There was limited movement in the top 10 of the rankings after most players opted to skip the Sony Open last week. Expect a reshuffle this week though; second through seventh in the DG rankings are all entered in The American Express.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Rory McIlroy	1	—	1	—
Jon Rahm	2	—	4	1
Scottie Scheffler	3	—	2	—
Tony Finau	4	—	12	—
Patrick Cantlay	5	—	5	1
Xander Schauffele	6	—	6	—
Will Zalatoris	7	—	7	—
Matthew Fitzpatrick	8	—	10	1
Justin Thomas	9	—	8	—
Viktor Hovland	10	1	11	1
Notables
Maverick McNealy	22	12	57	5
Si Woo Kim	45	35	41	43
Hayden Buckley	65	43	100	103
Christiaan Bezuidenhout	74	22	75	6
Matthias Schwab	277	57	299	6

Si Woo Kim and Hayden Buckley made huge jumps in both the DG and OWGR rankings after battling for the win on Sunday (spoiler: Kim won). Maverick McNealy continues to sneak up our rankings after another solid week (more on this later).

Myth Buster

The narrative around Collin Morikawa’s career to date has been that if he can putt well, he'll contend. And at first glance, it seems to be true: looking through Morikawa’s results shows a striking correlation between his strokes-gained putting and finish position.

However, our latest data visualization post highlights that 9 of Morikawa's top 10 putting weeks coincided with above-average (and sometimes great) tee-to-green performances.

So the story is not simply when Morikawa putts well, he contends. Rather it's when Morikawa putts well, he also typically overperforms from tee-to-green, and as a result contends.

Player Feature

Maverick McNealy

age 27 yrs, 2 months

dg rank 22nd — owgr rank 57th

weeks in dg top 100 117

dg skill +1.15 strokes-gained / round¹

style above-average distance, elite putter

career wins
PGA Tour: 0
Korn Ferry Tour: 0
Amateur: 11

player comps
2016 Harris English (similarity score²: 95.7)
2020 J.T. Poston (94.9)
2008 Aaron Baddeley (91.1)

Letzig's Insight
There is a large discrepancy between McNealy’s DG rank (22nd) and his OWGR rank (57th). The likely cause is McNealy’s uncanny ability to finish just shy of the top finish positions: in his last 25 starts, McNealy has finished between 7th and 20th 10 times! Our model currently rates McNealy as the best putter on the PGA Tour. To turn those Top 10s into wins, he will need some help from his tee-to-green play.

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.

Amateur Hour

One of the most interesting things that comes out of our model are the amateur rankings. Gordon Sargent, who received an unexpected invitation to play in this year’s Masters, occupies the #1 spot. We estimate that Sargent’s current skill is almost exactly at the level of an average PGA Tour player. For some context, since 2010 only 28 amateurs have reached a higher skill level than Sargent. The best in that stretch were Jordan Spieth and Jon Rahm (both reached a skill of +0.8), while the trio of Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, and Matthew Wolff all reached skill levels in the +0.5-0.6 range.

Another am to keep an eye on is Caleb Surrat. He’s 5th in our rankings and still shy of his 19th birthday, making him the top-rated junior by a wide margin (the next highest is 39th). Surratt is in the field at this week’s The American Express.