ESPN Golf Blog

Posted by Justin Ray

Having won four times in the last two years, tallied four straight top-10 finishes on tour and finished in the top three in six events since the end of last May, Steve Stricker has sparked conversation that he is one of the most under-the-radar stars in sports in the last few years. His unlikely ascension to second in the Official World Golf Rankings has many tabbing him to win his first major in 2010.

But is Stricker the best current player never to have won a major? This week the tour visits Pebble Beach, site of this year's U.S. Open, so why not visit the thought?

A year ago, we compiled a formula that measured the careers of the best players never to have won a major and called it the "Almost Index." At the time, Stricker ranked fifth by that measure, behind Sergio Garcia, Kenny Perry, Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy. The formula took into consideration PGA Tour and European Tour career accomplishments, with a heavy emphasis on finishes in majors. Because we always show our work at Numbers Game, the formula breaks down as such:

(2 + [PGA Tour top-10 pct.]) + (1 + [European Tour top-10 pct.]) + PGA Tour wins + (Euro Tour wins x 0.5) + ([Top-10 pct. in majors x 100] x .25) + (major points x 0.1) = Almost Index

Major points are collected as such: Players are awarded points for every major in which they finish in the top 10, on a scale from 1 to 9. A second-place finish is worth 9, a T-2 is 8.5, a third is 8 and so on, with the scale ending at T-10 (0.5 points).

Stricker had an Almost Index score of 17.144 in August, and has seen it bumped to 18.457 after last week's win at the Northern Trust Open. Look at the numbers of the five aforementioned golfers (who still rank as the top five in the Almost Index) before last year's PGA Championship and where they sit heading into this weekend's event:

This is no mathematical bible for identifying the best golfer never to have won a major, merely a guide and a conversation starter. But now you too can impress your friends with statistical nerdery and a bit of substance to support the notion that Stricker has yet to attain one of the most reluctantly owned titles in pro sports.

While we're on the topic of majors, this week's AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am undoubtedly will spark all kinds of U.S. Open predictions. Since 2000, the site of the U.S. Open has twice been the site of a PGA Tour event earlier in the year: at Torrey Pines in 2008 and at Pebble in 2000. In each of those instances, the winner of that tournament went on to win the U.S. Open later in the year. And on both occasions, the man who won those tournaments was Tiger Woods.

The defending champion for this week's PGA Tour event is Dustin Johnson, who enters Pebble Beach fresh off a Sunday 66, which staked him to a T-3 finish at Riviera. But in theory, last weekend could have gone much better for Johnson, who held his first career 36-hole lead before shooting a 74 in Round 3. Eight of Johnson's 14 rounds this year have been in the 60s, and he remains one of the biggest hitters on tour, currently sitting at fourth in driving distance (298.8 yards).

Johnson led the field in driving distance in this event last year, en route to his second career PGA Tour win. In three of the past five years, the winner of this event has finished in the top four in driving distance among members of the tournament field. Phil Mickelson was fourth when he won in 2007 and third in 2005.

Speaking of the world's new No. 3 golfer, it's another week, another California course at which Mickelson has had prior success. Phil has won at Pebble Beach three times, but he missed the cut as the defending champion in '08 and didn't fare much better last year (T-55). This comes after finishes of third, first, T-38 and first in a four-year span from 2004-07.

Mickelson's Achilles' heel in last week's event was a four-hole stretch, from 13 to 16, that he played in 6-over for the tournament. He hit only 2 of 8 possible fairways, half the greens in regulation, and failed to save par either time he hit into the bunker on 15. Phil's wildness off the tee is nothing new, but he has been especially shaky to start this season. He has yet to hit more than eight fairways in a round (through two events) and altogether has missed more of them (58) than he has hit (54).

Padraig Harrington -- currently ranked 10th in the world -- will try to rebound this week after missing the cut at Riviera. His 72-73 snapped a streak of six straight top-10 finishes in official PGA Tour events for Paddy, dating back to the WGC-Bridgestone last August.

This will mark the fourth consecutive year Harrington has played in the Pebble Beach event. Since contending finishes in 2007 and '08 at Riviera (T-3rd, seventh), success has been fleeting for Harrington during February's California swing. In four starts, he has missed the cut three times and finished T-24.

