Justin Thomas' win at the RBC Heritage snapped a 3-year winless drought and generated some chatter about where his career stacks up among his American peers.

From his profile, here are JT's accomplishments in his 12 years as a pro:

2x PGA Championship winner (2017, 2022)
1x Players Championship winner (2021)
1x FedExCup Champ (2017)
13x Other PGA Tour wins
1x Korn Ferry win

In total that gives him 17 professional wins and 588 DG Points—39th-most in the post-90s era.

Justin Thomas is 32 years old. If we use Dustin Johnson (almost 41) as the cutoff for JT's "peers", there are only 5 players from his generation with more DG Points than him: Rory (1,253), DJ (864), Jason Day (633), Spieth (626), and Rahm (599). Focusing on Americans, JT is within shouting distance of Spieth (38 points), and still has a decent shot at catching Johnson—Thomas has 160 more points than DJ did at age 32, but the best part of DJ's career was age 31-37. So the claim that Thomas is the best American of his generation is not that outlandish, he just needs to have a better second half than Spieth, and hold on long enough to pass DJ.

Unfortunately, there are two huge elephants in the room:

1. Scottie Scheffler, who is accumulating DG Points at a rate we haven't seen since Tiger's heyday. While JT started his career faster, Scottie is now ahead of where Thomas was at age 29, and only 40 points behind him in total. He will likely pass JT later this year, or early in 2026:

2. Brooks Koepka, who has only accumulated 525 DG Points in his career despite leading post-Tiger Americans with 5 major titles (2x U.S. Open, 3x PGA Championship). While you can't just use majors to measure a career (unless you're prepared to argue Angel Cabrera's career is better than Jim Furyk's), Koepka is obviously one of the best Americans over the past decade and has shown levels of dominance at the majors that Thomas has never reached. Here are their career summaries from our head-to-head page:

JT's PGA Tour career (14 wins including The Players) is probably underrated, and the perception of Thomas' career is hurt by the fact that both of his majors are PGA Championships—and the 2nd one was a bit flukey (his final round win probability was never above 15% before Mito Pereira doubled 18). It is also funny that Brooks struggled to win many non-major PGA Tour events, but has quietly racked up 5 LIV wins!

So, where do we place JT's career among post-Tiger American players right now? Probably 5th.

Dustin Johnson is way ahead in DG Points. JT needs to reset his trajectory after this 3-year "slump" and rack up points for another 3-4 years to pass him.
Scottie is almost Thomas' equal in career points and has already recorded 3 of the top 16 seasons by DG Points—JT's best season (2017) is only the 27th-best.
Spieth has an extra major on Thomas, and there is greater career value in winning 3 different majors relative to two PGAs than just a single major. Spieth also has the 9th-best season (2015).
Right now I think you have to give Koepka the edge over Thomas. Majors aren't everything but having 5 is, and probably should be, perceived as being greater than the sum of its parts.

*Honourable mentions to Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele. Fowler (somehow) has more career points than Brooks, while Xander's huge 2024 season brought him a lot closer to JT's point trajectory.

Bryson

Bryson’s performance off the tee so far in 2025 has been historically good. In his 25 rounds with shot-level data—21 on LIV plus 4 at the Masters—DeChambeau is averaging +1.97 SG OTT per round. As our readers know, +2 SG is the typical cutoff we use when defining a top 5 player in the world. Bryson is gaining those 2 strokes on his tee shots alone this season. At the LIV event in Mexico City (at Chapultepec), Bryson gained 3.1 strokes per round with his driving, which put him 8th on our list of best OTT tournaments—despite only playing 3 rounds!

For some context, elite drivers of the ball like Rory McIlroy gain around 1 stroke per round with their driving. Rory has been doing this for more than a decade on the PGA Tour, which is probably the biggest contributor to his incredible longevity. Post-bulk-up Bryson also gained about a stroke per round OTT (ignoring his injury-filled 2022 season). The best off-the-tee season in the SG era belongs to Bubba Watson in 2012, when he gained 1.65 strokes per round.

