2017 Memorial Tournament

[Braivo]

Fun watching this finish up, anyone else tuning in?

Wow! and Dufner essentially locks it up in front of a few dozen remaining fans. Nice. 

[Chris223]

The Duf.  Absolutely love his swing.  And when he is on his game is there a dude in golf that can stick his wedges any closer than duf?  I just remember when he won the PGA it seemed like every shot inside 130 yards he stuck inside 4 ft

[Buckeyebowman]

Good for Duf! I was pulling for him. When they went off the air on CBS the second time, that was it for me as I've cut the cord and don't get the Golf Channel.

There was a big question hanging about his approach shot on 18.

[Apoc81]

Good for Dufner. 
I didn't get the end. :(

[Apoc81]

I have to admit I was rooting against bubba all day. 

 

And how can he stand that garish driver. A pink base fine, but the top would distract the hell out of me. I saw it at a golf shop, that ugly stick is 800$ cdn.

Edited June 5, 2017 by Apoc81

[DeadMan]

Happy that Dufner pulled out the win. If you're a fan of his, he was on the No Laying Up podcast this week. It was really interesting. Dufner when he's on is just a superlative ballstriker. 

[Shorty]

4 hours ago, Apoc81 said:

I have to admit I was rooting against bubba all day. 

 

And how can he stand that garish driver. A pink base fine, but the top would distract the hell out of me. I saw it at a golf shop, that ugly stick is 800$ cdn.

Prepare for the outrage of people who say it's supporting breast cancer

[woodzie264]

5 hours ago, Apoc81 said:

I have to admit I was rooting against bubba all day. 

I'm a big Bubba fan, but I'm not mad at ya. Bubba plays ok  in most tournaments (as viewed thru the tainted lens that I watch), but he rarely is competing for a win so I was hoping to see him get one

1 hour ago, Shorty said:

Prepare for the outrage of people who say it's supporting breast cancer

Not to sound callous, but as a Bubba fan, I agree with @Apoc81...but untimately if he felt it too distracting, I'm sure he'd change things up.

[Apoc81]

5 hours ago, Shorty said:

Prepare for the outrage of people who say it's supporting breast cancer

Thats fine, I still think it's ugly and distracting. 

[NCGolfer]

Good to see Dufner come back from a rough Saturday to play like he did.  Some guys would have possibly packed it in...he put himself back in it and finished strong on the back nine.

[zipazoid]

Loved how Duf kept saying essentially the same answer after he shot the 77 on Saturday - 

"I just shot a 77 and still have a chance to win the tournament."

And he did. That's sort of a US Open-type course in that everyone eventually found trouble, and everyone had their run of bad holes. Duf had his on Saturday & he was totally accepting of it, then shoots a 68 on Sunday to win by 3. Dufnering!

Edited June 5, 2017 by zipazoid

[Vinsk]

Fowler really botched that one. I mean, he's sitting pretty in the fairway, Dufner in deep rough....then Dufner lays up...into the rough again. Fowler must've been pretty irked when he pulled a wedge with what should've been a gimmie par or very likely birdie.

[rehmwa]

well....that putt was a good salvage of the last hole

Good on Duff -

the utter excitement and drama and emotion he portrayed was inspiring

just kidding - he really came out of his shell this time - nice to see

[iacas]

3 hours ago, Vinsk said:

Fowler really botched that one. I mean, he's sitting pretty in the fairway, Dufner in deep rough....then Dufner lays up...into the rough again. Fowler must've been pretty irked when he pulled a wedge with what should've been a gimmie par or very likely birdie.

Fowler's final-round scoring average is 98th on the Tour. He's not getting it done on Sundays.

[chspeed]

4 minutes ago, iacas said:

Fowler's final-round scoring average is 98th on the Tour. He's not getting it done on Sundays.

I wonder how closely related that is to winning/losing. Obviously related, but how strongly? For instance, sometimes players who are out of contention can "go for it" on the final day and shoot low.

[iacas]

39 minutes ago, chspeed said:

I wonder how closely related that is to winning/losing. Obviously related, but how strongly? For instance, sometimes players who are out of contention can "go for it" on the final day and shoot low.

What do you mean?

