Stats Report: The RSM Classic, Round 1

After the first round of The RSM Classic there are 86 players at Even par or better (T65th position). Here is how our live model is projecting Friday’s cutline: Even par: 27 percent 1 under par: 26 percent 1 over par: 17 percent The RSM Classic is played on two courses for the first 36 holes of the tournament: the Seaside course (SS) and Plantation (PL) course at Sea Island Resort. Historically, the Plantation course has played significantly easier than the Seaside course. Thursday’s first round was no different: here are the respective course scoring averages: Seaside: +1.05 Plantation: -0.95 This difference in course difficulty obviously has important implications for estimating finish probabilities. Roughly speaking, we could add 2 strokes to everyone’s score who played the Plantation course in the first round to obtain the “effective� current leaderboard. Here are the current top 10 win probabilities, factoring in the course rotation: Despite just 2 of the top 15 scores on Thursday coming from players on the Seaside course, 7 of the top 15 win probabilities belong to Thursday Seaside players. Of course, implicit in these estimates is the assumption that the scoring discrepancy between the two courses will persist in Friday’s second round. NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut�, “Top 20�, “Top 5�, and “Win� probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 10K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of The RSM Classic, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

Click here to read the full article…