I googled the disney putter disqualification....... it's NOT a long name, nor starts with an "M". common surname too............. hard to believe but i have never heard of this player, so good luck guessing

also, googled the most cuts made............ this player i'm sure went to college in the 1970s but i wouldn't associate him with the pga tour in the 70's.......... so many hints you could give but can't think of many hints that wouldn't completely give away the answer.................... went to a very prestigious school for college golf.

Yeah, just googled the name and I was way off.

it's funny. i have vague memories of stuff. i go and look it up and sometimes i'm way off.

More miscellany of dubious interest:

There have been several tour-wide streaks when the entire tour collectively agrees to go on a streak of 54-hole leaders closing tournaments (or not closing tournaments).

Long streaks of 54-hole leaders closing

10 consecutive starting the 1977 season (stopped by Mark Hayes over Tom Watson and Mike McCullough at Players)

10 consecutive in 2006 (stopped by Brett Wetterich over Adam Scott and Trevor Immelman at Byron Nelson)

Long streaks of 54-hole leaders NOT closing

10 consecutive in 1969 (stopped by Dale Douglass at Kemper)

15 consecutive in 1979 (stopped by Curtis Strange at Pensacola; note that there were 8 straight closes to start the 1979 season -- this streak was stopped by Mark McCumber over Alan Tapie at Doral)

11 consecutive in 2007 (stopped by Steve Flesch at Reno-Tahoe)

I'm gonna throw an Aaron Baddeley guess at #4

Great guess. I distinctly remember Baddeley's meltdown that year. Unfortunately, he is not the correct answer. Baddeley wound up finishing "only" 7 strokes behind the winner Angel Cabrera.

The correct answer to the question, a 54-hole leader in a U.S. Open since 1960, finished a whopping 14 strokes behind the winner.

Gave in, had to look it up.

Never heard of him.

Do you have the stats for 54 hole leaders who have never won on the PGA tour?

I am not sure exactly what you are asking, but I have a database of every PGA Tour tournament from 1936-2016, who the 54-hole leader(s) was, how many strokes he was leading by after 54 holes, and how he finished the tournament (place and strokes ahead/behind).

What stats are you interested in seeing?

eg Daniel Berger leads in Memphis today, but has never won a tournament on the PGA tour before.

I would imagine that there would be a significant difference between players like Berger and players who have won before, but how much?

Is your data on excel? Is the actual winner included in the data? If so (using the example that the 54 hole leader is in column A and the winner in column B and you have headers), the formula =COUNTIF($B$2:B2,A2) copied down the data from row 2 in a new column should give the number of wins, with a 0 beside a 54 hole leader that has never won in your database.

I think that formula will give a 1 in the column where the maiden win comes as first round leader, so might be better to use =COUNTIF($B$3:B2,A2) which will miss the win of the very first player in your db but make it easy to select all the non-winner 54 hole leaders.

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, now that I understand what you are asking.

Yes, for many reasons we would expect the close pct to be higher among 54-hole leaders who have previously won on tour vs. 54-hole leaders who are winless to that point.

Here is the data from 1950-2016. I chose 1950 as the starting point for this in order to eliminate any effect of players entering my database (starting in 1936) in mid-career.

Outcome	54-Hole Leader Won Before	54-Hole Leader Has Not Won
Wins	1,212	262
Losses	1,540	624
Total	2,752	886
Win Pct	44.0%	30.0%

There is a significant difference in the close pct (44% vs. 30%) between 54-hole leaders who have previously won on tour vs. those who have not yet won on tour to that point in their careers. Honestly, I would have thought that the difference would have been even larger.

Great question, davmcg.

Thanks for that - I thought it would be larger as well.

I liked the Davis Love guess (obv before the no majors hint). And damn, I almost luckboxed on the Tom Kite guess.. lol. Boy, I'm stumped. Prior to the "no majors" hint, I would have thrown out Floyd, Fuzzy, and Strange. Honestly, I can't even pull a name.

I just Googled who it was. Fun fact about him: I have a family friend who toilet papered his house when they were kids in St Louis.

as per most cuts made player....

played college golf in the 1970s......... was on an ACC team that GolfWeek has proclaimed "the greatest college team ever". multiple major winner on the team with him but i didn't actually know he went to this school.

In the absence of any hints and just trying to name the golfer with the most ever made cuts on the PGA Tour, I imagine that most people would guess more than 100 names before getting it (or giving up).