Ten years ago, when the U.S. Open was played at Pebble -- and the field was playing for second, light years behind Tiger Woods -- Harrington was tied for third through 54 holes and wound up tied for fifth. At the time, it tied for his best finish in a major championship.

One can imagine that Harrington hopes to play like the Woods of 2000 this week at Pebble Beach -- and beyond.

Justin Ray has been a studio researcher for ESPN since June 2008, and is the lead researcher for "The Scott Van Pelt Show." He is a 2007 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he studied convergence media. Send comments and suggestions to Justin.Ray@espn.com.

Posted by Justin Ray

The biggest news last week at La Jolla unfortunately didn't have anything to do with what happened Sunday -- it came Thursday, when Scott McCarron brought the grooves rule front and center to the general sporting public. The golfing public and PGA Tour professionals alike are now grappling with the question of whether taking advantage of a bizarre loophole is right or not. But how much of a difference has the rule actually made?

The short answer is that it hasn't made a difference yet. Take a look at the difference the grooves rule has made at the three PGA Tour spots so far this year that have been full-field events. On approach shots of 75-100 yards, the average proximity to the hole was only greater on one of the three courses. Take the results from the three courses together, and it comes to an average of 9.3 inches closer to the cup on approach shots on which the clubs in question are most likely to be used.

This is obviously just a quick snapshot, and more evidence will be needed to fully substantiate the rule from either side, but it gives you an idea of the negligible amount of impact the rule has had on the course so far.

It's no secret that California's own Phil Mickelson has had great success at Riviera, especially in recent years. This week Phil will try to become the first player ever to three-peat at the event. But contrary to his current billing as the King of L.A., there was a time when Mickelson didn't succeed in this event. From 1993 to 2001, he played at Riviera seven times and never finished in the top 10. Mickelson played just seven of 21 rounds below par during that span. He didn't play in the event again until '07. Compare the two eras:

Since 2006, Mickelson has been the defending champion at an event 11 times, and he has started in nine of those events. Only twice did he defend his title successfully -- at the '06 Bell South Classic and last year at the Northern Trust. His Riviera success aside, Phil hasn't fared well since 2006 when he is the defending champion at an event. In only one of those nine starts did he even finish in the top 10.

Quick, name the third-ranked golfer in the world. It's Steve Stricker (by a hair over Lee Westwood), and he makes his continental-U.S. PGA Tour debut this week at Riviera. Stricker enjoyed the most success of his career in 2009, winning three times, recording six top-three finishes and landing in the top 10 in 11 of 22 starts.

Stricker has played in at least 20 events in every year but one since 1994 (he had 17 starts in 2006). Only one other time, in 1998, did he finish in the top 10 at least 10 times -- and he didn't win a tournament that year. After winning the 2001 Accenture Match Play (his first start of that year), Stricker went 113 PGA Tour events without finishing in the top three. Since the 2006 Shell Houston Open, where Stricker finished third, he has finished in the top three 14 times in just 83 starts.

Stricker was the runner-up at this event last year, losing to Mickelson by 1 shot. He played well the year before, finishing tied for 11th. Stricker enters the event having fired nine straight competitive rounds of par or better at Riviera, a far cry from his first four starts at the event. In those starts, he never finished better than 42nd, turned in only three rounds under par and played to a collective total of 23 over.

It could be argued that the field for the PGA Tour event in each of the past two weeks was weaker than that of its European Tour counterpart. The European Tour is currently in its "desert swing," which consists of the Abu Dhabi Championship, the Qatar Masters and this week's Dubai Desert Classic.

While the highest-ranked player in the field at the Bob Hope Classic was Mike Weir at 37th, Abu Dhabi attracted seven of the world's top 20 golfers. Last week, the Qatar Masters had nine of the Official World Golf Ranking's top 20, while the Farmers Insurance Open had just three. The winners were higher-profile, too: Ben Crane and Bill Haas were the stateside winners; in the desert, it was Martin Kaymer (currently ranked sixth in the world) and Robert Karlsson, who was Europe's No. 1 player in 2008 before an eye injury derailed his '09 campaign.

