2019 Degenerate Golfers Discussion

[Tripping William]

I have no dog in the hunt, but Koepka strikes me as a cyborg who is going to devour everyone else.

A nekkid cyborg ....

[sagegrouse]

The Sunday noon leaders are all -8 to -10 for the week -- except #1 Justin Thomas, who is -1 and trails by four shots. Paul Casey made the biggest move -- from #16 -- while Xander was #8.

The others: Koepka #3, Rory #5.

#2 Patrick Cantlay has had a horrible week, shooting +6 through 54 holes and even through 4 today. #4 Patrick Reed is +3 at East Lake.

[sagegrouse]

By the way, until today Ms. Sage Grouse, a "casual golfer" to say the least, had one more career hole-in-one than Xander Schauffele.

[Tripping William]

A nekkid cyborg ...

Nekkid Cyborg falling apart.

[cato]

Nekkid Cyborg falling apart.

Tough to let it all hang out with this kind of audience.

[Tripping William]

Tough to let it all hang out with this kind of audience.

Performance issues with his putter.

[tteettimes]

Performance issues with his putter.

Couldn’t keep the face squared up

[mkirsh]

Sooooo...I'm struggling to find prize money for the Tour Championship that is separate from the Fed Ex winnings. I had read previously that there was a $9M purse, but all I can find are Fed Ex winnings which has a $45M purse and contrary to the rules we had set for the contest. I guess I could divide the Fed Ex winnings by 5 to get closer to last year's total purse, but Fed Ex has different steps than a regular tournament - Fed Ex first gets 3x second, vs a regular tournament which is more like 1.7x. Alternatively we could use last year's Tour Championship payouts. Any other suggestions?

Depending on the methodology used we could see different winners. I won't say who yet as I'd love feedback on the above questions first. I'm trying to find a method where I can win but that one is coming up empty.

[YmoBeThere]

Isn't the event purse $9 million which woupd be the same purse as the prior 2 events? So, the event payout should be about the same?

https://www.pga.com/news/pga-tour/20...chedule&page=1

[JasonEvans]

Everything I am seeing says the purse for this week is the big bonus purse. In fact, this article spells it out quite clearly:

The 2019 Tour Championship purse is set for $46 million, with the winner's share coming in at $15,000,000 -- the standard 18 percent payout according to the PGA Tour's prize money distribution chart.

At the end of the Tour Championship, the top 150 players in the final FedEx Cup standings will be paid from the 2019 FedEx Cup bonus pool, with the winner getting $15 million.

While there is technically no purse for the Tour Championship, the fate of the tournament decides the FedEx Cup bonus pool payout for the top 30 players. The sum of money on the line is $46 million.

I bolded the important part. It seems we have no choice but to use the FedEx Cup bonus pool as the payouts for our contest. To do anything different would be to invent our own results.

As I think about it, I've got no problem with this. One could argue that we are essentially making the first two tournaments of the playoff meaningless, but because those tournaments end up giving you strokes on the field in the Tour Championship, it seems like success in the first rounds serves to make you more likely to win the whole thing, which is as it should be.

-Jason "how many of us had Rory?" Evans

[sagegrouse]

Everything I am seeing says the purse for this week is the big bonus purse. In fact, this article spells it out quite clearly:



I bolded the important part. It seems we have no choice but to use the FedEx Cup bonus pool as the payouts for our contest. To do anything different would be to invent our own results.

As I think about it, I've got no problem with this. One could argue that we are essentially making the first two tournaments of the playoff meaningless, but because those tournaments end up giving you strokes on the field in the Tour Championship, it seems like success in the first rounds serves to make you more likely to win the whole thing, which is as it should be.

-Jason "how many of us had Rory?" Evans

Aha! That's the implication of reducing all prior golf results for the 2019 season to stroke bonuses in the final event. No one was keeping track of the actual scores for the four days. In fact, I had to calculate it for the leaders using the round-by-round scores. Last year, for example, Tiger won the PGA Tour championship and Justin Rose won the FedEx Cup. This year they are the same thing.

