Form Vs. Course History: The Open Review
Rory McIlroy picked the wrong week to learn how to play the British Open. I faded him nearly everywhere, as The Open Championship was his worst major by far entering the week. It still turned out to be a good week thanks to the likes of Eddy Molinari, Rickie “Major” Fowler, and Dustin “Links” Johnson. It was funny to see people proclaiming Rory as a great links player during the week. His nine majors played on links-style courses prior to last week suggest otherwise. He had finished outside the top 20 in seven of those nine. That’s very un-Rory like, and would appear that links golf is not his thing. He’s even been quoted in the past as saying he wasn’t a fan of tournaments where the “outcome is predicted so much by the weather,” and that there is “there’s no point in changing your game for one week a year.”
Turns out the weather never really showed up last week, and that played into Rory’s frame of mind. The course played much easier than most years at The Open. It was more like playing in North Dakota, windy but easy to adjust to. For the week the field averaged +0.767 RTP, on the difficult side of the spectrum, but only the 10th hardest course to date on this year’s PGA TOUR schedule. Enough about Rory, this will now be our sixth week of the course history vs. form experiment, so let’s see how well each method did to predict this week:
Course/Tournament History
The Open Average Finish: 44th place
The Open Money Earned: $1,311,599
6-Week Average Finish: 38th place
6-Week Avg Money Earned: $699,612
Season Form
The Open Average Finish: 30th place
The Open Money Earned: $2,835,128
6-Week Average Finish: 38th place
6-Week Avg Money Earned: $991,360
Recent Form (Last 6 Weeks)
The Open Average Finish: 72nd place
The Open Money Earned: $105,332
6-Week Average Finish: 40th place
6-Week Avg Money Earned: $392,384
Conclusion
Season form wins another week pretty easily. The average finishes continue to be similar, but season form tends to produce the most winners and top 5s. This week it brought home three top 5s including a runner-up, and the winner, Rory McIlroy.
It’s hard to complain with the results tournament history produced, either. Tiger was known to be risky but DJ, Sergio, and Scott all came through. Ernie nailed a fan with his opening drive, producing blood and everything, and that proved to weigh heavily with Ernie, and he was never able to bounce back.
Recent form continues to produce weak results, money-wise. In the six weeks we’ve studied these, recent form has been 2nd or 3rd in five of the six weeks. Just proving that recent form doesn’t do enough to incorporate true skill into the equation. The larger the sample, the better.