The trend starts to change this week, though, as more top-20 players are in the field at the Northern Trust (seven) than in Dubai (six). Padraig Harrington and Jim Furyk both make their 2010 tour debuts this week in Los Angeles, while Steve Stricker and Stewart Cink return for the first time since playing in Hawaii at the beginning of January.

John Daly made headlines this past Friday when he apparently let his emotions get the best of him, telling a Golf Channel producer he was quitting the game. Although every golfer can empathize with the impulse to quit, most of us who want to throw our clubs in the pond on No. 17 don't have sponsors' exemptions lined up at events around the globe.

Although Daly remains relevant because he draws a crowd, it has been a long time since he was relevant on a PGA Tour leaderboard. In the past five seasons, Daly has competed in 70 tour events and has either missed the cut or withdrawn from the tournament 46 times -- or 65.7 percent of the time. In that span, he has never finished in the top 10, and only three times has he finished in the top 25.

His most recent top-10 finish was the WGC-American Express Championship in 2005, when he lost in a playoff to Tiger Woods. Since that day, Tiger has won 25 tournaments.

Big John may have quit that many times.

Justin Ray has been a studio researcher for ESPN since June 2008, and is the lead researcher for "The Scott Van Pelt Show." He is a 2007 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he studied convergence media. Send comments and suggestions to Justin.Ray@espn.com.

Posted by Justin Ray

Golf on television, especially on this network, has risen and set with the actions of one Tiger Woods since roughly 1997. One auxiliary angle to the saga of Mr. Woods is television's marketing angle with TW out of the picture. How would TV sell its product with the sport's biggest draw off the marquee?

If you've happened to observe any of the promos run for the (now) Farmer's Insurance Open, you'll notice the networks hitching their wagon to what the world rankings say is golf's second-largest celestial body. Phil Mickelson tees it up for the first time in 2010 this week in San Diego, an event he's won three times in his career. Lefty struggled here last year, though, shooting 73-75 on the weekend to finish tied for 42nd.

Mickelson has had some success in his first event of the season during his career. After all, it was January of 1991 when he won his first PGA Tour event in Arizona as an amateur.

Possible credit for this could be the PGA Tour's early-season inhabitance out West, where Mickelson grew up (California) and went to school (Arizona State). In his 18 career "first starts of the season" as a pro, Lefty has won four times, and missed just one cut. That came last year at the FBR, when he opened up with a 5-over 76 and never recovered.

Since 2000, here are Phil's best finishes in opening events. The last time Mickelson's first event was at Torrey Pines was 2008 -- and he finished tied for sixth. The aforementioned Woods won that event by 8 shots.

Let's look at Mickelson's last two starts at Torrey Pines in this event (the course obviously was a different animal at the '08 U.S. Open). What was the difference between finishing tied for sixth and lumped in the middle of the pack?

Lefty missed more fairways than he hit last year, which is always less than ideal. Mickelson was also just 5-for-12 in sand saves, after saving 80 percent of his trips to the beach in 2008.

Despite what broadcast promotions might lead you to believe, there's more than one golfer teeing it up this week. Nick Watney is your defending champion -- his Sunday 68 last year pushed him past 54-hole leader John Rollins into the winner's circle.

The defending champion has had great success in this event over the last decade. Of course, many years, that defending champion was Woods or Mickelson -- eight of the last 11, to be exact, either Tiger or Phil has won this tournament. In the last 11 years, when neither Tiger nor Phil was the defending champion, that player has not fared well. In 2005, John Daly finished T-72, and in 2003, Jose Maria Olazabal missed the cut.

Speaking of John Daly, he returns once again to the event where he last won on the PGA Tour. He has now entered Year 6 since that last win, and Year 5 since his last top-10. Since winning the event in 2004, Daly has started here four times, missing last year's tournament. Daly's finishes: T-72, T-63, cut, cut. In those events, he had six rounds of 75 or higher compared with four rounds below par.

The South Course at Torrey Pines played as one of the more difficult courses on tour in 2009. At the Buick last year, only 23.1 percent of the rounds played were below par, and there were nearly as many rounds over 80 (17) as there were below 70 (22).