When I first heard the answer I honestly did not believe it to be true.

haha... nice! So we're looking for a spoiled rich white kid that grew up in the 50s and 60s, played golf, and everyone hated. j/k. I don't know much about where players grew up, but I don't remember St. Louis ever coming up in broadcasts.

ACC team in the 70s? Wake Forest with Strange? Was Scott Hoch on those teams? I think he was, so that would be a really good guess. Was any Clemson teams good then?

If you hadn't said ACC, I would have thought it was someone on Texas with Crenshaw and Kite. Or Notah Begay with Tiger.

I'm getting close to giving up with the hints.

This was not meant to be a hint, just an indication of how "fun" this question is in some sense.

Most people would start by naming all-time greats who played forever, right? Palmer, Snead, Watson, Nicklaus, etc.

Then maybe a second-tier of guesses would include great players who played forever such as Love, Couples, Mickelson, Kite, Irwin, Floyd, Strange, Calcavecchia, etc.

A third-tier of guesses would be other great players who didn't play forever or less-than-great golfers who played a long time.

The guy we seek would be considered a less-than-great golfer who played a long time. He won between 6-10 tournaments on the PGA Tour during his career.

I will put a final hint that probably gives it away in a spoiler.

Do you have the data in an easy to sort way that can show closure rates that exclude shared leads.

Right now, the leads and co-leads are all mashed together. However, I also know how many strokes the leader(s) led by, so I am able to identify co-leaders (having a lead of zero strokes). So it would be possible to separate solo leads from co-leads.

Is there anything in particular you are looking for?

Grrr... I was even trying to think of Senior players that had long careers. And Jay Haas is one of the more successful ones over the past few years... lol. But yeah, that spoiler helped me to think of it. And I googled to confirm that Haas is the right answer. I'm not sure if I ever would have thought of Haas as THAT successful tbh. Good for him!

Here is information restricting to outright leads (removing shared leads).

The tour-wide overall close pct with an outright lead is 53.0%, compared to the 42.0% close pct with either shared/outright lead.

Here is a list of all golfers' performance with the outright lead from 1936-2016 (minimum of 5 outright leads). Of course, 5 is not a very large number so care must be taken in divining great meaning in the performance of any golfer with that few outright leads, but I thought it would be interesting to see anyway.

