Who dominated in 2018? Hint: It wasn’t Justin Rose
By Bill Felber
8. Webb Simpson (11) -0.55
Simpson barely missed the final FedEx Cup top 10, but Margin of Dominance lands him safely inside it. Although not contending in any of the majors, he was top 20 in all of them, each with a standard deviation of performance that was solidly better than the field average, and whose weightings doubled their impact.
Simpson won the Players by four strokes, an effort that translated to 2.78 standard deviations better than the field. That was the season’s eighth best performance by any player, and the best in any of the weighted events. Only Brooks Koepka, with his wins at the U.S. Open and PGA – both weighted more heavily than the Players – derived greater impact from any single tournament than Simpson derived from the Players.
For the season, he had seven top 5s and nine top 10s. In eight of his tournaments he exceeded 1 standard deviation better than the field average, and four of those – the Players, U.S. Open, British Open and BMW – were weighted events.
Simpson’s rating was hampered by seven sub-par showings, three of them missed cuts. He failed to play the weekend at the Waste Management, the Fort Worth or the Travelers.
But he benefited from regular appearances, taking part in 24 of the 43 scheduled individual medal play events. Of the 30 competitors at the Tour Championship, only five teed it up more regularly.