Since 2004, Glover has gained 943 strokes tee-to-green (11th best all-time) but lost 323 strokes putting (10th worst). Until 2013 Lucas was actually an average putter on the PGA Tour, but a nightmarish stretch from 2013 to 2016 saw him lose 226 strokes in 251 rounds (0.9 per round). The second-worst putter in this 4-year stretch was Kyle Stanley, who lost 165 strokes.

After years of frustation and, for lack of a better word, yips, Glover switched to a broomstick putter in July of this year. The early results are positive—he's gained 13.8 strokes in 22 rounds. Glover's rebirth on the greens, in tandem with his relentless ball-striking, has already secured him two wins and has him in contention to win the FedExCup.

Here are a few other notable players who've had their careers plagued by a misbehaving flat stick:

Boo Weekley: -489 SG:Putting, +603 SG:Tee-to-Green
Kyle Stanley: -452, +544
Joe Durant: -437, +450
Vijay Singh: -334, +1309
Robert Garrigus: -316, +220
Jason Dufner: -296, +650

FedExCup Update

This week we go from 50 to 30 players to set the field for next week’s season-ending Tour Championship, and according to our simulations the current top 21 are guaranteed to advance. Players ranked 23rd through 28th are all >80% to advance, which leaves just two players truly on the bubble—Chris Kirk (48% advance prob) and Sam Burns (60%).

Despite a mediocre week from 2 of the Big 3, Scheffler, McIlroy, and Rahm still hold the lion’s share of the FEC win probability at 68.3% (to start last week their win probability was 71%). Lucas Glover, who is on a heater of epic proportions, still has just a 0.8% chance of winning the FEC according to our model.

As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, you can follow our live FedExCup forecast here.

Accuracy is King?

An under-appreciated feature of the PGA Tour schedule is how much the last four months of the season favors short and/or accurate players. After the Wells Fargo in early May, the PGA Tour visits Colonial, Muirfield Village, TPC River Highlands, TPC Deere Run, TPC Twin Cities, Sedgefield, TPC Southwind, and East Lake, all of which favor driving accuracy or disfavor distance to some degree. There are a few neutral courses in this stretch (TPC Craig Ranch, Detroit Golf Club, Keene Trace), as well as 3 majors—which are typically played at venues favorable to bombers—and a rotating Canadian Open venue. The only courses played during these 4 months that favor distance or inaccuracy are the Renaissance Club and Tahoe Mountain Club (host of the Barracuda).

(It's important to note that when we say a course “favors accurate golfers”, this means that it favors accurate golfers more than the typical PGA Tour course does, not that it rewards accuracy more than distance in an absolute sense. Although, some of the courses mentioned above do, like Sedgefield.)

This recent trend in PGA Tour course fit is important for predicting performance because it means that short and accurate golfers’ baseline skill levels will be inflated. For example, since the Wells Fargo, Brendon Todd has played 33 rounds on the PGA Tour and his average course fit—i.e. how much better our model predicts Todd to play at that course compared to the average course—was 0.16 strokes per round. At the other end of the spectrum, Cameron Young has played 30 rounds in this period with an average course fit of -0.09 strokes per round. As a result, when predicting Todd’s performance this week he receives a negative bump while Young receives a positive one; this adjustment enters into the second column on our skill decomposition table.

Rankings Update

After six months away, Rory McIlroy is back on top the DG Rankings. Rory has reeled off 8 straight top-10s, including a win at the Scottish Open, while Scheffler has "stumbled" to a T23 and T31 in his last two starts.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Rory McIlroy	1	1	2	—
Scottie Scheffler	2	1	1	—
Jon Rahm	3	—	3	—
Patrick Cantlay	4	1	4	—
Xander Schauffele	5	1	6	—
Viktor Hovland	6	1	5	—
Tommy Fleetwood	7	3	15	8
Cameron Smith	8	4	9	1
Tyrrell Hatton	9	3	14	—
Collin Morikawa	10	1	20	2
Notables
Jordan Spieth	14	4	12	—
Corey Conners	18	10	31	—
Matt Fitzpatrick	32	12	10	—
Stephan Jaeger	42	3	88	9
Lucas Glover	51	26	30	23
Nicholas Lindheim	83	6	164	22
Abraham Ancer	92	17	76	1
Paul Casey	103	10	261	11
Alejandro Tosti	107	38	99	57

Nicholas Lindheim is the hottest player on the Korn Ferry Tour right now: in only 6 starts this season he has a win and 3 other top-10s. Currently sitting 10th on the Korn Ferry Points list, he'll be playing on the PGA Tour next year.

From 2020-2022 Matt Fitzpatrick gained 15 yards of distance while sacrificing only a few percentage points in accuracy, but 2023 hasn't been as rosy. For the first time in his career, Fitzpatrick is below average (and falling quickly) in driving accuracy, and has also given back some of the gains he made in the distance department. These off-the-tee troubles have led to more inconsistency than we're used to from Fitzy, resulting in his lowest DG ranking since January 2022.

Player Feature

Patrick Cantlay

age 31 yrs, 5 months

dg rank 4th — owgr rank 4th

weeks in dg top 100 340

dg skill +2.15 strokes-gained / round¹

style well-rounded, above average in all 5 skill attributes

career wins
PGA Tour: 8
Korn Ferry Tour: 1
Amateur: 3

player comps
2011 Justin Rose (similarity score²: 83.1)
2020 Rory McIlroy (82.1)
2019 Rickie Fowler (78.9)

Letzig's Insight
Cantlay has been a model of consistency since the 2018 season, hovering around or slightly above the +2 True SG benchmark for the last 5 seasons. However, he hasn’t won as much as his SG data would predict: he’s accumulated 10 expected PGA Tour wins while only winning 7 times (8 including his Zurich team win). In the majors, the story is the same but worse: Cantlay has slightly underperformed from an SG standpoint, and only has 0.03 expected major wins (from a T3 at the 2019 PGA, his best finish in a major).

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.