Letzig's Latest

What We've Been Up To

We've had an unusually productive start to golf's offseason. Here are a few things we've been working on.

You might have noticed that a new column labeled "DG Points" appeared on our profile pages recently. These are point values that we assign to each finish position in a tournament. Points are determined based on how difficult it is to achieve a result, which is a function of the size and strength of the field. You can think of them as our version of OWGR points.

DG Points provide an alternative to strokes-gained for measuring performance. They assign more value to winning and high finishes in big events, and also set a floor for poor play (0 points), which makes them particularly useful for evaluating seasons and careers. Here are the 15 best seasons by cumulative DG Points from a yet-to-be-released page on our site:

Was the '24 FedExCup Fair?

The fall portion of the PGA Tour season wrapped up at last week’s RSM Classic, where the top 125 on the FedExCup (FEC) Fall list was finalized. This season featured plenty of change, with the return to a calendar year schedule, increased point allocations for the signature events, majors, and the Players, as well as smaller fields and new eligibility criteria for the signature events.

Under the old FEC system, where all events–with the exception of opposite fields–received roughly the same number of points, it was obvious that weaker events were allocated too many points. Under the new system, the concern is that there has been an overcorrection: signature events are allocated a lot more points than non-signatures and, critically, are limited fields. In the past, any player could chase points against weaker fields if they wanted or needed to; now, the most lucrative events are off-limits to players further down the priority rankings. Therefore, it’s important that the new FEC point distributions are reasonably fair across event types, given the differential access available to players.

To start, here is a simple breakdown of 2024 FEC position by a player’s start-of-year status (Top 50 and 51-70 are based on a player’s position before the Playoffs, while 71-125 and 126+ are based on the Fall points list):

Players that didn’t play a round before the Playoffs are not included in the counts; Hatton, Meronk, and Herbert are also not included, and Harrison Endycott is in the Q-School bin even though he finished between 126-150 in 2023.

Everyone that started the year with Top 50 status finished inside the top 125. This is unusual, and could be evidence of an unfair system, however it was also the case that no Top 50 player had that bad of a season (Fowler and Schenk were the worst by SG). Surprisingly, half of KFT graduates finished inside the top 125, which is slightly higher than their historical success rate. Hayden Springer came the closest of the five Q-School grads to keeping his card, but came up just short in 127th.

The next table shows the average number of events played pre-Playoffs by different groups of players based on their status to start the season (only players who made at least 10 starts are included):

Because of the new condensed schedule, the Top 50 group still played a lot of non-signature events in 2024. This ate into early-season starts for lower-ranking KFT and Q-School grads which, even with a perfectly fair point distribution, put them at a slight disadvantage.

Next we’ll look at the fairness of the point distributions for different events. Our preferred method for doing this is to estimate how many points we would expect a benchmark player to earn at each event. As in a previous newsletter, our benchmark golfer is given a skill of +0.45–roughly the 70th-best player on the PGA Tour. Here is what this player could expect to earn at each type of event in 2024:

Signature: 58.1 FEC points
Major/Players: 37.7
Opposite: 30.7
Non-Signature: 29.2

As before, only events pre-Playoffs are included. Signature events were worth 29 more points (in expectation) than the average non-signature event. To put this into perspective, consider that the Scottish Open (the strongest non-sig field of 2024) was worth 22 points, while the Mexico Open (the weakest non-sig field) was worth 40 points, a difference of only 18 points. Playing against the Mexico field instead of the Scottish field (for the same number of points) was less of an advantage than playing in a signature event instead of a regular event.

Putting these pieces together, we can estimate the point advantage from playing different schedules. We’ll consider the “median” schedule for 3 different player types: 1) Top 50 Player: 8 signatures, 4 majors, the Players, 7 regular events, 2) “71-125” Player: 16 regular, the Players, 3 opposite, and 3) KFT Grad: 14 regular, 5 opposite. These were actually the median schedules (insofar as a median can be defined) for these player groups. Even though many players from the 71-125 group played in majors and at least 1 signature event, more than half didn’t play in any.

Here are the expected points from playing each schedule for a +0.45 skill player, along with the probability of earning at least 650 points (the Top 70 cutoff for the 2024 Playoffs):

1. Top 50 schedule: 832 points; 67% chance of making the Playoffs
2. 71-125 schedule: 600; 36%
3. KFT grad schedule: 579; 33%

A few things to note: first, these schedules are fixed, and therefore don’t account for the fact that a lower-status player’s schedule will change if they perform well early in the year. Second, the expected points advantage for the Top 50 schedule isn’t as high as you would predict based on the event averages above because the non-signature events they played in had stronger fields. Third, even though the KFT grad’s schedule included one less event, it wasn’t that disadvantageous because the extra opposite-field events they played in yielded more expected points than the non-signatures they missed out on.

To wrap up, the changes to the 2024 FEC point distributions and signature event eligibility resulted in a large point bias in favour of the Top 50 players from 2023. The 70th-best player on tour would be almost twice as likely to make the Playoffs if they were able to play the typical Top 50 schedule compared to the typical schedule for a “71-125” player. Fortunately, for 2025 the points allocated to signature events and majors will be reduced (exact numbers yet to be released), so that will lessen at least part of this bias.

PGA Tour Pathways

Joel Dahmen shot a final round 64 at the RSM Classic to finish 124th on the FedExCup Fall list and retain his full PGA Tour playing privileges for 2025. Interestingly, it also might have hurt his chances of having a PGA Tour card in 2026. Why? Because it’s easier to earn a card through the Korn Ferry Tour than it is to retain it on the PGA Tour.

This was the case when there were 25–or 30, in recent years–cards given to the best season-long KFT performers (and 125 players retained status on the PGAT), and it will also be the case next year when just 20 cards are set aside for the KFT and only the top 100 players retain their status on the PGA Tour.

The simplest way to see this is by comparing the typical season-long True SG performance of the cutoff player on each tour. Since 2004, the 100th-best player on the PGA Tour (restricting to those who played at least 30 rounds) averaged +0.16 True SG/round, while the 20th-best KFT player averaged -0.36. In the last two seasons, which saw LIV poach a handful of top PGA Tour players, the 100th-best player’s average fell to +0.05. (For those interested, the True SG average of the cutoff player for PGA Tour cards earned through the DP World Tour in the last two seasons was about 0.)

Of course, we aren’t suggesting that Dahmen should change his January flight plans from Hawaii to the Bahamas. The upside from playing well is much higher on the PGA Tour in terms of money, world ranking points, and exemptions into golf’s top events, which is why every player’s goal is to get there. However, despite these potential benefits, the fact remains that Dahmen faces a tougher path to a ‘26 tour card on the PGA Tour than he would playing full-time on the Korn Ferry.