The Players Championship - Data Sickos Recap

Cameron Young won The Players Championship yesterday.

The bare-bones sentence above is apparently all that went through his brain as he did it. His reaction to the biggest professional accomplishment of his life was... "Ok."

I am conflicted because he was objectively doing very cool stuff yesterday. An incredible shot on 17 to make birdie on the course's most iconic hole. And he hit a NUKE of a drive on 18, the longest drive ever on the hole.

But I love drama, personalities, and excitement. So you'll have to forgive me if I have roughly the same level of excitement about Cam Young winning the Players as he did. Also, I'm going to need a full investigation on what's happening with his shoe fit.

Let's get into the true stories of the tournament. The roller coaster round of the tournament came on Saturday from Hideki Matsuyama who had 9 shapes in a row starting on the 8th hole. Just 5 pars in 18 holes. An almost-perfect back 9 if that pesky par on 17 wasn't there.

For the second week in a row, we were one hole shy of the Clean Sheet™ – Nicolai Jojgaard let us all down by making a birdie on 8. (side note: how on earth do you spell birdie-ing? birdying? birdieing? none of those look correct)

Thank you to Ludvig Aberg who got us into the 20s this week with a 29 on the front 9 Friday. I officially put him on #59Watch but he ended up shooting 63, one off the course record. (Accountability: I have not been correct putting someone on 59 watch....yet)

Davis Riley shot 1-under bogey golf on the back 9 Thursday. A gentleman's 44 which is good for the highest 9-hole score this season. Couple of birdies mixed in there though, so plenty to build off of moving forward. I'd rather have a 44 with a few blow ups and a couple birdies than 8 bogeys. The potential is there for Davis.

If you couldn't tell, I have a lot of experience trying to make a 44 sound Actually Not That Bad If You Think About It

For every tournament, we look at hole streaks. I define a streak as any stretch of 3 or more holes where every hole is under par or over par. Streaks here have to all be under par or over par (e.g. 2 birdies, a bogey, and another birdie wouldn't count as a streak)

Both Chris Kirk and Ludvig Aberg went -5 in four holes. You already saw Aberg's card above, so let's look at Chris Kirk.

The worst streak of the tournament was from Karl Vilips who went on a ride that most readers of this newsletter have been on: Bogey, Double, Bogey, Triple

Kristoffer Reitan is our weekly recipient of the Michael Scott Snip-Snap Reverse Vasectomy Award. He overachieved here also – you aren't required to go multiple strokes over or under par for the MSSSRVA but he did it anyways. Double, Eagle, Bogey, Birdie, Double, Birdie.

Some other tournament awards for this week:

Most under-par holes: Matt Fitzpatrick, 24 holes

Most chaotic holes: Kristoffer Reitan, 2 eagles/6 doubles

Beat his own ass: Ludvig Aberg, 63 on Friday, 76 on Sunday

Cut Drama

When the cut pressure is on, J.T. Poston is the best player on tour. After shooting a 76 on Thursday and having a couple bogeys in a row on 10 and 11, Poston got all the way down to a 1% chance of making the cut.

Then he birdies all three of the final holes, including 18 which is the hardest hole at TPC Sawgrass. This isn't the first time he has made a Friday charge on the back 9 this season. At the WM Phoenix open, he was down to 0.2% chance to make the cut and then played the final 6 holes at -6. If we can somehow convince J.T. that he is about to miss the cut at all times, look out...

The 17th

After going into immense detail on how bad Brooks Koepka is at playing the 17th hole, he gets the monkey off his back this week with four pars.

Cam Young wins the 17th this week as the only player to make three birdies. Hate to pick on Davis Riley again but he tied for the worst performance at 17 this week. At least he didn't make a 7 like some other people...

Every week, I compare the pre-tournament odds for players with their final finishing position to see who defied expectations the most.

Overperformers:
T5. Sudarshan Yellamaraju, -9 (+113 spots. This guy rules, he went 41-31 a couple weeks ago in the Cognizant)
T27. Chad Ramey, -3 (+84 spots)
T13. Austin Smotherman, -6 (+76 spots)

Underperformers:
T56. Chris Gotterup, +2 (-48 spots)
T46. Rory McIlroy, E, (-44 spots)
T50. Si Woo Kim, +1 (-43 spots)

80 Watch

A nice week for 80-watch which makes me feel happy. Here are the most relatable players on tour this week:

Emiliano Grillo, 84 on Thursday
Davis Riley, 84 on Thursday
Pierceson Coody, 83 on Friday
Takumi Kanaya, 81 on Saturday
Michael Kim, 81 on Friday
Jason Day, 80 on Sunday
Patton Kizzire, 80 on Thursday
Tom Hoge, 80 on Friday
Kevin Yu, 80 on Thursday
Max Greyserman, 80 on Friday
Chandler Phillips, 80 on Thursday

Quad Watch

Tom Hoge showed why golf is a great spectator sport on Friday by hitting one of the worst shots (his fifth) I have ever seen from a professional.

This man holds the course record for TPC Sawgrass. Of the thousands of players that have teed it up here, nobody has been able to crack it like Tom Hoge. And yet... he is capable of making a quintuple bogey on the course.

Here are the other quads from this week:

Rico Hoey, 7 on #3 Thursday
Cam Davis, 8 on #5 Friday
Sami Välimäki, 8 on #6 Thursday
Keegan Bradley, 9 on #11 Thursday
S.H. Kim, 7 on #17 Thursday
Jhonattan Vegas, 7 on #17 Thursday
Shane Lowry, 8 on #18 Thursday
Michael Thorbjornsen, 8 on #4 when he was in contention!

Thanks for reading! After trying to post my 17th hole newsletter, my reddit account got banned (something about too many external links?) so it would mean a lot if you could share this newsletter with friends or strangers on the internet. Hopefully just some kind of AI-filtering nonsense but might try to capitalize on it by saying:

DON'T LET THEM SILENCE US

-Mike