The South Course ranked in the top six in terms of difficulty in some key statistical categories. Players hit less than 59 percent of the greens in regulation, birdied only 2.69 holes per round, and missed nearly 15 percent of their putts from inside 10 feet. The only holes to play to an average below par for the week were the four par-5s. The hardest hole on the South Course last year? No. 7 -- where there were just 13 birdies all week.

According to the course description, hitting your tee shot to the right on the seventh hole makes it impossible to reach the green in regulation, as there are just too many trees there. If players hit a long, straight drive, they should end up with a downhill lie for their approach shot. Of the 63 players who hit the ball into the right rough at No. 7 last year, only 19 hit the green in regulation, and those who did played the hole to an average score of 4.508. Watney played the hole par-par-bogey. In contrast, Camilo Villegas, who finished 2 shots back and tied for third, bogeyed it both days on the weekend.

Another interesting stat? Each of the players who finished in the top four played the South Course in Rounds 2-4 last year.

Justin Ray has been a studio researcher for ESPN since June 2008, and is the lead researcher for "The Scott Van Pelt Show." He is a 2007 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he studied convergence media. Send comments and suggestions to Justin.Ray@espn.com.

Posted by Justin Ray

It's difficult to take any of the numbers that come out of this week's Bob Hope Classic too seriously when placing them within the context of the rest of the PGA Tour schedule. The nature of the event (five rounds instead of four, the pro-am format, different course schedule) is a chief cause of that, but the low numbers posted by the entire field play a big role in making it an outlier, too.

There were 584 rounds played by professionals at last year's tournament. Of those, only 44 were played to a score above par, or 7.5 percent. Compare that with last week's Sony Open, where 15 under was the winning score, and eight different golfers were more than 10 strokes under par for the event. There were 433 rounds played there last week. Of those, 183 were played to scores above par (42.3 percent.)

Only one winner in the history of the Bob Hope Classic has posted a cumulative score that was not double digits below par (Tommy Jacobs, 7 under in 1964) and back then it was still called the Palm Springs Golf Classic. David Duval shot a 59 in the event in 1999. Seven times the winner has been at least 30 under, with five of those instances coming since 2001, when Joe Durant posted his record of 36 under.

It's an event known best for casual pro-am schmoozing and video game numbers on the leaderboard. The professionals in the field treat the tracks like munis, painting the big board red at will. The relative ease of one of the tour's most famous pro-ams renders most of the statistics posted in the event as a total anomaly.

Those aren't even the primary reasons why Steve Stricker's snowman-at-No. 10-enhanced collapse on Sunday at this event last year was so surprising.

Through four rounds of the five-day event last year, Stricker had set the 72-hole record for strokes under par (33), and the low mark for consecutive rounds (61-62). When he went to sleep that Saturday night, he owned a 3-shot lead over Pat Perez, and had just finished a round in which he hit 13 of 14 fairways.

Through four rounds, he had missed only 11 greens in regulation, and carded one bogey in 72 holes. Here's a look at his first four rounds compared with Sunday's 77 that cost him a win:

The 77 was one of two rounds over par by anyone in the top 24 for the entire event, and tied his highest final round of the year in 2009. He also shot 77 in the final round at the BMW and at The Open Championship.

The big names that will be featured in this year's event aren't the golfers but the amateurs they'll be paired with. The highest-ranking golfer in this week's field is Mike Weir, who's currently 37th in the Official World Golf Rankings.

Analysis of the field tells you this isn't much of a stretch, but look for a winner to come from relatively nowhere this week. Defending champion Pat Perez was 90th in the world when he won last year, and D.J. Trahan was 217th when he captured the title in 2008. The only high numbers associated with this event are the world rankings of the winners.

Enjoy the red digits.

Justin Ray has been a studio researcher for ESPN since June 2008, and is the lead researcher for "The Scott Van Pelt Show." He is a 2007 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he studied convergence media. Send comments and suggestions to Justin.Ray@espn.com.

Posted by Justin Ray

As much of the United States shivers through frigid temperatures, the PGA Tour enjoys a second consecutive week in Hawaii. Try to keep your envy in check as you observe the scenery.

