The past couple weeks of The Numbers Game has focused on how to rate tour players in four main categories: Power, Accuracy, Short Game and Putting. Last week some formulas were developed that, in my opinion, were well suited to tell us who are the top in these categories.
Well, I’ve run the numbers and made all the calculations. I’ve also thrown in a total to find out who is are the most skilled players. Are there any surprises? Read on and find out.
So how am I going to evaluate the players in these categories? I’ll use the positional rankings of players in different stats on tour. Applying the formula to these will give us a composite ranking. Then we will be able to sort the players by this composite ranking and find out where they are in the different categories. Just for an example, if one of the rankings used 75% driving accuracy (DA) and 25% greens in regulation (GIR), and a golfer ranked 15th in DA and 50th in GIR, their composite ranking would be:
(.75 * 15) + (.25 * 50) = 23.75
Doing this for all players would give us rankings within categories. To assign the obligatory 1 through 10 rating to the 204 statistically eligible players, I didn’t want to give the top 20 (10%) a 10, the next 20 a 9 and so forth. I used the players’ composite ranking in a slightly different manner. The formula for getting the rating is:
Rating = (Composite ranking / total number of players) * 100
Using the above example that would give us:
(23.75 / 204) * 100 = 11.6
Using this rating, we can say that anyone from 1-10 is a 10, 10-20 is a 9, and so forth. This makes it harder for a player to get a 10 because they can’t just simply be in the top 20 players in a category, their composite ranking has to stay within the top 10% when the formula is applied.
This is a bit more scientific and not seemingly arbitrary like PGATour.com. So I apologize for the details, but they are necessary. Now we are ready to go.
Power
Here is the list for the top players in the power category:
PLAYER RANKING RATING Scott Hend 0.74 10 Tiger Woods 0.86 10 Brett Wetterich 2.33 10 John Daly 2.94 10 Scott Gutschewski 3.56 10 Ernie Els 4.17 10 Hank Kuehne 4.17 10 Kenny Perry 4.78 10 Mathias Gronberg 5.39 10 Sergio Garcia 5.88 10 Brenden Pappas 6.00 10 Brandt Jobe 6.37 10 Lucas Glover 6.50 10 Vijay Singh 6.86 10 John Elliott 7.60 10 Davis Love III 8.33 10 Harrison Frazar 8.95 10
Here there aren’t really too many surprises. If I had to give one, it would be the absence of Phil Mickelson who is considered to be a long hitter. He is actually rated higher in Going for the Green (GFTG) than he is in Driving Distance (DD). Other than that, it comprises most of the big hitters we are use to seeing on tour and I don’t have a problem with any of the guys being ranked as a 10.
Accuracy
Now the lists start to shrink a bit. Power had the most 10’s of any category and Accuracy has the least. The 10’s in Accuracy are:
PLAYER RANKING RATING Olin Browne 3.92 10 Jeff Brehaut 6.50 10 Jim Furyk 6.86 10 Billy Mayfair 7.84 10 Heath Slocum 8.58 10 Kenny Perry 9.31 10 Joey Sindelar 9.93 10
There’s a few big names in there, but not as many as I thought. Furyk has long been considered one of the top strikers of the ball. Kenny Perry has been one of the top players on tour in the past few years. Beyond those two, the others are mostly journeymen that have enjoyed some success.
The formula weighted GIR highly but the only person in the top 5 that got a 10 ranking was Kenny Perry. Garcia, Singh and Woods (all in top 5 in GIR) were pulled down by their Driving Accuracy (DA) percentage. Olin Browne is easily the top player in Accuracy being 5th in DA, 15th in GIR and 1st in Proximity. That is impressive. That is accuracy.
