2022 Presidents Cup: Why the numbers love the U.S. Team this week
By Bill Felber
Around the Green (.467)
The recovery game Is not as important a determinant of scoring on Tour as either the driving or approach games. That’s a good thing for the Internationals, because here again, U.S. team members are dominant.
Seven Presidents Cup players achieved at least a one standard deviation advantage over their Tour peers last season in their recovery work around the greens…and five of those seven play for the U.S. team.
The seven are:
- Billy Horschel, 1.597
- Sungjae Im, 1.473
- Justin Thomas, 1.358
- Kevin Kisner, 1.189
- Scottie Scheffler, 1.132
- Jordan Spieth, 1.111
- Si Woo Kim, 1.016
Im and Kim are the only Internationals among that group.
By contrast, six members of the Presidents Cup field were sub-par at recovery work, and five of those six play for the Internationals.
They include Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Taylor Pendrith, Sebastian Munoz, Corey Conners, and Adam Scott, along with Collin Morikawa, the worst American.
The U.S. team’s superiority in recovery is vast. U.S. team members average (.833) standard deviations better than the Tour average, while International team members only average (.227) standard deviations better.
Even discounted for the fact that the recovery game is less than a 50 percent influence on scoring, that still works out to adjusted scores of (.389) for the U.S. team against just (.106) for the Internationals.
That’s more than a three-fold advantage for the U.S.