Gdula's Golf Simulations: The Memorial Tournament
Volatility is the name of the game in golf, and picking winners isn't easy. With fields of 150-plus golfers sometimes being separated by how a putt or two falls each week, predicting golf can be absurdly tough.
We'll never be able to capture everything that goes into a golfer's expectations for a week, but we can try to account for that by simulating out the weekend and seeing what happens.
The Process
Over the years, I have made plenty of tweaks to my original golf model, which uses a combination of the OWGR's field strength numbers and datagolf's field strength numbers to adjust each golfer's score relative to the field (on the PGA Tour, the European Tour, and the Korn Ferry Tour).
The ultimate goal is to place a score from the Waste Management Open, the BMW International Open, and the Knoxville Open on level playing fields. This adjusted strokes metric lets me see how golfers are performing across all tours. From there, a golfer's adjusted stroke data is combined with their round-to-round variance to see how the field is likely to perform when playing out the event thousands of times.
In addition to that long-term adjusted form, I factor in course-level adjustments for course fit.
I run a second model that uses more granular strokes gained data, which allows me to very easily adjust for course fit. The results are averaged out.
I let the data do the talking and don't make many tweaks -- if any. Golfers with a small sample get regressed to a low-end PGA Tour player to round out their samples. Data points are weighted more heavily toward recent performance.
Here are the most likely winners for the Memorial Tournament, according to the models.
| Golfer | Simulated Win% |
Simulated Top-10% |
Simulated Made Cut% |
FanDuel Sportsbook Win Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jon Rahm | 6.0% | 33.9% | 86.3% | +1000 |
| Xander Schauffele | 5.5% | 30.8% | 84.9% | +2000 |
| Justin Thomas | 4.6% | 28.2% | 83.9% | +1600 |
| Viktor Hovland | 4.4% | 29.3% | 84.1% | +1600 |
| Jordan Spieth | 4.3% | 26.6% | 82.5% | +1600 |
| Collin Morikawa | 3.8% | 27.8% | 83.1% | +1600 |
| Corey Conners | 3.2% | 26.1% | 82.5% | +3300 |
| Matthew Fitzpatrick | 3.1% | 24.1% | 81.4% | +3300 |
| Tony Finau | 3.1% | 23.9% | 80.3% | +2700 |
| Patrick Cantlay | 3.0% | 22.8% | 79.8% | +2000 |
| Patrick Reed | 2.8% | 22.6% | 79.8% | +3400 |
| Bryson DeChambeau | 2.8% | 21.8% | 79.6% | +1400 |
| Rory McIlroy | 2.3% | 18.9% | 77.0% | +1400 |
| Louis Oosthuizen | 2.3% | 19.4% | 77.4% | +4100 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | 2.2% | 19.2% | 77.1% | +2200 |
| Scottie Scheffler | 1.9% | 18.6% | 76.5% | +4100 |
| Joaquin Niemann | 1.7% | 17.1% | 75.6% | +3400 |
| Cameron Smith | 1.6% | 16.2% | 75.0% | +5000 |
| Brendon Todd | 1.6% | 15.5% | 74.5% | +9000 |
| Russell Henley | 1.5% | 16.2% | 74.5% | +6000 |
| Cameron Tringale | 1.5% | 13.9% | 72.7% | +10000 |
| Charley Hoffman | 1.3% | 14.6% | 72.9% | +4200 |
| Keegan Bradley | 1.3% | 14.5% | 73.7% | +4500 |
| Billy Horschel | 1.3% | 14.1% | 73.1% | +5500 |
| Sungjae Im | 1.3% | 13.8% | 72.4% | +5000 |
| Kevin Streelman | 1.2% | 15.8% | 74.1% | +5000 |
| Emiliano Grillo | 1.2% | 13.1% | 71.1% | +5000 |
| Sam Burns | 1.1% | 11.3% | 68.7% | +4100 |
| Christiaan Bezuidenhout | 1.1% | 12.1% | 70.1% | +8000 |
| Si Woo Kim | 1.0% | 11.9% | 69.4% | +10000 |
| Shane Lowry | 1.0% | 11.4% | 69.7% | +3100 |
| Jason Day | 0.9% | 11.1% | 69.3% | +5500 |
| Talor Gooch | 0.9% | 9.8% | 67.1% | +15000 |
| Chris Kirk | 0.8% | 10.0% | 67.1% | +10000 |
| Matt Kuchar | 0.7% | 10.1% | 67.9% | +10000 |
| Doug Ghim | 0.7% | 9.7% | 66.7% | +12000 |
| Bubba Watson | 0.7% | 9.5% | 66.2% | +6500 |
| Stewart Cink | 0.7% | 10.3% | 67.7% | +10000 |
| Matt Wallace | 0.7% | 9.1% | 66.2% | +8000 |
| Matt Jones | 0.7% | 9.1% | 66.5% | +10000 |
| Adam Scott | 0.7% | 7.8% | 63.7% | +5500 |
| Gary Woodland | 0.6% | 8.1% | 64.4% | +5500 |
| Harold Varner III | 0.6% | 8.9% | 65.8% | +12000 |
| Max Homa | 0.6% | 7.9% | 63.3% | +10000 |
| Lanto Griffin | 0.6% | 8.1% | 64.6% | +15000 |
| Patton Kizzire | 0.5% | 7.4% | 62.8% | +10000 |
| Carlos Ortiz | 0.5% | 7.7% | 63.9% | +15000 |
| Rickie Fowler | 0.5% | 6.9% | 61.4% | +6000 |
| Alex Noren | 0.5% | 7.0% | 62.4% | +15000 |
| Aaron Wise | 0.5% | 7.3% | 62.7% | +9000 |
The models are pretty split on Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele, but the odds are quite different on Golf odds. Rahm is listed at +1000, and Schauffele is double that at +2000. For that reason, Schauffele makes a lot of sense, given the form over the past year.
We see some value emerge in the low 30s with Matt Fitzpatrick (+3300), Corey Conners (+3300), and Patrick Reed (+3400), according to the model. The accuracy-heavy course should fit their games, and they're on my radar. Fitzpatrick and Reed have stellar short games. Conners...not so much, but he's one of the best ball-strikers in the field.
A few longer shots I'm eying up and who the models also like include Louis Oosthuizen (+4100), Russell Henley (+6000), Christiaan Bezuidenhout (+8000), Brendon Todd (+9000), Cameron Tringale (+10000), and Si Woo Kim (+10000).
I've keyed in on action on Conners, Oosthuizen, Kevin Streelman, Henley, and Tringale.
