The Match’s latest edition will be held at Pelican Golf club on Saturday, TNT, 6 p.m. It will feature four of today’s most prolific PGA TOUR winners. Four of the five youngest players to achieve 10 career TOUR wins from World War II will be playing in The Match: Tiger Woods (age 23, Jordan Spieth (23) and Rory McIlroy (25) respectively. Justin Thomas (26). Jack Nicklaus (24 years old) is fifth on this list. They have combined to win 24 major championships and more than a quarter-billion dollars in official PGA TOUR earnings. They have won seven of the 16 FedExCup trophy trophies. They all reached the top of The Official World Golf Ranking. While their on-course achievements are well-known, a deeper look at their statistics may reveal a trend that many golf fans may not be aware. You might not be aware of this: Jordan Spieth Spieth will continue to dominate the golf record books regarding age. He was just 14 years old when he won the John Deere Classic 2013. This made him the youngest teenager to win a PGA TOUR tournament since 1931. He was 21 years old and had become a two-time major champion. This was the youngest player to achieve that feat in the men’s golf game since Gene Sarazen. Only Nicklaus and Spieth have three major wins in professional golf before the age of 24. Fans who watched Spieth in those early seasons, especially 2015, felt that he hit every putt from 20 feet. Spieth was able to hit 27.2% of his putts between 15 and 25 feet that season. That season, the overall make percentage for TOUR was 16.0%. Since then, no player who had enough rounds to qualify has seen a 27% or higher make-rate from this distance. Consider this: Spieth gained more strokes in 2015 with his approach play (40.78) than he did on greens (37.67). Spieth was the only player to average at least half a stroke per round with his approach shots during his brilliant 2015 season. Since then, only one player has been able to duplicate the feat in an entire PGA TOUR season. Justin Thomas: Justin Thomas – Perhaps no one in golf can get as low as JT. He topped the PGA TOUR record book with numbers that have held up for over five years at the 2017 Sony Open in Hawaii. He opened at Waialae Country club with 59 and ended with the lowest 36-hole score ever recorded in TOUR history (123). This is just the tip of a huge iceberg. Thomas has shot 63 and lower 20 times during his PGA TOUR career. That’s six more rounds than any other player, McIlroy being second with 14. In his TOUR career, Thomas has had five rounds at 61 or less and 38 rounds at 64 or below. Both rounds are the most by any player in the past decade. It is fitting that a player who can play crazy-low holds a major record for a comeback: Thomas won the 2022 PGA Championship despite being seven shots behind to start the day. This is the biggest final round deficit overcome to win major since Paul Lawrie’s 1999 Open Championship victory. You might not be aware of Rory McIlroy Rory McIlroy has been called the best driver in the entire world. It’s a statistical fact that it is. Since 2014, McIlroy averaged 0.96 Strokes gained: Off-the Tee per round. This is the highest average of any player who has played 100 rounds on the PGA TOUR in that time period. McIlroy’s hypnotic performance with the driver sometimes can overshadow other great things he does. However, McIlroy clearly is not a one-trick pony. McIlroy, for instance, has nine rounds where he has attained at least one full stroke in each of the four major disciplines Off-the-Tee (Approach the Green), Around the Green (Putting) and the Green. Six rounds is the limit for any other player. He and Thomas both did it in 2022 on two occasions. They were only two of four players to have multiple rounds this year. Tiger Woods: You might not be aware of this fact. Woods’ achievements are so few that it is difficult to find and celebrate any statistics not already available. His seemingly endless list of achievements becomes more absurd as the years go by. The question is not whether Tiger has done it before, but how many times. McIlroy was eight shots clear of Woods when he won the 2012 PGA Championship. Woods has done this three times: 2000 U.S Open, 2000 Masters, 2000 Open Championship. McIlroy won the title defense at THE CJ CUP, South Carolina in the autumn. It was his second back-toback win on the PGA TOUR (RBC Canadian Open). McIlroy became the first player to do this twice in a calendar-year since Woods did it in 2007. Woods had done it six times before McIlroy. Woods’ four consecutive major wins, the Tiger Slam at the turn of this century, is undoubtedly the most impressive stretch of golf. Woods won a staggering 20 times in just 40 PGA TOUR starts, extending this window from 1999 Memorial Tournament presented to Workday through 2001 Memorial Tournament. What if I said that Woods would go on to have another run of incredible success years later? Although the Tiger Slam era is rightly regarded as the halcyon peak in Tiger’s playing, it wasn’t the only time he won 20 times in 40 PGA TOUR starts. Woods had 40 official PGA TOUR starts, spanning the 2005 WGC American Express Championships to the 2008 U.S. Open. He won 20 of these. The younger Woods still holds the crown. However, the numbers in the later run are not to be ignored. Woods won the combined race by a margin of victory of 69 strokes on the earlier stretch and 56 strokes on the later. Young Tiger won five majors in eight starts, while Woods won three in eight starts. Closer to the average is the 34.9%-31.0% ratio of rounds co-led or led. It’s easy to see how it works: In the past 40 years, five other players have won at least 20 times on the PGA TOUR during their entire careers. Woods won 20 times in 40 starts twice, something that is unlikely to happen again.
By: Justin Ray, Twenty First Group
Title: Hidden stats that differentiate Woods, McIlroy, Spieth and Thomas
Sourced From: www.pgatour.com/statsreport/2022/12/06/hidden-stats-that-differentiate-tiger-woods-rory-mcilroy-jordan-spieth-justin-thomas.html
Published Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2022 10:30:00 -0500
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