[Rich]

Aha! That's the implication of reducing all prior golf results for the 2019 season to stroke bonuses in the final event. No one was keeping track of the actual scores for the four days. In fact, I had to calculate it for the leaders using the round-by-round scores. Last year, for example, Tiger won the PGA Tour championship and Justin Rose won the FedEx Cup. This year they are the same thing.

With the new stroke system that is necessarily the case. They did this on purpose because people were confused by two people holding trophies like last year (Tiger won the Eastlake Tournament and Justin Rose won the FedEx Cup because he had the most points). By dropping the point format and going with the stroke format at Eastlake, the winner at Eastlake IS the winner of the FedEx Cup.

[sagegrouse]

With the new stroke system that is necessarily the case. They did this on purpose because people were confused by two people holding trophies like last year (Tiger won the Eastlake Tournament and Justin Rose won the FedEx Cup because he had the most points). By dropping the point format and going with the stroke format at Eastlake, the winner at Eastlake IS the winner of the FedEx Cup.

So -- to cut to the chase -- it was good that I had Rory on my team.

[CDu]

Congrats to those who had Rory. He had a monster last tournament, overcoming a slight deficit to win the tourney and FedEx Cup. Going into the final day, I was hoping Schauffele would win out, but alas that was not meant to be. And, honestly, with Cantlay falling apart over the last 3 days my team's chances of winning it all were sunk. Such is the life of a single-tourney contest: you are at the mercy of whomever has a good week that week.

Ultimately, as we noted before, the results of this thing will play out very much like a single tournament. The best finishers this week are going to be the ones who win our contest. The money from the previous two weeks may differentiate between who finishes 2nd/3rd/4th, but the folks who picked McIlroy are the ones who will top the standings.

[CDu]

I bolded the important part. It seems we have no choice but to use the FedEx Cup bonus pool as the payouts for our contest. To do anything different would be to invent our own results.

As I think about it, I've got no problem with this. One could argue that we are essentially making the first two tournaments of the playoff meaningless, but because those tournaments end up giving you strokes on the field in the Tour Championship, it seems like success in the first rounds serves to make you more likely to win the whole thing, which is as it should be.

-Jason "how many of us had Rory?" Evans

Yeah, I mentioned previously that everyone should have (and pretty much everyone DID have) the strategy of getting as many guys as possible high in the rankings to ensure that (a) they had guys who would play the Championship and (b) have a shot to start the Championship with a stroke advantage. I said that the winner would almost certainly be from the guys who had the winner of the last event. My reasoning was that - with the exception of Koepka, who had a big points lead coming in - the format of the last event was such that you would have to do well in the first two events to get the big stroke advantage, and the big stroke advantage would likely result in the winner of the last event. So the probability was highest that the teams that did well the first two weeks would be the teams to do well in the final event.

As it turns out, the rules were such that the final event winner would 100% determine your chances of winning the contest. Interestingly though, this event illustrates the week-to-week variability in results for any given contest. The guys who did the best in the Championship weren't the guys who did the best in the preceding two events. Rory and Schauffele both overcame substantial deficits (4 and 5 strokes, respectively) to top the leaderboard. McIlroy shot 13-under, 3 strokes better than the nearest competitor (Schauffele) and a whopping 10 clear of points leader Thomas. So even if McIlroy had entered the tournament at #20, he would have won the event with his score. Conversely, the guy who entered the event #2 overall (Cantlay) fell all the way to #21 thanks to shooting +9 for the weekend. By virtue of Thomas (-3 for the weekend), Cantlay, and Reed (+1) playing poorly and Koepka being mediocre (-6), it more or less was still anybody's ballgame. If anyone had shot 19-under, for the tournament, the worst they would have done is finished in a tie at the top. Or if McIlroy had shot 10 under instead of -13, then if anyone had shot 16 under they would have at least tied.