Name	Outright Leads	Wins with Outright Lead	Outright Lead Close Pct
Jerry Pate	5	5	100.0%
Tiger Woods	44	42	95.5%
Cary Middlecoff	20	18	90.0%
Arnold Palmer	36	31	86.1%
Bobby Locke	7	6	85.7%
Jason Day	7	6	85.7%
Craig Wood	6	5	83.3%
Vic Ghezzi	6	5	83.3%
Byron Nelson	33	27	81.8%
Al Geiberger	11	9	81.8%
Johnny Miller	15	12	80.0%
Ken Venturi	10	8	80.0%
David Frost	5	4	80.0%
Nick Faldo	5	4	80.0%
Steve Jones	5	4	80.0%
Peter Jacobsen	5	4	80.0%
Sammy Byrd	5	4	80.0%
Bob Charles	5	4	80.0%
Ken Green	5	4	80.0%
Jack Nicklaus	38	30	78.9%
Ernie Els	14	11	78.6%
Dutch Harrison	9	7	77.8%
Curtis Strange	9	7	77.8%
Tony Lema	9	7	77.8%
Steve Stricker	9	7	77.8%
Larry Nelson	9	7	77.8%
Ben Hogan	35	27	77.1%
Jim Ferrier	13	10	76.9%
Kenny Perry	12	9	75.0%
Julius Boros	8	6	75.0%
Phil Mickelson	19	14	73.7%
Lloyd Mangrum	19	14	73.7%
Lanny Wadkins	11	8	72.7%
Lee Trevino	18	13	72.2%
Johnny Revolta	7	5	71.4%
David Toms	7	5	71.4%
Dave Stockton	7	5	71.4%
Jimmy Hines	7	5	71.4%
Jordan Spieth	7	5	71.4%
Mark O'Meara	10	7	70.0%
Tommy Bolt	13	9	69.2%
Billy Casper	29	20	69.0%
Sam Snead	46	31	67.4%
Doug Ford	15	10	66.7%
Henry Picard	9	6	66.7%
Jug McSpaden	9	6	66.7%
Mark Calcavecchia	9	6	66.7%
Bruce Lietzke	9	6	66.7%
Adam Scott	9	6	66.7%
Scott Hoch	9	6	66.7%
Rory McIlroy	9	6	66.7%
Bobby Nichols	6	4	66.7%
Calvin Peete	6	4	66.7%
Bruce Devlin	6	4	66.7%
Loren Roberts	6	4	66.7%
Billy Maxwell	6	4	66.7%
John Daly	6	4	66.7%
Ray Floyd	14	9	64.3%
Nick Price	11	7	63.6%
Harry Cooper	8	5	62.5%
Dave Hill	8	5	62.5%
Justin Leonard	8	5	62.5%
Andy Bean	8	5	62.5%
Stuart Appleby	8	5	62.5%
Tom Watson	29	18	62.1%
Fred Couples	13	8	61.5%
Jimmy Demaret	18	11	61.1%
Hubert Green	18	11	61.1%
Gay Brewer	10	6	60.0%
Wayne Levi	5	3	60.0%
David Graham	5	3	60.0%
Retief Goosen	5	3	60.0%
Bob Gilder	5	3	60.0%
Rocco Mediate	5	3	60.0%
Bo Wininger	5	3	60.0%
Jerry Heard	5	3	60.0%
Mason Rudolph	5	3	60.0%
Jack Burke	12	7	58.3%
Craig Stadler	12	7	58.3%
Vijay Singh	21	12	57.1%
Doug Sanders	14	8	57.1%
Ralph Guldahl	7	4	57.1%
Jay Haas	7	4	57.1%
Bill Rogers	7	4	57.1%
Peter Thomson	7	4	57.1%
Gene Littler	23	13	56.5%
Paul Azinger	11	6	54.5%
Gary Player	13	7	53.8%
Tom Weiskopf	16	8	50.0%
Tom Kite	14	7	50.0%
Jim Furyk	14	7	50.0%
Bruce Crampton	12	6	50.0%
David Duval	10	5	50.0%
Fuzzy Zoeller	10	5	50.0%
Ben Crenshaw	8	4	50.0%
Corey Pavin	8	4	50.0%
Paul Harney	8	4	50.0%
Lew Worsham	8	4	50.0%
Miller Barber	6	3	50.0%
Bert Yancey	6	3	50.0%
Davis Love	17	8	47.1%
Greg Norman	17	8	47.1%
Art Wall	15	7	46.7%
Hal Sutton	13	6	46.2%
Hale Irwin	20	9	45.0%
Mike Souchak	9	4	44.4%
John Cook	7	3	42.9%
Dow Finsterwald	7	3	42.9%
Lawson Little	7	3	42.9%
Bob Murphy	7	3	42.9%
Johnny Pott	7	3	42.9%
Fred Funk	10	4	40.0%
Ted Kroll	10	4	40.0%
Lee Janzen	5	2	40.0%
George Knudson	5	2	40.0%
Jesper Parnevik	5	2	40.0%
Scott Verplank	5	2	40.0%
Frank Beard	8	3	37.5%
Johnny Palmer	8	3	37.5%
Rory Sabbatini	8	3	37.5%
Payne Stewart	12	4	33.3%
Don January	9	3	33.3%
Sergio Garcia	9	3	33.3%
Tom Lehman	9	3	33.3%
Bob Goalby	6	2	33.3%
John Mahaffey	6	2	33.3%
Dick Metz	6	2	33.3%
Jerry Barber	10	3	30.0%
Justin Rose	7	2	28.6%
Stewart Cink	7	2	28.6%
Fred Haas	9	2	22.2%
Jeff Sluman	6	1	16.7%
Bubba Watson	7	1	14.3%
Mike Weir	7	1	14.3%
Gardner Dickinson	7	1	14.3%
Jay Hebert	7	1	14.3%
George Archer	7	0	0.0%
Ed Oliver	5	0	0.0%
Lou Graham	5	0	0.0%
Luke Donald	5	0	0.0%

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Thanks. I see you posted another table.

First, I think it is cool that you are interested in this kind of analysis and willing to share it with us.

I was just wondering what the data would look like when shared leads are excluded. Just thinking that if I have 10 shared leads and won 5 times, it would be 50% close rate. It would look bad, but it would actually be excellent. I would have beaten my co-leader and the entire field 5 out of 10 times.

So, mostly what I was wondering about was how badly the shared element contaminated the crux of your questioning, which was how well do you close when you have the lead. IMO, you don't have the lead if you are sharing it, so I am glad you posted the other table.

Thanks.

This is a great thread, and fun questions, thanks for posting. I am 99% sure I know this, as I still randomly recall watching this occur.



ETA: yep, confirmed after looking up after posting. I would have been 7 years off or so on the year I thought it happened. JFC where does time go.