With all the off-course golf news swamping our TVs and Twitter feeds over the past week, the U.S. Open can't come soon enough. Here are a couple things we came across while prepping our model for the week ahead:

U.S. Open Histories
The USGA is fairly predictable in how they set up their Opens: long, firm, and with penalizing rough and runoffs. That formula usually produces one of the toughest tests players face all season. Here are the players in this week's field who have fared best on U.S. Open setups over the years:

1. Xander Schauffele: +3.17 strokes-gained per round, 24 rounds played, 0 wins
2. Brooks Koepka: +2.70, 34, 2
3. Hideki Matsuyama: +2.28, 38, 0
4. Collin Morikawa: +2.27, 14, 0
5. Dustin Johnson: +2.13, 56, 1
6. Rory McIlroy: +2.12, 46, 1
7. Scottie Scheffler: +2.10, 16, 0
8. Patrick Reed: +1.97, 34, 0
9. Jon Rahm: +1.97, 24, 1
10. Jason Day: +1.91, 36, 0

LACC—Who does it fit?
An interesting wrinkle with this year's U.S. Open is that we've never seen the golf course—Los Angeles Country Club (North Course)—before. Without this data, it can be tricky to guess precisely how a golf course will play, or what style of player it might favour. One thing we do know about LACC is that it is extremely long, and should force players to hit several more long irons than a typical tour stop. With that in mind, here are the best long iron players (200+ yards from fairway) over the past 12 months:

1. Gary Woodland: +0.101 strokes-gained per shot, (174 shots in sample)
2. Collin Morikawa: +0.092, (154)
3. Tom Hoge: +0.089, (197)
4. Scottie Scheffler: +0.088, (202)
5. Xander Schauffele: +0.085, (169)
6. Patrick Cantlay: +0.081, (184)
7. Corey Conners: +0.080, (181)
8. Tom Kim: +0.075, (198)
9. Justin Rose: +0.071, (150)
10. Sahith Theegala: +0.067, (226)

Scottie's Scaries (cont'd)

Last week we documented how great Scottie Scheffler has been tee-to-green in 2023—and also how poor he's been on the greens. A reader emailed us asking for a more detailed breakdown of his putting woes; here are the results:

In short, Scheffler is worse than he's ever been from all ranges. He's lost 17 strokes from inside 10 feet so far in 2023 (compared to -8.9 last year), but the biggest change from 2022 is in the 10-20 foot bucket: +13.9 in 2022, -2.2 in 2023. Despite the trouble from short range, Scheffler has maintained his above-average lag putting so far this year.

Rankings Update

We might lose our citizenships if we failed to mention Nick Taylor's historic win at the Canadian Open last week at Oakdale G&CC, just a 20-minute drive from DG headquarters! The win puts Taylor 34th in our rankings and 44th in the OWGR—the highest he's ever climbed in both.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Scottie Scheffler	1	—	1	—
Jon Rahm	2	—	2	—
Xander Schauffele	3	—	6	—
Rory McIlroy	4	—	3	—
Patrick Cantlay	5	—	4	—
Tyrrell Hatton	6	1	14	2
Viktor Hovland	7	1	5	—
Tony Finau	8	—	12	—
Collin Morikawa	9	—	18	—
Jordan Spieth	10	—	10	—
Notables
Rickie Fowler	13	1	45	1
Tommy Fleetwood	16	10	21	2
Max Homa	17	2	7	—
Nick Taylor	34	25	44	25
Aaron Rai	60	32	94	36
Adrien Dumont de Chassart	139	38	479	—
Michael Thorbjornsen	230	28	490	9
Sam Bennett	313	59	469	—

Max Homa—a Southern California native and holder of the course record (61) at LACC—is the darling of the betting market this week. Our model is not convinced: he's fallen to 17th in the DG rankings after a relatively pedestrian 3-month stretch where he gained just 0.85 strokes per round–44th best in this week's field. Additionally, Homa has historically struggled in Major Championships, a stage where most top players thrive.

Player Feature

Xander Schauffele

age 29 yrs, 8 months

dg rank 3rd — owgr rank 6th

weeks in dg top 100 299

dg skill +2.2 strokes-gained / round¹

style well-rounded, elite ball-striker

career wins
PGA Tour: 8
Korn Ferry Tour: 0
Amateur: 2

player comps
2021 Patrick Cantlay (similarity score²: 99.8)
2017 Rickie Fowler (93.3)
2022 Justin Thomas (89.6)

Letzig's Insight
Schauffele has all the tools, he just hasn’t managed to win any of golf’s truly big events (although an Olympic gold medal is nice). His game is as well-rounded as they come: Schauffele hasn’t lost strokes in a season-long SG category since his rookie PGA Tour season in 2017. His last missed cut came all the way back at the 2022 Masters.

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
N. Taylor	PGA — RBC Canadian Open	+3.29	0.155
D. Whitnell	DPT — Scandinavian Mixed	+2.8	0.027
S. Stricker	SNR — AF Insurance	+2.12	0.001
K. Nakajima	JPN — ASO IIZUKA	+2.11	0.002
A. D de Chassart	KFT — BMW Pro-Am	+2.01	0.001
S. Hutsby	CHA — Andalucía Challenge	+0.7	0.0

Explainers: True SG, xWins

Nick Taylor became the first Canadian to win the Canadian Open since 1954, beating out Tommy Fleetwood on the 4th playoff hole in dramatic fashion. Fleetwood’s expected PGA Tour win total is now 2.2 (and his expected Majors total is 0.7), easily the most of any active PGA Tour player without a win.

Adrien Dumont de Chassart won his pro debut on the Korn Ferry Tour last week. This year’s amateur class is the strongest since 2019 when Matthew Wolff, Collin Morikawa, and Viktor Hovland burst on to the professional scene.