[Rich]

Yeah, I mentioned previously that everyone should have (and pretty much everyone DID have) the strategy of getting as many guys as possible high in the rankings to ensure that (a) they had guys who would play the Championship and (b) have a shot to start the Championship with a stroke advantage. I said that the winner would almost certainly be from the guys who had the winner of the last event. My reasoning was that - with the exception of Koepka, who had a big points lead coming in - the format of the last event was such that you would have to do well in the first two events to get the big stroke advantage, and the big stroke advantage would likely result in the winner of the last event. So the probability was highest that the teams that did well the first two weeks would be the teams to do well in the final event.

As it turns out, the rules were such that the final event winner would 100% determine your chances of winning the contest. Interestingly though, this event illustrates the week-to-week variability in results for any given contest. The guys who did the best in the Championship weren't the guys who did the best in the preceding two events. Rory and Schauffele both overcame substantial deficits (4 and 5 strokes, respectively) to top the leaderboard. McIlroy shot 13-under, 3 strokes better than the nearest competitor (Schauffele) and a whopping 10 clear of points leader Thomas. So even if McIlroy had entered the tournament at #20, he would have won the event with his score. Conversely, the guy who entered the event #2 overall (Cantlay) fell all the way to #21 thanks to shooting +9 for the weekend. By virtue of Thomas (-3 for the weekend), Cantlay, and Reed (+1) playing poorly and Koepka being mediocre (-6), it more or less was still anybody's ballgame. If anyone had shot 19-under, for the tournament, the worst they would have done is finished in a tie at the top. Or if McIlroy had shot 10 under instead of -13, then if anyone had shot 16 under they would have at least tied.

This is precisely why I didn’t pick Koepka. I went with a strategy of taking as many guys as possible with a reasonable chance of winning (my team was all 5’s in OGR).

Even though I won’t win because I didn’t have Mcilroy, and some of my guys floundered, in my mind picking Koepka was kind of like picking one team over the field in the NCAA Tourney. He might’ve been the best over the course of the year, but in a one game event the odds favor the field.

[CDu]

This is precisely why I didn’t pick Koepka. I went with a strategy of taking as many guys as possible with a reasonable chance of winning (my team was all 5’s in OGR).

Even though I won’t win because I didn’t have Mcilroy, and some of my guys floundered, in my mind picking Koepka was kind of like picking one team over the field in the NCAA Tourney. He might’ve been the best over the course of the year, but in a one game event the odds favor the field.

Yeah, I went with the same strategy, just different names. I took six guys with an OWGR in the 4 to 6 ranges. Unfortunately, one of the names I picked was "Woods", and he bombed out. But that still left me with five darts in the final event, all in the top-15 (so they all started within 6 shots of the lead) including the #2 guy. Unfortunately, my top guy (Cantlay) fell apart this week, while the guy who did the best for me (Schauffele) just wasn't quite good enough. Happy with my strategy, but it just didn't work out this week. It could have been any of 20 guys that would have won it with the -13 that won it. It just happened that the guy who did it was not one of my five. Oh well.

Koepka certainly had the best chance of any particular player starting in the top-3 going into the last event. But I just didn't feel like the increase in chance there was worth the premium in OWGR points, when there were probably a dozen guys in the OWGR range of 4 to 8 that would be close enough in probability to be in that top-3 that I didn't feel it was worth picking just one guy over two.

[mkirsh]

So without consensus, I ran this three ways:

First, using the full FedEx prize money, cato is the winner:

Name	Northern Trust	BMW	Tour Championship	Total
cato	$1,259,734	$801,466	$21,082,500	$23,143,700
rasputin	$1,210,557	$607,031	$19,182,500	$21,000,088
sagegrouse	$374,589	$266,187	$19,646,667	$20,287,442
killerleft	$593,734	$212,537	$18,930,000	$19,736,271
mkirsh	$359,016	$1,347,678	$12,029,667	$13,736,360
accfanfrom1970	$107,531	$735,393	$12,300,000	$13,142,924
CDu	$1,136,016	$2,206,310	$9,360,500	$12,702,826
Jason Evans	$183,266	$460,788	$12,002,167	$12,646,220
mr. synellinden	$304,441	$1,265,187	$9,529,667	$11,099,294
elvis14	$556,549	$2,176,756	$8,064,167	$10,797,472
Tripping William	$433,941	$1,843,340	$7,951,667	$10,228,947
Rich	$210,831	$1,048,737	$8,467,500	$9,727,068
Rogue	$1,019,234	$746,012	$5,246,667	$7,011,913
Bob Green	$128,691	$317,155	$4,412,500	$4,858,346
CameronBornandBred	$128,691	$140,184	$3,900,000	$4,168,875

