The start of the PGA Tour season has been a slow one for U.S. players. In the 7-event opening stretch—which has been a staple on the PGA Tour for decades—Harris English was the only American to notch a win (Farmers Insurance Open). And it's not like there were a bunch of near-misses either: Americans have been noticeably absent from leaderboards this year. This has been their slowest start as a group, both in terms of wins and top 5s, since 2004:

It was looking even bleaker prior to The Genesis Invitational, where Americans grabbed 6 top 5s behind Swede Ludvig Aberg. Although the season is still young, the US Ryder Cup win probability has already taken a hit—perhaps it is time for Musk and Premier Trump to launch a new DOGE (Department of Golf Efficiency).

LIV Golf SG

While LIV's website redesign left some things to be desired, they did make one great addition to their site: shot-level data on leaderboards going back to 2024. This allows us to calculate the familiar strokes-gained categories using the same methodology we use for PGA Tour events every week.

The shot data from LIV is not as high quality as the PGA Tour’s, but it's pretty good. There are very few obvious errors, and the general data patterns (e.g. hole out rates from various distances) roughly match those observed in the PGA Tour data.

Here are a few takeaways from the updated SG category data for the 6 most important golfers on LIV (recall that shot-level data is not required to calculate total SG, so those numbers are unaffected):

Jon Rahm
After a temporary dip in 2023, Rahm’s OTT performance is back to being as reliable as ever (gaining ~1 stroke per round). Rahm has never been a consistently elite iron player, but in 2024 his SG approach numbers were the lowest they’ve been since 2018. His short game was excellent last season, while his putting regressed slightly.
Bryson DeChambeau
Bryson is still one of the best off-the-tee players in the game and a very good putter. However, his approach game is trending towards being just average; Bryson’s iron play peak was in 2018-2019, and he hasn't regained that form since bulking up in 2020.
Joaquin Niemann
Niemann has improved on his already high OTT and APP baselines to become a clear top-5 ball-striker in the game. However, his short game and putting have continued to hover around zero SG.
Tyrrell Hatton
No notable changes to his performance in any of the SG categories; still a very solid all-around player.
Cameron Smith
Smith struggled mightily with his ball-striking in 2024, averaging -0.4 SG per round off-the-tee and -0.1 on approach. Fortunately, Smith also elevated his short game to the highest level of his career and remains an elite putter, which has partially offset the long game losses.
Brooks Koepka
BK putted poorly in 2024, averaging -0.15 SG per round. His off-the-tee and approach game have continued to be solid though, performing at a sub-elite level (gaining 0.5-0.6 strokes) in both categories.

Is Distance King?

Much was made about driving distance being the dominant skill at Vidanta Vallarta last week—primarily due to, I assume, Aldrich Potgieter's presence on the leaderboard. But when you look at the basic stats from last week it's not clear that that should be the key takeaway:

Driving distance was slightly less correlated with score last week than at an average PGA Tour tournament.
Brian Campbell, who is one of the shortest players on tour, won the tournament and only 2 of the top 5 drove it longer than the field average.
While Potgieter's power, in combination with Vidanta Vallarta's forgiving landing areas, undoubtedly helped him (5th in the field OTT at +1.2 strokes per round), it was his putting that did most of the damage (1st in field, +2.3 strokes per round). With an average putting week he would have come ~T25.

Now, this isn't to say that last week's course doesn't favour bombers—it does (likely in part due to the number of long approach shots). But it does seem like driving distance as a standalone skill is being exaggerated in the discourse around pro golf.

Here are our model's estimated driving distance (using official driving holes, not all drives) and accuracy skill levels for the ~400 players with enough measured rounds to qualify. The size and color of each dot corresponds to their overall off-the-tee skill:

Phew... that's a lot to take in. Takeaways:

Of the top drivers in the world, only Bryson (big green dot at -3% DA, +23 DD) would be considered inaccurate. The others—Rory, Rahm, Niemann, Scheffler, Aberg—are at or above average in driving accuracy. Collin Morikawa is the only top-15 driver who is below average in distance (+10% DA, -1 DD).
In general, if a player is 10 yards or more above average in driving distance, it's going to be hard to lose strokes (shout-out Peter Uihlein). Remember that if someone really loses it in terms of accuracy, their distance will likely fall as a result (see Smylie Kaufman).
If a player is below average in distance, they need to be hitting roughly 0.5-1 (4-7%) more fairways per round than average to start gaining strokes off the tee.
Lastly, it looks like the fair exchange rate between distance and accuracy is roughly 10 extra yards for 1 extra fairway. This can be most easily seen in the plot by drawing a line through the smallest dots and looking at the slope.

Professional golf is getting longer—and that is a problem—but I don't think it's impacting who is winning golf tournaments as much as people think it is. Power is a weapon, but it will always be controlled power that wins out.

Rankings Update

Since our last newsletter 4 weeks ago, one player has moved out of our top 10 (Sungjae Im) and one player has moved in (Tommy Fleetwood). As he often does, Fleetwood has quietly put together a great run of form since The Open Championship, finishing no worse than 22nd in 12 starts.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Scottie Scheffler	1	—	1	—
Rory McIlroy	2	—	3	—
Xander Schauffele	3	—	2	—
Jon Rahm	4	—	54	2
Collin Morikawa	5	—	5	—
Justin Thomas	6	—	9	—
Tyrrell Hatton	7	—	8	—
Hideki Matsuyama	8	—	6	—
Tommy Fleetwood	9	—	10	—
Patrick Cantlay	10	—	12	—
Notables
Akshay Bhatia	20	4	29	1
Robert MacIntyre	24	1	16	—
Sergio Garcia	35	1	489	2
Sahith Theegala	47	1	21	1
Michael Kim	50	7	79	1
Wyndham Clark	51	1	7	—
Brian Campbell	84	42	97	125
Nicolai Hojgaard	104	31	68	6

Akshay Bhatia reached a career-high ranking of 20th this week. Even though 2025 will be his 6th full season as a professional, Bhatia is still only 23.

It remains to be seen whether Sergio Garcia will fulfill the playing requirements to be eligible for the Ryder Cup this fall, but, as probably very few people have noticed, he is flushing it right now. Garcia is now 35th in our rankings, and it’s mostly been driven by good ball-striking.

Michael Kim has cracked our top 50 players for the first time. Kim won early on in his PGA Tour career at the 2018 John Deere, but then completely lost his ball-striking from 2019-2021.

After a brief stint as the better Hojgaard twin in 2023, which culminated in a spot on the winning Ryder Cup team, Nicolai Hojgaard struggled for most of 2024. His solo-8th finish at last week’s Mexico Open is his best since the Olympics (7th), and has helped his ranking climb to 104th from a low of 187th last fall.