Can anyone catch Justin Thomas at the Tour Championship?
By Bill Felber
Brooks Koepka
Ranked third in the FedEx Cup standings, Koepka begins the Tour Championship three strokes behind Thomas at 7-under par.
His reputation for the long ball notwithstanding, the Strokes Gained data gives Koepka only a modest advantage over the field in that category. He averaged 0.555 Strokes Gained Off The Tee per round this season, ranking just outside the top third of the 30-player field.
Koepka’s iron game is slightly above average by the standards of the Tour Championship field. He averages .595 Strokes Gained Approaching The green, 11th best among the 30 players. That, however, projects to about two strokes worse than Thomas across four rounds.
If the issue is decided by recovery play, Koepka is at a disadvantage. For the 2019 season, he averaged 0.041 Strokes Gained Around The Green, eighth-worst in the field and below the .164 field average.
Koepka’s chances of winning are conditioned on having a hot week with his putter. Measured by the standards of the 30-player field, he is not a likely suspect to do that, ranking only 18th for the 2019 season with an average pickup on the greens of just 0.21 strokes per round. That’s marginally below the field average.
By the standards of the leading contenders, Koepka’s profile is relatively predictable. His seasonal average is -7.84, with a 13.42 two standard deviation range. That puts Koepka’s foreseeable four-round score between -21 and +6.