Pro Golf Now
Fansided

Who dominated in 2018? Hint: It wasn’t Justin Rose

By Bill Felber

ATLANTA, GA - SEPTEMBER 24: The FedExCup trophy is displayed prior to the final round of the TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club on September 24, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
ATLANTA, GA - SEPTEMBER 24: The FedExCup trophy is displayed prior to the final round of the TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club on September 24, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 11
Next

Justin Rose won the 2018 FedEx Cup and its $10 million prize. From the perspective of the PGA Tour, that made Rose the season “champion.” Yet Rose actually only enjoyed the second best season on Tour.

Measured by each player’s week-by-week dominance over his competitors, one player had a more imposing 2018 season than Rose, even if they didn’t win the FedEx Cup.

This new system of assessing player performance considers not merely whether a player won or where they finished, but also takes into account their margins of victory or defeat. This system, which could be thought of as “Margin of Dominance,” also demonstrates that among the top 10 players in the 2018 FedEx Cup standings, four did not merit their inclusion based on their season-long performance.

More from Pro Golf Now

“Margin of Dominance” is based on the average standard deviation of a player’s score in 2018 season tournaments relative to all other competitors who completed four rounds of play in that event. Results of all PGA Tour sanctioned events contested by individuals over four rounds of medal play are included, and the value of some tournaments is weighted. Performance in the four majors carries of weighting of 2.0, while performance in WGT medal play events, the Players Championship and the Tour Championship Series events are weighted at a factor of 1.5.

Because golf is a game where low scores are better than high ones, the player with the most negative average standard deviation of performance over the course of the season can be said to have had the most dominant season.

Players who miss a cut, thus failing to complete four rounds, are assigned a score equivalent to three strokes higher than the worst four-round score posted in that event, and their standard deviation of performance is calculated accordingly. That’s a major improvement on the FedEx Cup system, which does not penalize sub-standard play.

Whose name won’t you see below? Four players ranked among the final FedEx Cup top 10 fail to justify their placing based on Margin of Dominance. Those four are Bryson DeChambeau (3rd in FedEx, 12th in MOD), Billy Horschel, (5th vs. 25th), Keegan Bradley (8th vs. 24th) and Bubba Watson (10th vs. 28th).

Here’s a look at how the top 10 as measured by Margin of Dominance compared with final FedEx Cup standings accompanied by a breakdown of why players were ranked where they were. In each case, the data line shows the player’s Margin of Dominance rank, his FedEx Cup rank (in parenthesis) and the season-long standard deviation of his tournament performances.

Home/Golf Power Rankings