One of the pundits on the Golf Channel opined that the quality of the play on the PGA tour is inversely related to how often a 54-hole leader wins the tournament. The idea being that when talent is widely spread out among the tour players, this suggests that overall quality is low.
The pundit mentioned the influx of European and rest-of-world players undoubtedly raised the overall quality on the PGA Tour and, he opined that one consequence of the "bunching" of talent would make it harder for any one player to dominate. And it would be more difficult for a 54-hole leader to go on to win the tournament. There would be more good players on the leaderboard who could overtake him in the final round.
I hope to look into questions pertaining to 54-hole leaders on the PGA Tour. I have compiled a database of every tournament on the US PGA Tour going back to 1936. So we can get some historical perspective.
The table below shows how the percentage of 54-hole leaders winning tournaments has evolved over time. I have broken the past 80 years of play on the PGA Tour down into decades. Formatting tables on 2+2 is a challenge for me as you can see, but hopefully the data will be apparent.
Let me describe the first row of the table. As of today, there have been 466 tournaments in 2006-2016 on the PGA Tour for which the 54-hole question is relevant. This only includes official 72-hole (or longer), stroke play tournaments, with standard stroke play scoring. It excludes match play events, 54-hole (or shorter) events, team events, unofficial events, events using Stabelford scoring, round-robin events, etc.
By the way, if the event is a 90-hole event, I take the 72-hole leader to be what I am calling the "54-hole leader". That is, the leader going into the final round. I will use "54-hole leader" throughout these posts, but remember that caveat.
In these 466 tournaments, there have been a grand total of 625 54-hole leaders. Of course, this is possible since many tournaments have multiple leaders going into the final round. (We will see in the next post why it is important to take into account the number of multiple leaders.)
In these 466 tournaments with 625 54-hole leaders, a 54-hole leader has gone on to win the tournament 218 times. 218/625 = 34.9% which is displayed in the next column.
The average 54-hole lead in these tournaments was 1.7 strokes (where the average is the simple average not taking into account multiple co-leaders with a zero stroke lead) and is displayed in the final column of the table.
.............Num..Num.3rd.........Avg
..............Strk..3rd..Rnd.........3rd
..............Play..Rnd..Ldr.........Rnd
Decade...Trnys.Ldrs.Won.Pct...Lead
|
2006-2016 466 625 218 34.9% 1.7 |
1996-2005 439 562 241 42.9% 1.8 |
1986-1995 407 540 198 36.7% 1.5 |
1976-1985 424 541 236 43.6% 1.8 |
1966-1975 431 572 223 39.0% 1.7 |
1956-1965 433 554 243 43.9% 1.8 |
1946-1955 328 419 207 49.4% 2.1 |
1936-1945 218 256 142 55.5% 2.4 |
TOTAL...3146 4069 1708 42.0% 1.8 |
By reviewing the table we see that the "closing" percentage was indeed much higher in the early days of the PGA Tour. 55.5% of 54-hole leaders in 1936-1945 went on to win the tournament, over 20 percentage points higher than in the most recent decade. Of course, this time period saw the emergence and domination of Hogan, Snead, and Nelson. Byron's remarkable 1945 season surely contributed to the decade's high closing percentage.
While this closing pct has definitely dropped over time, the decade-to-decade fluctuation has not been smooth. The influx of Europeans and rest-of-world players on to the US PGA Tour began in the 1980's and picked up steam in the 1990's all the way to the present day. It is tempting to say that the dip in the 1986-1995 closing pct is at least partially due to this influx of talent. However, the following decade of 1996-2005 sees a dramatic upward spike which we will comment on in a subsequent post.
Bonus Trivia Questions
As a reward for any reader who has made it this far, here are a few trivia questions culled from my research. In order to allow others to "enjoy" the questions without answers being immediately provided, could I suggest that answers/guesses be put in spoilers?
1. Name the only golfer, other than Byron Nelson in 1945, who won PGA tournaments in four consecutive weeks.
2. Name the golfer who inadvertently entered his back nine score in the box for the 18th hole and was forced to accept the 30 stroke error after he signed his scorecard.
3. Name the golfer who in a tournament in the 1960's waited over seven minutes for a putt to drop from the lip of the 72nd hole (the ball never did fall in). [His putt had no bearing on the outcome of the tournament but his playing partner, who was forced to wait, did have a crucial putt to make.]
4. Name the 54-hole leader who finished the most strokes behind the eventual tournament winner (tournament was 72 holes).
Last edited by whosnext; 06-07-2016 at 04:08 PM.