Short Game
Some big names here…
PLAYER RANKING RATING Kevin Sutherland 4.28 10 Jose Maria Olazabal 4.55 10 Jim Furyk 5.74 10 Pat Perez 6.08 10 Tiger Woods 6.96 10 Vijay Singh 7.21 10 Kevin Na 7.79 10 Phil Mickelson 8.37 10 Brian Gay 8.91 10
Four of the top five in earnings this year have a 10 in Short Game. Phil is has Johnny Miller drooling over his short game. Tiger gets his 2nd 10 in addition to Power as well as Vijay. I’m impressed with Sutherland being at the top of the list. I have heard his name before, but never really associated it with a great short game. When I hear Olazabal, yes. Sutherland, no.
Putting
Nothing shocking here. A few newer names, but some of the same old ones.
PLAYER RANKING RATING Ben Crane 0.54 10 Steve Stricker 1.37 10 Chris DiMarco 2.50 10 Todd Fischer 2.50 10 Arjun Atwal 3.14 10 Aaron Baddeley 3.97 10 Brad Faxon 4.26 10 David Toms 7.16 10 Tim Clark 7.30 10 Charlie Wi 7.75 10 Michael Allen 8.73 10 Paul Azinger 8.77 10 Scott Verplank 9.12 10 Joe Ogilvie 9.90 10
Ben Crane is known for two things. First are his putting skills which are considerable. Second is his infamous episode with Rory Sabatini earlier this year. Crane is a slow player, sure, but a great putter. DiMarco, Faxon and Toms are all players I expected to see here. Tim Clark is somewhat underrated and flies under the radar as a great player but not for long when you putt as well as him and are over $2 million on the year in earnings.
I had thought Tiger may pull off his 3rd 10 here, but he was close finishing with a 9. I also thought Furyk would be on this list but he also was just outside of the range and got a 9.
Total
I thought you would want to see who had the highest total across the four categories. Power=POW, Accuracy=ACC, Putting = PUTT, Short Game = SHGM. Below are the top 20 and ties. I have a thread in the forum with the entire list if you are interested.
NAME PUTT POW ACC SHGM TOTAL Tiger Woods 9 10 8 10 37 Vijay Singh 7 10 9 10 36 Phil Mickelson 9 9 6 10 34 Jose Maria Olazabal 9 6 7 10 32 Geoff Ogilvy 9 8 6 8 31 Richard Johnson 8 5 9 9 31 Jim Furyk 9 2 10 10 31 Kenny Perry 3 10 10 7 30 Justin Rose 4 8 9 9 30 Jason Bohn 8 8 7 7 30 Zach Johnson 9 6 9 6 30 Ernie Els 7 10 8 4 29 Davis Love III 5 10 6 8 29 Brett Quigley 8 8 4 9 29 K.J. Choi 7 7 7 8 29 Tim Herron 9 7 6 7 29 Billy Mayfair 6 6 10 7 29 David Toms 10 5 9 5 29 Justin Leonard 9 4 7 9 29 Luke Donald 8 3 9 9 29 Olin Browne 8 2 10 9 29
There are some players on here I didn’t expect, but I will say that I have heard of every one of them. I wasn’t shocked or wowed by this list, but I wouldn’t have expected Olazabal as high as he is, along with Richard Johnson (even though I picked him to break through in a previous article.) Another interesting tidbit is that only four players got a 10 in multiple categories. I mentioned earlier about Singh and Woods, but Kenny Perry (Power and Accuracy) and Jim Furyk (Accuracy and Short Game) both had two 10’s as well.
I had no expectations going in, so these are just my gut reactions. Overall it looks pretty good. These are just my opinions though. I’m curious to hear from you on whether this seems accurate and realistic. Feedback is always welcome and I want to hear from you.
Ernie Els’ Short Game ranking is a ‘4’ while Justin Rose, Brett Quigley and Richard Johnson are ‘9’s? Something is not quite right there…
Well…the numbers don’t lie. Els (at the time of his accident) was only getting up and down 56.4% of the time. Even his sand play was poor. Last year his scrambling percentage was much better…good enough for 7th. I plan on doing a future column that give some weight to previous years rankings so there is a ‘smooting’ effect.
You make a good point, but I think Ernie would even say that his short game was iffy at best this year.
Thanks for the comments…