The formula for gaining strokes off the tee is pretty simple: hit it far and in the fairway. Obviously the first of these two things is harder to change; when players gain distance it’s usually because of a concerted effort they've made to do so (Bryson in 2020, Matt Fitzpatrick in 2022). Driving accuracy, however, is more volatile. So far in 2025 Bryson has continued to drive it ridiculously far while also hitting 1 more fairway per round than an average pro (this is a lot; the most accurate drivers gain 1.5 fairways per round).

Even if Bryson’s accuracy numbers revert back to something close to his long-term baseline (-0.5 fairways/round), he’s in a good position to break the single-season OTT record (he still averaged +1 SG OTT in 2024 with below average accuracy). And if we don’t see a reversion, we might see him challenge the +2 SG barrier in a single SG category, which has only been broken once before (Tiger averaged +2.2 SG on approach in 2006).

Digit Of The Week

72%

Scottie Scheffler’s average win probability throughout last week’s Byron Nelson Championship.

This is the highest average in our live model archives (excluding starting-stroke era TOUR Championships—Scheffler averaged 75% at East Lake in 2024). Scottie was 86% to win through 36 holes (6-shot lead) and 98% through 54 (8-shot lead).

The next highest average win probabilities in our archives belonged to Talor Gooch at LIV Adelaide in 2023 (61%), and Brooks Koepka at the 2019 PGA Championship (55%).

Rankings Update

Scottie Scheffler (+5.6 SG per round) and Bryson DeChambeau (+5.3) turned in the two best SG performances of 2025 last week. Scheffler’s place at the top of our rankings was unchanged but he nearly doubled his stroke gap over McIlroy, while Bryson moved just ahead of Rahm to the #3 spot.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Scottie Scheffler	1	—	1	—
Rory McIlroy	2	—	2	—
Bryson DeChambeau	3	2	13	1
Jon Rahm	4	1	77	4
Collin Morikawa	5	1	4	—
Justin Thomas	6	—	5	—
Russell Henley	7	1	8	—
Xander Schauffele	8	1	3	—
Joaquin Niemann	9	2	85	2
Tommy Fleetwood	10	—	11	—
Notables
Patrick Reed	22	4	51	1
Jordan Spieth	26	11	46	12
Tony Finau	48	5	38	2
Wyndham Clark	50	4	15	—
Talor Gooch	104	42	—	—
Eugenio Chacarra	112	3	139	1

Scheffler also came close to a couple all-time strokes-gained category marks last week: his ball-striking performance was the 5th-best in the SG era, while his approach performance was the 17th-best.

Jon Rahm is currently a good example of how player rankings can diverge depending on whether you value scores or results. Rahm has the 6th-best adjusted SG average in 2025, but has accumulated only the 42nd-most DG Points. He's finished between T2 and T9 in every LIV event so far this year which, using DG Points, is similar to finishing between T5 and T25 in a full-field PGA Tour event. While solid, these types of results don't move the needle much in top-heavy points systems. In the debate about where Rahm currently sits among the world’s best players, it’s important to clarify whether we are focusing on his recent scores (DG Rank) or the results he’s achieved (DG Points).

What We've Been Up To

We got through our post-Masters depression by making a few upgrades to the site:

1. Final round recaps
We added final round recaps to our past results pages (only majors back to 2019 and 2025 PGA Tour events for now). The recap shows Sunday leaderboard snapshots and win probabilities at 5-minute intervals for the key players from the final round. Even Letzig chipped in, identifying the key moments during each final round (e.g. 5:39pm on Masters Sunday: Rory doubles 13, dropping his win probability from 96% to 73%).

2. Cumulative SG on live stats
Not as fun as the previous update, but we added a toggle to our live stats page that shows cumulative, instead of average, strokes-gained for the week (you need to be on the "Tournament" tab to see it). We typically stay away from cumulative SG around the site because it isn't great for comparing performance across tournaments and seasons, but for an isolated event I find it useful to see the total strokes gained/lost in each category.