If you're 98th on Sundays, a lot of people are passing you by. That's the simple nature of it. He's top 30-ish the first three rounds.

[chspeed]

3 hours ago, iacas said:

What do you mean?

If you're 98th on Sundays, a lot of people are passing you by. That's the simple nature of it. He's top 30-ish the first three rounds.

I mean the correlation between where pros finish up and their scoring average position on Sunday.

If you are 98th on Sunday, but are much higher in the other three rounds, not than many people will pass you by on Sunday. A simple example would be Duffner this week. He was among the worst on Saturday, but finished first. Does Ricky not win because he doesn't get it done on Sunday? Or does he not get it done on the other rounds?

I was curious, so I just spent an hour doing regression analysis on PGA Tour data comparing players average rank after Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4 vs where you fall on the money list. This is obviously imperfect because it doesn't take into account how many tournaments you enter, which would affect where you fall on the money list. I would like to actually see the correlation week by week, but those data aren't available. Still, here's what I found:

Correlation between R1 rank and Money List: 0.327

Correlation between R2 rank and Money List: 0.264

Correlation between R3 rank and Money List: 0.293

Correlation between R4 rank and Money List: 0.153

At first glance, it looks to me like how you do in Round 1 has a much bigger effect (over 2x) on where you fall on the money list than how you do in Round 4. I'm sure there's more to this, and I haven't given it too much thought (I've already blown enough time doing this ), so am open to other analyses.

Edit: Some other interesting stats that came out of this:

-Best Round 1 player is Charles Howell III, with a 68.71 scoring average. He's 33rd on money list.

-Best Round 4 player is Michael Thompson (who?) with a 68.0 scoring average. He's 119th on the money list.

Edited June 5, 2017 by chspeed

[iacas]

1 hour ago, chspeed said:

I mean the correlation between where pros finish up and their scoring average position on Sunday.

If you are 98th on Sunday, but are much higher in the other three rounds, not than many people will pass you by on Sunday. A simple example would be Duffner this week. He was among the worst on Saturday, but finished first. Does Ricky not win because he doesn't get it done on Sunday? Or does he not get it done on the other rounds?

It seems pretty straightforward to me, and I don't think we need to do a ton of math here.

Rickie enters the final round near the top of a lot of leaderboards because he scores well, relative to his peers, in the first three rounds. Do you agree?

Then on Sunday he slides down the leaderboard as many people pass him by - 97 people have lower final-round scoring averages.

He's not Tiger Woods. He's not leading by 7 going into Sunday, where he can play more conservatively but still win. He's top ten, then falls out of the top ten. Or top three, and then falls out of the top ten.

Several people pass him. 98th gives him a chance for a LOT of people to pass him by… and it only takes 1 to turn a W into a non-W.

1 hour ago, chspeed said:

Does Ricky not win because he doesn't get it done on Sunday? Or does he not get it done on the other rounds?

He doesn't win because he fails to close. He goes down the leaderboard on Sundays. Rickie is:

• Round 1 - T2 - 69.00
• Round 2 - 33 - 70.10
• Round 3 - 12 - 69.11
• Round 4 - T98 - 70.89

Average of the first three rounds: T15 - 69.4
Average (ha) of the last round: 80+ spots worse, ~1.5 strokes worse

If he shot 69.4 in the final round, he would be 13th, or right around what his average is for the first three rounds. Put a bell curve at 13th place, and you're getting more Ws in that bell curve than one with a bell curve centered around 36.25th place. Right?

1 hour ago, chspeed said:

Correlation between R1 rank and Money List: 0.327

Correlation between R2 rank and Money List: 0.264

Correlation between R3 rank and Money List: 0.293

Correlation between R4 rank and Money List: 0.153

It's simpler than doing all of that.

Rickie's not getting it done on Sundays. He's a stroke and a half worse on Sundays, and consequently, is failing to close out tournaments.

---

In terms of other nits at which to pick… consider that players will generally have lower third- and final-round scoring averages because they only get to add rounds to that category when they're playing well enough to have made the cut. That bit of information throws off the calculations a bit.

The median value of the first and second rounds is 71.06 and 71.08, but for the third and fourth rounds we see median values of 70.83 and 70.92. They're lower, as you'd expect.