals who have made the cut at the PGA Championship since 2004.

On average, Club Pros have lost 4 strokes per round to the field, with only 13 (3.3%) finishing the week with positive strokes-gained. Chip Sullivan notched the best performance in 2004, gaining 1.6 strokes per round to finish T31.

Player Feature

Max Homa

age 32 yrs, 6 months

dg rank 12th — owgr rank 6th

weeks in dg top 100 149

dg skill +1.48 strokes-gained / round¹

style well-rounded, above-average in all 5 skills

career wins
PGA Tour: 6
Korn Ferry Tour: 2
Amateur: 3

player comps
2019 Shane Lowry (similarity score²: 99.1)
2014 Bill Haas (93.1)
2012 Brendon De Jonge (92.9)

Letzig's Insight
Homa’s career trajectory since 2017 is nothing short of incredible: in 2017 he averaged -2.7 True SG per round and made just 2 cuts on the PGA Tour. He’s improved every year since then, averaging +1.5 True SG/round last season and +1.7 so far this year. The next step for Homa is to start playing to his new, higher, level in the major championships: his average major performance is just -0.1 True SG/round, more than a stroke below his non-major average in the same time period.

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
D. Johnson	LIV — Tulsa	+3.11	0.02
J. Day	PGA — Byron Nelson	+2.97	0.05
S. Forsstrom	DPT — Soudal Open	+2.02	0.001
S. Stricker	SNR — Regions Tradition	+2.0	0.001
S. Im	KOR — Woori Champ.	+1.08	0.0