Last week was a busy one in the world of golf; the PGA Tour and DP World Tour continued their respective West Coast and Middle East swings while the Asian Tour hosted the LIV players—and a few others —in Saudi Arabia. It was a lot to keep track of, even for Letzig!

While there were no changes near the top of the rankings, there was plenty of shuffling further down:

Top 5 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Rory McIlroy	1	—	1	—
Jon Rahm	2	—	3	—
Tony Finau	3	—	13	1
Scottie Scheffler	4	—	2	—
Xander Schauffele	5	—	6	—
Notables
Cameron Smith	17	1	4	—
Paul Casey	23	20	70	8
Justin Rose	30	19	35	36
Abraham Ancer	35	20	26	11
Jordan Spieth	40	10	17	1
Bryson DeChambeau	104	5	102	6
Peter Malnati	142	62	242	76
Webb Simpson	154	22	154	8
Pierceson Coody	236	44	238	131
Guido Migliozzi	271	35	144	5
Phil Mickelson	383	22	270	16

Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith saw their DG rankings continue to fall after missing the cut in a shallow Saudi International field. For DeChambeau, it is another bad week in a dreadful stretch of golf dating back to early 2022. It is astounding, and somewhat sad, to think of how far Bryson has fallen from the heights he reached on and off the course in 2020/2021.

Luck of the Draw

As we saw this past week, the difficulty of Pebble Beach depends largely on the weather conditions. Nowhere else is this more true than the 107-yard 7th, where players’ downhill tee shots are fully exposed to the elements. The plot below shows how the 7th’s scoring average varied throughout the week:

The week-long scoring average was slightly under par at 2.98, but the south-facing 7th showed its teeth when there were strong winds from the South.

Young Guns

What do Viktor Hovland, Collin Morikawa, and Cameron Young have in common? They are all old – or, at least, too old to make it into the following list. Here are top 15 players in the DG Rankings under the age of 25:

1. Sungjae Im — 24 years old; +1.65 DG Index; main tour: PGA Tour
2. Joaquin Niemann — 24; +1.47; LIV
3. Tom Kim — 20; +1.34; PGA Tour
4. Min Woo Lee — 24; +0.65; DP World
5. Rasmus Hojgaard — 21; +0.52; DP World
6. Seonghyeon Kim — 24; +0.31; PGA Tour
7. Matthew Wolff — 23; +0.29; LIV
8. Kevin Yu — 24; +0.15; PGA Tour
9. Davis Thompson — 23; +0.14; PGA Tour
10. Gordon Sargent — 19; +0.00; Amateur
11. Michael Thorbjornsen — 21; -0.06; Amateur
12. Ludvig Aberg — 23; -0.09; Amateur
13. Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra — 22; -0.14; LIV
14. Austin Eckroat — 24; -0.19; PGA
15. David Ford — 20; -0.24; Amateur

Perplexing Letzig

Here are the players with the most cumulative strokes-gained over or under baseline—our model’s prediction—since the start of the 2023 calendar year.

"ELITE" PLAYERS
Rising
Max Homa: +16.6 SG in 2 events; Collin Morikawa: +15.7 SG in 2 events;

Falling
Cameron Smith: -6.6 SG in 1 event; Justin Thomas: -5.1 SG in 2 events;

"SUB-ELITE" PLAYERS
Rising
Justin Rose: +20.3 SG in 3 events; Jason Day: +14.3 SG in 2 events;

Falling
Cameron Davis: -18.9 SG in 3 events; Billy Horschel: -11.8 SG in 2 events;

"AVERAGE" PLAYERS
Rising
Chris Kirk: +20.0 SG in 2 events; Joseph Bramlett: +18.6 SG in 4 events;

Falling
Rory Sabbatini: -21.4 SG in 4 events; Eddie Pepperell: -20.5 SG in 3 events;

Player Feature

Scottie Scheffler

age 26 yrs, 8 months

dg rank 4th — owgr rank 2nd

weeks in dg top 100 173

dg skill +2.12 strokes-gained / round¹

style above-average distance and accuracy, elite iron player

career wins
PGA Tour: 4
Korn Ferry Tour: 2
Amateur: 2

player comps
2018 Hideki Matsuyama (similarity score²: 96.1)
2019 Justin Thomas (95.3)
2015 Rory McIlroy (93.2)

Letzig's Insight
It’s an odd thing to say about the OWGR #2 and DG #4, but Scottie Scheffler is underrated. Scheffler’s OTT skill (+0.98) and APP skill (+1.03) sum to +2.01 strokes-gained per round, making him the best ball-striker in the game. Rory McIlroy (+1.94) and Jon Rahm (+1.76) are #2 and #3 on that list. In his last 25 starts, Scheffler has lost strokes on approach only twice, and off the tee just once.

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.