After 35 consecutive weeks, Letzig will be taking a much-deserved break from publishing the newsletter. We'll be back in a couple weeks, thanks for reading!

Season in Review

It was a mixed bag for the best players on the PGA Tour in 2023: Scottie Scheffler had the best season-long SG numbers (+2.7/round), Jon Rahm had the most wins (4), and Viktor Hovland took home the FedExCup. Rory McIlroy didn't top any season-long categories, but he had one of the best strokes-gained seasons of his career.

Rounding out the clear top 6 players in 2023 were Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, who both averaged +2.3 SG/round, combined for 15 Top 5s, and both (somehow) finished the season without a win.

You can explore season-long SG, wins, and FEC points on our tour standings page.

X at East Lake

In 28 rounds at East Lake, Xander Schauffele has averaged +3.6 true strokes-gained per round.

His finish position record is muddled by the starting-strokes format that was introduced in 2019; without starting strokes, Schauffele's finishes since 2017 would be 1, T7, 2, 1, 4, T6, and T1. Not bad!

Only one player since 2004 has a better strokes-gained record at a single PGA Tour course (minimum of 20 rounds played). The top 12 are listed below:

1. Tiger Woods, Cog Hill: +3.8 true strokes-gained, 24 rounds
2. Xander Schauffele, East Lake: +3.6, 28
3. Tiger Woods, Doral: +3.3, 35
4. Tiger Woods, East Lake: +3.2, 28
5. Keegan Bradley, Firestone: +3.2, 20
6. Rory McIlroy, Quail Hollow: +3.0, 26
7. Tiger Woods, Sherwood: +3.0, 36
8. Patrick Cantlay, Muirfield Village: +3.0, 28
9. Patrick Cantlay, TPC Summerlin: +2.9, 20
10. Jon Rahm, Augusta National: +2.9, 28
11. Jordan Spieth, Augusta National: +2.8, 38
12. Jon Rahm, Kapalua: +2.8, 24

Another Snoozer

Last week’s Tour Championship was the least exciting PGA Tour event since 2019 according to our entertainment metrics (page coming soon..). Roughly speaking, we measure a tournament’s excitement by how much uncertainty there is around who will win—the closer our live win probabilities are to 0% or 100% throughout the event, the lower is its excitement score. Scottie Scheffler began the week with a 45% win probability thanks to his starting-stroke advantage; Viktor Hovland ended the week with a 5-shot win and a live win probability that never went below 87% during the final round. Unfortunately, that’s the script of a boring golf tournament.

Rankings Update

Viktor Hovland jumped two spots in our rankings—to 3rd—after winning the FedExCup last week. After 4 consecutive seasons hovering around +1.5 strokes-gained per round, Hovland elevated his game in 2023 to become one of the few 2.0+ strokes-gained players in the world. Improvements to his around-the-green and off-the-tee play were responsible for the rise.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Rory McIlroy	1	—	2	—
Scottie Scheffler	2	—	1	—
Viktor Hovland	3	2	4	1
Xander Schauffele	4	2	6	—
Patrick Cantlay	5	2	5	1
Jon Rahm	6	2	3	—
Tommy Fleetwood	7	1	15	—
Collin Morikawa	8	2	19	1
Cameron Smith	9	2	11	1
Max Homa	10	1	7	—
Notables
Wyndham Clark	13	3	10	1
Matthew Fitzpatrick	17	2	8	—
Ludvig Aberg	54	9	200	45
Nicolai Hojgaard	57	12	83	22
Justin Thomas	58	1	26	—
Taylor Montgomery	130	1	69	2
Chan Kim	177	70	118	46
Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra	207	37	487	—
Todd Clements	471	—	175	—

Chan Kim has spent most of his 13-year professional career on the Japan Tour, where he won 8 times and qualified for 12 major championships (via his OWGR ranking). In 2023 Kim chose to play on the Korn Ferry Tour, a decision that may have been motivated by the changes to the OWGR methodology making it harder to earn points in Japan. The risk has paid off: Chan's back-to-back KFT wins may not get him into the 2024 majors, but he now has a PGA Tour card for next season, ensuring he'll be playing against the world's best week in, week out.

Player Feature

Nicolai Hojgaard

age 22 yrs, 5 months

dg rank 57th — owgr rank 83rd

weeks in dg top 100 10

dg skill +0.7 strokes-gained / round¹

style bomber, above-average iron player

career wins
PGA Tour: 0
European Tour: 2
Challenge Tour: 0
Amateur: 4

player comps
2012 Victor Dubuisson (similarity score²: 78.6)
2006 Charl Schwartzel (74.4)
2015 Daniel Berger (73.6)

Letzig's Insight
Hojgaard has already been a professional for 5 seasons, so it’s easy to forget he’s just 22 years old. We rank him as the 4th-best player under the age of 25, behind only Tom Kim, Joaquin Niemann, and Ludvig Aberg. Up until the 2023 season, Nicolai’s twin brother Rasmus had been the better Hojgaard, but Nicolai recently eclipsed his brother’s peak DG rank of 78 (from November 2022). Nicolai is also one of the longest players in the game (13th), a skill that could be useful at a beefy Marco Simone next month.

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.