Somewhat incredibly, the top LIV golfer by adjusted strokes-gained over the last 12 months is only ranked 32nd (Brooks Koepka at +1.1). There are several LIV players close to BK—Cam Smith at 35th, Bryson at 37th, and four others in the top 50—but the fact that no LIV golfer cracked the top 31 in SG this year is surprising.

Our first reaction to this was that maybe it really is harder for the top players to gain strokes consistently on LIV—perhaps due to courses that don’t separate as much on skill, or some other quirk of their format and schedule. When looking at where the top 10 LIV golfers in 2023 gained their (adjusted) strokes, the breakdown looks like this: 67% of their yearlong SG gains occurred at LIV events (and 64% of their rounds), 27% at majors (18% of rounds), and 6% at events on other tours (18% of rounds). So it doesn't seem like LIV rounds prevented the top LIV players from gaining more strokes.

A second thought was that maybe this result wasn’t that unexpected. At the beginning of 2023, there were 3 LIV golfers who we expected to be in the top 30 of SG this year—Dustin Johnson (ranked 9th), Cam Smith (12th), Joaquin Niemann (16th)—and several others just outside the top 30 who wouldn’t require a big improvement in 2023 to move in. However, when simulating the 2023 season using their start-of-year skill levels and assuming 60 rounds played (the average number for LIV players this year), it was very unlikely for zero LIV players to have an SG average above 1.1 (it happened in just 0.1% of simulations, or 1 in 1000).

The plot below shows how the skill level of every LIV golfer changed in 2023:

The top 7 LIV players heading into 2023 all saw their skill levels fall, while the tour's average fell by 0.2 strokes per round. An overall decrease in skill is possible because LIV golfers still played 1/3 of their rounds in non-LIV events—where we can compare their performances against other professionals. As a result of this non-LIV play, LIV's estimated field strength declined slowly throughout the 2023 season—from +0.1 to -0.1—as LIV players performed worse than expected against their non-LIV opponents (with majors being the exception).

So, what should we make of all this? The absence of LIV golfers in the Top 30 SG performers in 2023 is likely due to a combination of real declines in skill and bad luck. While many LIV golfers had solid years—there were 8 players ranked between 32-52 in 2023 SG—it seems uncontroversial to say that no LIV golfer had a great year when considering all of their rounds (obviously many players above Koepka on the SG list would trade their seasons for his, however). One small silver lining to Jon Rahm joining LIV (if the move does in fact materialize) is that we will be able to see how one of the most consistently elite golfers performs while playing the LIV schedule. If Rahm isn’t able to gain at least 2 strokes per round—which he’s done in each of the last 5 years—then we will have to start seriously considering the idea that it’s harder to gain strokes at an elite level while playing on LIV.

Hello World

In his debut season as a professional golfer, Ludvig Aberg averaged +1.4 strokes-gained per round and notched two wins. He finished the year ranked 13th in our rankings, and 32nd in the OWGR.

Here are the top debut seasons, by true strokes-gained per round, since 2010:

Adrien Dumont de Chassart also had a strong rookie season in 2023, quietly posting the 16th-best season since 2010—although he was still a full shot worse per round than Aberg.

Rankings Update

After a dominant win at last week's Hero World Challenge, Scottie Scheffler jumped both Viktor Hovland and Rory McIlroy in our rankings to finish the year as the unanimous number one player in world. It marked the end of an historic tee-to-green season for Scheffler, who now has the second-best season-long T2G average in the strokes-gained era at +2.98 per round.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Scottie Scheffler	1	2	1	—
Viktor Hovland	2	1	4	—
Rory McIlroy	3	1	2	—
Xander Schauffele	4	—	6	—
Collin Morikawa	5	3	14	—
Jon Rahm	6	1	3	—
Patrick Cantlay	7	1	5	—
Max Homa	8	1	7	—
Tommy Fleetwood	9	—	13	—
Tyrrell Hatton	10	—	12	—
Notables
Ludvig Aberg	13	1	32	—
Min Woo Lee	19	1	35	3
Justin Thomas	20	8	26	1
Bryson DeChambeau	28	5	152	3
Joaquin Niemann	30	2	59	23
Dean Burmester	33	9	77	29
Cameron Smith	40	5	23	3
Brooks Koepka	45	4	17	—

Dean Burmester won back-to-back events on the DP World Tour to go from 154 to 77 in the OWGR (and 74 to 33 in DG). As a LIV player, these sanctioned wins contribute vital world ranking points towards Burmester's quest to qualify for the 2024 major championships. The big-hitting South African is going for three in a row this week at the Alfred Dunhill Championship.

After a frustrating 2023 season Joaquin Niemann won the Australian Open last week, his first win since the 2022 Genesis Invitational (sigh.. simpler times). Unlike other LIV stars, Niemann doesn't have any major championship exemptions. While this win got him back to 59th in the OWGR, he's going to miss the end-of-year top-50 cutoff to qualify for the 2024 Masters—Joaco will need to clean up on the Asian tour in early 2024 to snag a spot.

Player Feature

Dean Burmester

age 34 yrs, 6 months

dg rank 33rd — owgr rank 77th

weeks in dg top 100 117

dg skill +0.93 strokes-gained / round¹

style bomber, average iron player

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

player comps
2016 J.B. Holmes (similarity score²: 92.7)
2013 Jimmy Walker (91.1)
2012 Scott Piercy (87.3)

Letzig's Insight
Burmester went from solidly below PGA Tour average to solidly above starting around 2021, making him a bit of a late bloomer. He’s also one of the longest players in the game, ranking 5th in our driving distance ratings.

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.