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Chasing SG Greatness

En route to his T2 finish at the Masters and win at the PGA Championship, Brooks Koepka gained a cumulative 34.4 strokes over the field. If he maintains this torrid pace he would reach 68.8 strokes gained over the four Major Championship fields—good enough for the 4th best Major SG total since 1983.

Perplexing Letzig

Here are the players with the most cumulative strokes-gained over or under baseline—our model’s prediction—in the last four weeks.

"ELITE" PLAYERS
Rising
Tyrrell Hatton: +13.5 SG in 3 events; Viktor Hovland: +8.3 SG in 3 events;

Falling
Tony Finau: -19.1 SG in 3 events; Jordan Spieth: -15.5 SG in 3 events;

"SUB-ELITE" PLAYERS
Rising
Adam Scott: +17.1 SG in 3 events; Brooks Koepka: +16.3 SG in 3 events;

Falling
Abraham Ancer: -18.6 SG in 3 events; Talor Gooch: -13.5 SG in 3 events;

"AVERAGE" PLAYERS
Rising
Bryson DeChambeau: +19.6 SG in 3 events; Austin Eckroat: +17.4 SG in 3 events;

Falling
Sam Ryder: -18.7 SG in 3 events; Pierceson Coody: -16.3 SG in 4 events;

Rankings Update

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG			OWGR
Scottie Scheffler	1	—		1	—
Jon Rahm	2	—		2	—
Xander Schauffele	3	—		5	—
Patrick Cantlay	4	—		4	—
Rory McIlroy	5	—		3	—
Tyrrell Hatton	6	1		17	1
Viktor Hovland	7	1		7	1
Tony Finau	8	2		12	—
Cameron Smith	9	1		9	1
Sungjae Im	10	1		19	—
Notables
Harold Varner III	36	11		67	3
Steve Stricker	47	18		—	—
Emiliano Grillo	48	29		42	38
Adam Schenk	77	32		60	31
Harry Hall	121	33		125	72
Pablo Larrazabal	188	68		53	17
Rico Hoey	197	56		159	156

Emiliano Grillo's win at Colonial vaulted him into the top 50 of both the DG and OWGR rankings.

Fun fact: our paths—very briefly—crossed with Grillo's at the 2007 Optimist Junior International. The bad news is that Emiliano beat me (Will) by a whopping 40 shots over three rounds at PGA National. The better news is that I only lost to Patrick Rodgers by 24 shots. The margins were #NotThin out there, but in my defense I was younger than most of the field...

Player Feature

Emiliano Grillo age 30 yrs, 8 months dg rank 48th — owgr rank 42nd weeks in dg top 100 373 dg skill +0.74 strokes-gained / round1 style accurate driver, close-to-elite iron player career wins PGA Tour: 2 European Tour: 0 Korn Ferry Tour: 1 PGA Tour Latinoamerica: 1 Amateur: 0 player comps 2016 Billy Horschel (similarity score2: 99.4) 2019 Russell Henley (97.8) 2009 Lucas Glover (95.9) Letzig's Insight Grillo seems destined to be the type of player whose career strokes-gained stats surprise you every time you revisit them. Grillo has played 7 full seasons on the PGA Tour and has gained strokes in the OTT and APP SG categories in every one of them. His worst ball-striking year was 2022, where he still managed to gain 0.6 strokes per round. Since 2016–his rookie season on the PGA Tour–only 12 players have gained more strokes in the OTT+APP categories than Grillo. These aren’t the kinds of numbers you would expect from a player with only 2 wins to their name. 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.

Week That Was

Winner	Event	True SG	xWin
H. Varner III	LIV — DC	+3.35	0.047
E. Grillo	PGA — Charles Schwab	+3.1	0.082
S. Stricker	SNR — Senior PGA	+2.45	0.007
P. Larrazabal	DPT — KLM Open	+2.4	0.006
M. Manassero	CHA — Copenhagen	+1.85	0.001
R. Hoey	KFT — Knoxville Open	+1.62	0.0

Matteo Manassero is a name you probably haven’t heard in a while. The young Italian phenom won twice on the European Tour as a 17-year-old and 4 times between 2010-2013. But he lost his game in 2015-2016, and then really lost his game in 2019. Manassero has spent his last 2 seasons grinding on the Challenge Tour, but hopefully this win is the spark he needs to get back to the main European circuit. Despite already experiencing the ups and downs (and then some) of a journeyman pro, Manassero is still just 30 years old.