Scottie Scheffler's win at the WM Phoenix Open has reinserted him into the "best player in the world" conversation. Since winning 4 times in 6 starts last spring, a cool putter has kept Scheffler out of the winner's circle. His tee-to-green play remains elite so if he continues to putt like he did on Sunday, look out.

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Jon Rahm	1	1	3	—
Rory McIlroy	2	1	2	1
Scottie Scheffler	3	1	1	1
Xander Schauffele	4	1	6	—
Tony Finau	5	2	13	—
Patrick Cantlay	6	—	5	—
Sungjae Im	7	2	18	—
Justin Thomas	8	5	7	2
Max Homa	9	2	12	—
Will Zalatoris	10	—	8	—
Notables
Jason Day	17	7	57	34
Rickie Fowler	49	23	80	20
Shane Lowry	67	17	22	1
Nick Taylor	68	51	73	150
Brooks Koepka	99	24	78	7
Cameron Champ	291	66	172	7
Hudson Swafford	417	59	128	5

Jason Day and Rickie Fowler continued their 2023 resurgences after finishing 5th and T10th respectively last week. Both players are still waiting for a win to punctuate their returns to the top echelon of professional golf, but the underlying strokes-gained numbers are healthy and trending upwards.

It might be time to sound the alarm bells on Shane Lowry. A few months ago Lowry was seemingly a lock to be on the 2023 European Ryder Cup team but after another MC in Phoenix—this time missing the weekend by 9 shots—he finds himself 67th in our rankings, which is just 14th best among Europeans.

Garbage Time

We often hear that every shot matters in professional golf. There are times, however, late on a Friday—or sometimes even Thursday—when a player’s probability of making the cut goes to zero, and shots become meaningless. This is what we call garbage time.

Using our live model archives, we've identified the 10 PGA Tour players who have spent the most time in garbage time since the start of the 2019 season:

1. Martin Trainer: 104.5 hours (9.6% of time on course)
2. Kevin Stadler: 89.1 (22.9%)
3. Nick Watney: 67.0 (5.6%)
4. Michael Kim: 64.8 (8.9%)
5. Matt Every: 64.3 (10.7%)
6. Ted Potter Jr: 61.0 (7.6%)
7. Bo Van Pelt: 56.6 (8.8%)
8. Sung Kang: 54.2 (4.1%)
9. Hunter Mahan: 53.7 (9.3%)
10. Richy Werenski: 50.5 (3.9%)

At the other end of the spectrum, Tommy Fleetwood has the lowest fraction of time spent in garbage time at just 0.03% (15 minutes of garbage time out of 723 hours spent on course)! Remember that we are only counting time spent with a cut probability of exactly 0%—being two strokes outside the cutline with 1 hole to play would (most likely) not count as garbage time.

He's Back

Tiger is back this week, playing for the first time since missing the cut at last year’s Open Championship. Based on the data—and ignoring the fact that we are talking about Tiger Woods—our model gives him a skill of -0.8 strokes per round.

In recent years it has been Tiger’s short game that has let him down more than anything else, which is not what you would expect given his age and injuries. Since his last win at the ZOZO Championship in October 2019, Tiger’s averages by SG category have been:

Off-the-tee: -0.11 strokes/round
Approach: +0.42
Around-the-green: -0.24
Putting: -0.48

Player Feature

Sungjae Im

age 24 yrs, 11 months

dg rank 7th — owgr rank 18th

weeks in dg top 100 208

dg skill +1.77 strokes-gained / round¹

style well-rounded elite player, average distance

career wins
PGA Tour: 2
Korn Ferry Tour: 2
KPGA Korean Tour: 1

player comps
2021 Scottie Scheffler (similarity score²: 90.8)
2019 Matthew Fitzpatrick (88.3)
2015 Rickie Fowler (87.2)

Letzig's Insight
Im is as well-rounded as they come. Using our skill estimates for each of the SG categories, he ranks 23rd in OTT, 20th in APP, 14th in ARG, and 25th in PUTT. There are only 3 other players that rank inside the top 25 of all 4 statistics: Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, and Patrick Cantlay. Not a bad group to be a part of.

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.