This week we sunk our teeth back into the shot-level data to look at the 10th hole at Riviera Country Club—hence the day-late newsletter release. This interactive graphic plots the average number of strokes to hole out from various locations on the hole; shown below is the data for all pin positions, but on the interactive version you can view the data for each pin separately.

The takeaways?
1. Players rarely lay up on the 10th at Riviera anymore, and are correct not to—the scoring average is ~0.1 strokes higher for players that lay up.
2. Front-left pins offer the largest benefit to going for the green (0.16 strokes). Players' strategies seems to reflect this as more of them go for it with a left pin compared to other locations. Who said PGA Tour players aren't rational?!
3. The wedge shot from the layup zone is roughly 0.2 strokes harder to a back-right pin than to a front-left (half of this difference is simply because it's a longer shot). The middle pin splits the difference.
4. The front bunker is the toughest of the 3 greenside bunkers to all pin positions. For some reason this surprised us.

Again, here's a link to the graphic if you want to poke around yourself.

Taylor Triumphs

Nick Taylor birdied 5 of his last 6 holes (including the two playoff holes) to take down Charley Hoffman and win the WM Phoenix Open last week. While PGA Tour players tend to struggle—on average—when in contention on Sunday, Taylor has so far been one of the few exceptions to that rule: in the 5 times he has started the final round T5 or better he has won 3 of them, beating our model's expectation by 3.4 strokes/round.

Also notable from his Sunday performance was that he shot 65—gaining 4.2 strokes on the field—despite losing over 2 strokes off the tee (5th worst in the field). On that note, here are the 10 worst final round OTT performances that still resulted in a win:

1. Scottie Scheffler, 2022 Arnold Palmer: -2.2 SG OTT, +3.5 SG Total
2. Nick Taylor, 2024 WM Phoenix Open: -2.1, +4.2
3. Nick Dunlap, 2024 AmEx: -2.0, -0.7
4. Tiger Woods, 2013 Arnold Palmer: -1.8, +3.7
5. Tiger Woods, 2013 Farmers: -1.7, +0.4
6. Justin Rose, 2011 BMW Champ: -1.7, +0.8
7. Ben Crane, 2014 FedEx St Jude: -1.5, -2.2
8. Wesley Bryan, 2017 RBC Heritage: -1.4, +4.2
9. Adam Hadwin, 2017 Valspar: -1.4, -0.1
10. Scott Stallings, 2014 Farmers: -1.4, +4.4

That was a different time for Scottie...

Digit Of The Week

This week the 10-shot rule will be in effect at the Genesis Invitational. That is, after 36 holes the 70-man field will be cut to the top 50 and ties, plus anyone within 10 shots of the lead. From our pre-tournament simulations, we expect the 10-shot rule to make a difference 8% of the time.

Rankings Update

Sam Burns has made his way back into the DG Top 10 thanks to a solid start to the 2024 season—the last time he was inside our top 10 was July of 2022. Burns began the year ranked 24th, but a T6-10-T3 stretch has quietly shot him up the rankings.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Scottie Scheffler	1	—	1	—
Rory McIlroy	2	—	2	—
Xander Schauffele	3	—	5	—
Viktor Hovland	4	—	4	—
Jon Rahm	5	—	3	—
Collin Morikawa	6	—	14	1
Patrick Cantlay	7	—	7	—
Tommy Fleetwood	8	2	13	1
Sam Burns	9	6	18	2
Tyrrell Hatton	10	1	16	1
Notables
Justin Thomas	12	1	21	2
Jordan Spieth	14	3	12	4
Sahith Theegala	24	15	20	2
Bryson DeChambeau	28	3	168	1
Dustin Johnson	29	14	231	13
Talor Gooch	38	14	408	14
Nick Taylor	49	39	28	27
Rikuya Hoshino	128	36	75	32
Charley Hoffman	131	75	108	192
Andrew Novak	228	97	228	79
Matthew Wolff	274	71	—	—

A T12 in Phoenix means that Justin Thomas' run of form continues—that's now 7 consecutive tournaments gaining 2 (or more) strokes per round. Up to 12th.

Dustin Johnson won LIV Las Vegas by one shot over Peter Uihlein (who has a serious case of driver yips.. not sure if anyone has noticed) and Talor Gooch. DJ is ranked 29th in our rankings at 39 years of age—only one player is older than him and ranked higher, any guesses? Answer.