Who dominated in 2018? Hint: It wasn’t Justin Rose
By Bill Felber
2. Justin Rose (1), -1.40
This rating system displaces Rose from No. 1, but it does not greatly diminish his performance. At -1.40, he stands a very solid second; the gap between him and Koepka in third is the largest for any two positions in the entire top 30.
A world player, Rose made just 17 starts on the PGA Tour, all but six of them in events that rate headline status. Rose only failed to match the field average in three, and really only hurt himself with one missed cut, that at the Northern Trust. His 274 at the Tour Championship – capped by a cautious Sunday 73 — was four strokes more than Woods, but good enough to claim the $10 million season-long title.
His most spectacular showing came at the Forth Worth invitational in May. His four-round total of 260 was 15.4 strokes better than the field average, a distance that translated to 3.42 standard deviations. That was the second most dominant performance in any event.
There’s a reason Rose was rated at or near the top of the World Golf rankings all season. He won the WGC HSBC late in 2017, dominated the Fort Worth Invitational in May, lost to Molinari by two strokes at Carnoustie and was runner-up at two of the Tour Championship Series events, the Dell and the BMW.
The only less-than-overpowering aspect of Rose’s record was his performance in the three U.S. majors: ties for 12th, 10th and 19th at the Masters, U.S. Open and PGA.