A foreign-born player has now won nine straight at Kapalua, but Hawaii's other early PGA Tour stop has been more Yankee-friendly in recent years. Americans have won three of the last four at Waialae, including Iowa's Zach Johnson a year ago.

One of the most accurate drivers on tour (he was 10th in driving accuracy in 2009), Johnson's ability to keep it in the fairway could be his ticket to a repeat. Waialae has traditionally been one of the most difficult courses in terms of driving accuracy. In 2006, the fairways at the Sony Open were the hardest to hit of any PGA Tour event for the entire year. Johnson finished T-3 in driving accuracy last year, and he hit his last seven fairways en route to a back-nine 31 and a win.

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Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

Keep an eye on Rory Sabbatini. His recent success could yield a victory at this week's Sony Open.

Another name to watch this week will be the man who finished second to Ogilvy at Kapalua, Rory Sabbatini. The tightly wound South African had all kinds of near-superlatives last weekend. He posted 10 birdies in his final-round 63, one shot short of the tournament record. He was six back of Lucas Glover after three rounds. If Sabbatini had won, it would have equaled the second-largest comeback in tournament history.

The last three seasons have seen Sabbatini play well during Hawaii's opening swing, especially on the weekend. In 2008, he finished second at the Sony Open, going 66-68 in Rounds 3 and 4. At Waialae last year, he jumped 29 spots on Sunday with a closing 65.

In Sabbatini's last four starts at either the Sony Open or the SBS Championship, he's a combined 47-under par, and 32-under on the weekend. While he got close last week, and has in years past at this event, this week could be his first win of 2010 and his fourth on tour in five years.

Sabbatini hit each of his last 10 fairways Sunday at Kapalua, and 13 of 15 overall on Sunday, which also bodes well for him this week.

Teenager and noted Hawaiian Tadd Fujikawa will be playing in his fourth Sony Open this week. The 19-year-old (he celebrated his birthday on Friday) made waves last year with his third-round 62, but he faded on the final day, posting a 73 and finishing T-32.

Where Fujikawa faltered on Sunday last year wasn't off the tee -- he hit just one fewer fairway in the final round than in Round 3. It was his approach shots that killed his chances: Fujikawa's average approach-shot distance was nearly 15 feet further away from the pin on Sunday than on Saturday, and he hit just 11 greens. Look at the numbers:

Fujikawa made the cut in three of his four starts on tour last year, posting a score better than par in six of his 14 competitive rounds. Before 2009, he hadn't made a cut on tour since bursting onto the scene at the 2007 Sony Open, where he was the youngest player to make a PGA Tour cut in 50 years.

One of the storylines to follow throughout the season will be the difference the new club-grooves rule has on approach shots and how it will affect scoring overall. To put it plainly, the rule is supposed to make the ball spin less, especially coming out of the rough. One event in, what do the numbers say about the impact of this rule?

In terms of approach shots, the numbers actually went in the opposite direction you might expect last week at Kapalua. Entering the week, many players said the rule had little effect on shots coming from the fairway, and the numbers backed it up. In fact, from the fairway, the field for the most part was hitting closer birdie putts this year than last:

From the rough, it was more of a mixed bag, with marginal increases in distance from the pin from 50-75 and 100-125 yards away.

The rule, in theory, will increase the difficulty of knocking approach shots close, and therefore might cause players to think twice before letting it fly as freely from the tee box. So what about driving accuracy among the players in the field? Again, no dice on the expected turnout: 72.37 driving accuracy in 2009, 71.79 in 2010.

Undoubtedly, it's an early return, but an interesting item to keep track of throughout the year.

Justin Ray has been a studio researcher for ESPN since June 2008, and is the lead researcher for "The Scott Van Pelt Show." He is a 2007 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he studied convergence media. Send comments and suggestions to Justin.Ray@espn.com.

Posted by Justin Ray

As PGA Tour administrators and the golf industry as a whole count down the seconds until their biggest draw is back on the course, it might be helpful for everyone to take a step back, look at the numbers and breathe a bit.

Their sport is still in a good place.

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Stan Badz/PGA Tour

After winning the season-opening tournament in 2008, Daniel Chopra didn't have another top-10 finish the rest of the year.

