BROOKS RETURNS!

Lot of crazy stuff going on right now in the world of LIV. Brooks was the first to big name to depart and make his return to the PGA Tour. He tees it up this week at arguably one of the best tracks for his game, despite his poor course history. We will dive into that, but lot of fun things to watch for this week, and it sounds like this whole season!

The Course(s)

I want to highlight the main point this week is that it doesn't matter which course these players tee off on. we looked back the last 3 years, the last 5 years and last 10 years. We looked at Make cut %, top 25 finishes, top 10s, and winners. There is nothing to indicate that starting on North is advantageous to South. Now, could some players view it as an advantage? Sure. But that doesn't remove the math. Simply put (assuming no weather difference), there is no statistical advantage shown in the data (or in theory anyways) that random sampling of players on random sampling of 2 courses, can have a measurable effect on outcomes. This is basically like a coin flip but wth 2 different coins, perhaps one of those 2 coins gets to 10 heads faster than the other, but over 10,000 trials, and probably even 1,000 trials, they will be nearly in lockstep at 50/50.

Same goes for putting. There is no excuse for analysis that says because "X did Y at this tournament, we need to target good Y players". This sends me every time. I cannot comprehend the chemical make up of the brain that reasons with this. Literally the absolute worst. So again, use our lead-in stat correlations. Do your own research in TimeMachine and Studio and see what statistics prove themselves predictive. Another good one we will see in a few weeks at Harbour Town "guys that win have to hit fairways here so look at good Driving Accuracy." What? There is actually more correlation with driving distance than driving accuracy. Jake Knapp doesn't show up to Harbour town and just spray drivers everywhere...he pulls out his Taylormade Rocketballz 3 hybrid and smashes it 265 into the fairway. literally apples to oranges.

Fun to argue with a wall...or my keyboard. You guys get it. Don't buy into clickbait, use the data...we have plenty of it.

Now there is some data that will help us. North Course plays around 2 to 2.5 strokes easier than the South Course. This doesn't mean much for full slate, but for showdown 2 strokes is a huge difference. this could be 10 to 15 points. Stack up the North as much as you can for showdown.

Other notes on the course: