Winner	Event	True SG	xWin
J. Rahm	PGA — The Genesis Invit'l	+4.74	0.982
T. Olesen	DPT — Thailand Classic	+3.6	0.394
B. Langer	SNR — Chubb Classic	+2.54	0.003
J. Senekal	CHA — SDC Open	+2.15	0.002
A. Ogletree	ASA — Int'l Series Qatar	+2.05	0.002
W. Nygard	NGL — GolfStar Winter I	+1.69	0.000
D. Micheluzzi	ANZ — TPS Sydney	+1.28	0.000

The table is sorted by True SG, which is simply a player’s total strokes-gained adjusted for the strength of the field. A true SG value of 0 is the average PGA Tour performance. Adjusting strokes-gained for field strength allows us to directly compare performances from players who didn't play in the same tournament (e.g. Jon Rahm was 1.1 strokes better per round last week than Thorbjorn Olesen).

The rightmost column, Expected Wins (xWin), is the probability that a given True SG performance would be good enough to win an average PGA Tour event.

Rankings Update

Jon Rahm's DG Index (our estimate of current skill, in strokes-gained per round) is now +2.88—almost half a shot better than Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler. This marks a new high for Rahm and places him 5th on our all-time list. A few more weeks of strong play could get the Spaniard to 2nd all-time (Vijay Singh - 2004, +3.10) but he's still a long way from matching Tiger's historic run through the summer of 2000 (+4.09).

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Jon Rahm	1	—	1	2
Rory McIlroy	2	—	3	1
Scottie Scheffler	3	—	2	1
Patrick Cantlay	4	2	4	1
Tony Finau	5	—	12	1
Xander Schauffele	6	2	6	—
Max Homa	7	2	8	4
Will Zalatoris	8	2	7	1
Justin Thomas	9	1	9	2
Collin Morikawa	10	1	10	1
Notables
Jason Day	13	4	46	11
Thorbjorn Olesen	91	45	92	35
Harris English	122	41	73	17
Mark Hubbard	130	10	173	2
Kevin Kisner	139	10	41	3
Andy Ogletree	308	91	350	—
Bernhard Langer	339	79	—	—
Phil Mickelson	394	4	298	19

A T9 at The Genesis Invitational for Jason Day extends his run of consistent play and puts him 13th in our rankings—it's hard to believe he wasn't even a consideration for last year's Presidents Cup team.

Bernhard Langer jumps past Phil Mickelson in our rankings after winning the Chubb Classic and tieing Hale Irwin for the most wins in Champions Tour history.

The Rahm Slam

A favorite pastime of those who write and talk about golf for a living is to get very carried away when projecting major championship wins for the current crop of stars. It’s important to remember the basic facts: majors are very hard to win, and there are only four of them per year.

Jon Rahm’s win probability at each of the 4 majors this year could be (optimistically) set at 10%. Looking at odds from the betting markets, this estimate might be a bit low for the Masters but it’s probably too high for the 3 other majors. Using this 10% we have the following conclusions for Rahm in 2023:

Expected number of majors wins: 0.4
Probability of winning at least 1 major: 34%
Probability of winning all 4 majors: 0.01% (1 in 10,000!)

Player Feature

Thomas Pieters

age 31 yrs, 1 month

dg rank 44th — owgr rank 35th

weeks in dg top 100 262

dg skill +0.9 strokes-gained / round¹

style well-rounded, above-average distance

career wins
PGA Tour: 0
European Tour: 7
Amateur: 2

player comps
2021 Harold Varner III (similarity score²: 99.7)
2007 Pat Perez (99.5)
2014 Marc Leishman (99.1)

Letzig's Insight
Pieters is currently our highest ranked player who plays the majority of his golf on the DP World Tour, and the 10th ranked European. With his move to LIV, he will become the 6th highest ranked player on that tour (behind Johnson, Niemann, Smith, Casey, and Ancer).

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.

Digit Of The Week

Jon Rahm’s recent run of form is impressive no matter how you look at it—unless you happen to be looking at it alongside Tiger’s career numbers. Since September 1, 2022, Rahm has played 39 rounds and averaged a ridiculous +3.6 true strokes-gained per round. Tiger had 4 seasons (2000, 2006-2008) where he averaged more than 3.6 SG/round. He also had an additional 4 seasons where he averaged at least 3 SG/round (1999, 2002-2003, 2009).