Take some numbers into consideration regarding the growth of the earning power of players on the PGA Tour. It's no secret that the past decade was a prosperous one for the Tour, even if those facts have become obscured in the short term by visions of smashed windshields and newsmen referring to TMZ.com.

In 1999, 36 players earned $1 million while playing on the PGA Tour. Last year, 91 did. Back in '99, No. 125 on the Tour's money list was the immortal Charles Raulerson, who made a cool $326,893. Last year Jimmy Walker finished 125th and made more than double that ($662,683).

Entering 2009, 43 first-year players had made $1 million in their rookie seasons on the PGA Tour. Entering this decade, that had happened only twice -- both times in 1999.

Twelve players in the history of the PGA Tour have earned $25 million in career winnings. Every one of those 12 players won a PGA Tour event this decade.

The cumulative total of purses on the
PGA Tour in 1999 was $134,950,000, at the time an all-time high, and the first time that number had passed $100 million. In 2009, that number was more than doubled: $277.3 million.

So while the absence of Mr. Woods on the course is a loss to everyone who loves this sport, he has helped put it in an enviable place financially in the past decade.

What will the first tournament of this decade -- aka the SBS Championship -- tell us about what's to come on the course in 2010? Recently, success at the first event of the year hasn't translated to great success for the rest of the PGA Tour calendar (see: Chopra, Daniel in 2008).

Since 2002, half of the eight winners have gone on to win another tour event that year. The winners have finished in the top 10 in just over 20 percent of their events for the rest of the year after kicking off their season in the best possible way.

Success in majors for the winners has been far more fleeting. Geoff Ogilvy won the Accenture Match Play in March and seemed like a prime candidate to win his second major in 2009. It was not to be. His finishes at the four majors: T-15, T-47, missed cut and T-43. In fact, no winner of the first event on the calendar has gone on to finish in the top 10 of any major since Ernie Els finished tied for fifth at the 2003 PGA.

No one has won the first event of the year and gone on to win a major that same year since Tiger Woods in 2000, when he beat Els in a playoff at the Mercedes-Benz Championship. Woods then went on to have a year you might not recall -- three majors, nine wins and 17 top-10s in 20 starts.

Last year at Kapalua, the only thing Ogilvy seemed to fail at was making things interesting. The Aussie blew away runners-up Anthony Kim and Davis Love III by six shots. Ogilvy was the only player in the field to have four sub-70 rounds. He hit 25 of 30 fairways over the weekend and missed just one green on the back nine on both Saturday and Sunday. His putting won the event, though -- Ogilvy ranked first in the field in putts per GIR (1.871).

Six of the past eight winners at the Plantation Course in Kapalua have finished either first or second in the field in putting average. The winners' putting average has also gone down in each of the past four years. A look at the winners since 2002 and what they did on the greens:

Numbers getting lower at Kapalua has been a trend across the board in recent years. The total scoring average for the event has gone down each year since 2006. That year the number was 74.893; only the U.S. Championship had a higher total scoring average among PGA Tour events. Since then: 72.895, 70.935 and 70.515. The number of players under par follows suit: Six broke even in '06. Last year, only two players in the field did NOT shoot better than par.

Kapalua is a field consisting only of winners from the previous year, but what about winners of multiple events in the previous year? Six players in the field this year fit that category: Steve Stricker, Zach Johnson, Kenny Perry, Y.E. Yang, Brian Gay and defending champ Ogilvy. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson also won multiple times last year, but neither is in the field this week.

In the past three years, 11 players who won more than once on tour in the previous year played the event. None went on to win, and only one finished in the top five (Kim, in 2009). Ten of those 11 players finished out of the top 10, which is lower on the totem pole than normal considering the size of the field.

The most recent winner of the event to have won multiple times the previous year? The Big Easy, who won twice in 2002, then won at Kapalua in '03.

And you thought I was going to say Tiger.

Justin Ray has been a studio researcher for ESPN since June 2008, and is the lead researcher for "The Scott Van Pelt Show." He is a 2007 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he studied convergence media. Send comments and suggestions to Justin.Ray@espn.com.