Who dominated in 2018? Hint: It wasn’t Justin Rose
By Bill Felber
9. Jason Day (16), -0.35.
Day’s performances in the Tour Championship Series undermined his final FedEx Cup standing. He missed the cut at the Dell Technologies, and although playing decently in the others failed to challenge for the title in any of them.
Still his season contained only two true hiccups, those being his missed cuts at the Dell and the U.S. Open. To be sure those were two big ones, but in noting that it also needs to be noted that Day played in 18 sanctioned individual medal play events during the season and beat the field average in 15 of them.
Day won two tournaments, the Wells Fargo and the Farmers, of which the Wells was decidedly his best effort of the season. His 272 score and two-stroke margin translated to 2.48 standard deviations better than the field average, representing the season’s 12th most dominant showing of the year by any player.
In seven of his 18 starts, Day exceeded the field average by more than one standard deviation, a level of exceptionality that on Tour will usually land you a spot in the top 10. Unfortunately for Day, his play was better than his luck; he only had five top 10s in individual medal play events during 2018.
Day’s Margin of Dominance was also hurt by his flop in the U.S. Open. He shot 79 and 73 and went home early, tagging himself with a +6.64 weighted Margin of Dominance for the event. For comparison, the winner, Brooks Koepka, was -2.42.