Second, using 20% of the FedEx winnings to approximate a normal $9M purse, cato still wins but the rest of the order shuffles a bit

Name	Northern Trust	BMW	Tour Championship	Total
cato	$1,259,734	$801,466	$4,216,500	$6,277,700
rasputin	$1,210,557	$607,031	$3,836,500	$5,654,088
CDu	$1,136,016	$2,206,310	$1,872,100	$5,214,426
killerleft	$593,734	$212,537	$3,786,000	$4,592,271
sagegrouse	$374,589	$266,187	$3,929,333	$4,570,109
elvis14	$556,549	$2,176,756	$1,612,833	$4,346,139
mkirsh	$359,016	$1,347,678	$2,405,933	$4,112,627
Tripping William	$433,941	$1,843,340	$1,590,333	$3,867,614
mr. synellinden	$304,441	$1,265,187	$1,905,933	$3,475,561
accfanfrom1970	$107,531	$735,393	$2,460,000	$3,302,924
Jason Evans	$183,266	$460,788	$2,400,433	$3,044,487
Rich	$210,831	$1,048,737	$1,693,500	$2,953,068
Rogue	$1,019,234	$746,012	$1,049,333	$2,814,580
Bob Green	$128,691	$317,155	$882,500	$1,328,346
CameronBornandBred	$128,691	$140,184	$780,000	$1,048,875

3rd option is to use last year's payout schedule and the same purse from the first 2 events, which results in CDu winning:

Name	Northern Trust	BMW	Tour Championship	Total
CDu	$1,136,016	$2,206,310	$2,047,950	$5,390,276
cato	$1,259,734	$801,466	$2,770,375	$4,831,575
rasputin	$1,210,557	$607,031	$2,437,375	$4,254,963
elvis14	$556,549	$2,176,756	$1,451,633	$4,184,939
mkirsh	$359,016	$1,347,678	$2,270,258	$3,976,952
Tripping William	$433,941	$1,843,340	$1,421,108	$3,698,389
mr. synellinden	$304,441	$1,265,187	$1,900,258	$3,469,886
Rich	$210,831	$1,048,737	$2,062,750	$3,322,318
sagegrouse	$374,589	$266,187	$2,599,558	$3,240,334
killerleft	$593,734	$212,537	$2,360,600	$3,166,871
accfanfrom1970	$107,531	$735,393	$2,224,625	$3,067,549
Rogue	$1,019,234	$746,012	$1,141,758	$2,907,005
Jason Evans	$183,266	$460,788	$2,261,008	$2,905,062
Bob Green	$128,691	$317,155	$869,500	$1,315,346
CameronBornandBred	$128,691	$140,184	$690,050	$958,925

So like the olden days of split national champs in college FB, I'm calling CDu and Cato co-DBR FedEx Cup champs for 2019!

My bad for missing the lack of purse for the Tour Championship - will strive to do better next year. Great season everyone!

[sagegrouse]

So like the olden days of split national champs in college FB, I'm calling CDu and Cato co-DBR FedEx Cup champs for 2019!

My bad for missing the lack of purse for the Tour Championship - will strive to do better next year. Great season everyone!

You must be kidding. The winnings are the winnings -- checks are written; funds are transferred. The others are imaginary.

Cato won.

[CDu]

You must be kidding. The winnings are the winnings -- checks are written; funds are transferred. The others are imaginary.

Cato won.

I agree. I appreciate the olive branch, mkirsh, but cato won. Congrats cato!