PGA Championship: Brooks Koepka on pace for most dominant major ever

Brooks Koepka is dominating this PGA Championship like few others ever have. In fact, if he keeps it up, it could be the greatest major performance of all time.

It’s almost statistically impossible to do what Brooks Koepka is halfway to doing at the PGA Championship. But it’s sure fun watching him try.

The seven-stroke lead Koepka has built through the first 36 holes of the 2019 PGA Championship is almost without parallel. The last player to command such an advantage in a major was Henry Cotton, and that was way back at the 1934 British Open. Cotton led by nine and ended up winning by five.

The previous record 36-hole lead at the PGA was set by Nick Price, when he led by five strokes in 1994. Price went on to win by six.

All these sorts of record achievements of course are context-dependent: what course were they playing, what was the weather like, kind of equipment was involved, that sort of thing. And that’s where a context neutral measurement like standard deviation shines.

By asking only how a particular player performed compared with his peers playing the same course at the same time with the same equipment under the same conditions, it neutralizes context and makes cross-era comparisons valid.

So let’s set aside the usual numbers and compare Koepka’s first 36 holes with some of the great major tournament performances through that lens.

First, a statement of mathematical fact: Koepka’s 36-hole total of 128 is more than 12 and one-half strokes better than the 140.6 average of all players who survived the cut, meaning those who will eventually submit a four-round score.

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That translates to 4.37 standard deviations worth of superiority.

How good is that? Mathematically, a 3 standard deviation margin is only expected about one time in a hundred. A four standard deviation result could be expected closer to once in a thousand.

In fact, in all of men’s major tournament history – a history consisting of approximately 450 competitions across 160 years – only one player has ever posted a four-round score that was four standard deviations better than the average of the field against which he was competing. That was Tiger Woods, who hit 4.10 at the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

In other words, Brooks Koepka is heading for the greatest one-event performance in major tournament golf history. Take that Tiger, Jack, Arnie, Bobby, Ben, Walter, Harry and Young Tom.

That is merely a projection; it is not a prediction. Even if Koepka doesn’t falter and return somewhat closer to the pack, he may at minimum ease off the accelerator, protecting his victory but at a less dominant pace. Margins are fun to talk about, but winning is what matters.

Beyond that, Koepka doesn’t have to maintain his present pace to set PGA Championship history. The best performance in the history of that event, as measured by standard deviation, was Davis Love’s 1997 victory. Love’s win translated to a margin of 3.56 standard deviations over the field.

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So Koepka could let the field creep closer and still have the most dominant performance in tournament history. That’s a scary thought – if you’re one of his competitors, that is.

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