2024 preview: Takeaways from 1,000 simulations of 2024 PGA TOUR season

Editor’s note: The PGA TOUR is celebrating the start of a new year with Opening Drive, a two-week kickoff to the 2024 season. Players are refreshed and ready to shine, and they’ll need to bring their best from the start because of the season’s condensed time frame. PGATOUR.COM’s preview content will prepare you for the start of the 2024 season by telling you the players and storylines you need to know before the first shot is hit.

One of the few constants in pro golf is parity, but guessing where it will come from is a precarious task.

There’s a seemingly never-ending amount of variables that affect the outcome of a PGA TOUR season. Hundreds of players participate each year. Surprise winners are crowned. Top players go through unforeseen slumps and the end-of-year standings can be influenced by a single stroke.

That’s where data comes in. The PGA TOUR’s statistical team created a simulations model with the 2024 official exempt membership list to determine the probability of certain outcomes in the upcoming PGA TOUR season (making the FedExCup Playoffs, making the top 50, making the TOUR Championship and winning the FedExCup).

The model predicts a player’s performance over the span of a season by simulating a player’s likely tournament starts based on their similarly performing cohort group of players. The model simulates their hole play using their equally weighted prior season on-course statistics, also accounting for course performance history.

Then they ran the model 1,000 times. After compiling all simulation outcomes, a probability score was given for various achievements on TOUR

Here are five takeaways from the simulation:

1. Xander Schauffele holds highest probability of making the TOUR Championship

Schauffele’s love for East Lake Golf Club is well documented. In 28 career rounds at the course, he has never shot over par. He won the TOUR Championship in 2017, before the implementation of Starting Strokes, and has twice tied the low 72-hole score since the format was adopted.

Only one player since 2004 has a better Strokes Gained record at a single PGA TOUR course (minimum 20 rounds), according to Data Golf. Tiger Woods gained an average of 3.8 strokes per round at Cog Hill, former venue of the BMW Championship. Xander Schauffele has gained 3.6 strokes per round at East Lake.

With that context, it makes sense that the model indicated Schauffele had the highest probability of winning the TOUR Championship. But he also had the highest probability of making it there. Across 1,000 simulations of the season, no player made the TOUR Championship more frequently than Schauffele. That has nothing to do with his course history at East Lake and everything to do with his consistency.

Schauffele has never missed a TOUR Championship in his TOUR career. Over the same period (2017-2023), only two other players have achieved a perfect record of making the TOUR Championship, Tony Finau and Jon Rahm.

Schauffele leads all active players with 34 consecutive cuts made, seven more than Viktor Hovland in second. Schauffele had 11 top-10s in the 2023 season, the most of any player without a win. He also notched a career-high 18 top-25s in 23 events.

There’s no use in predicting a fall-off. Schauffele has missed just eight cuts in the last five seasons, an average of 1.6 per season. He’s carded at least three top-three finishes in each of the past six seasons. Watching him play golf can often look like watching a machine. He ranked ninth in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green in 2023 and fifth in Strokes Gained: Putting. The model indicates he’s the closest thing to a machine on the PGA TOUR.

2. Rebound incoming for Justin Thomas

There was no precedent for Thomas’ poor season in 2023. The 15-time TOUR winner had never finished worse than 32nd in the FedExCup, let alone miss the Playoffs entirely. Last season was Thomas’ first since 2014-15 that didn’t include a win.

For players of Thomas’ stature, a slump doesn’t typically last. The model suggests a quick turnaround in 2024. After 1,000 simulations of the PGA TOUR season, Thomas, the 2017 FedExCup champion, had the ninth-highest probability to make the TOUR Championship and the fifth-best odds to win the FedExCup.

There are signs Thomas is already rounding back into form. He closed 2023 with three consecutive top-5s. That corresponded with a renewed ownership over his swing, which Thomas said began during the FedExCup Regular Season finale at Sedgefield Country Club. While the model heavily weighs the last 12 months in its simulations, it also includes three years of course history scoring stats. The wider the scope of the model gets, the better Thomas is expected to perform.

Most of Thomas’ slump can be attributed to a drop in ball-striking. He ranked a career-worst 39th in SG: Approach. After finishing in the top three of SG: Tee-to-Green in each of the previous five years, he ranked 18th in 2023.

A regression to the mean should be more than enough for Thomas to earn an eighth trip to the TOUR Championship.

3. Tony Finau joins familiar group in top five

The four names at the top of the model’s results could easily be guessed. The players with the highest probability to reach the TOUR Championship, in order, are: Schauffele, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay and Scottie Scheffler. Each has finished inside the top five of the FedExCup multiple times in his career; three have won the TOUR Championship.

But the model projected a new name to round out the top five, one that has never finished there before: Tony Finau.

Quietly, Finau has become one of the most consistent performers on the PGA TOUR. The six-time TOUR winner has made the TOUR Championship seven years in a row and has never missed the FedExCup Playoffs. His T20 finish in the FedExCup last season was his worst since 2015-16.

What could be sparking the model’s love for Finau? His consistency is surely a part of it. Finau has won two events in back-to-back seasons and has five wins in his last three years. He’s also improved year-over-year in his approach play. Over the last three seasons, Finau has jumped from an above-average ballstriker to an elite one. He finished fifth in SG: Approach last season, easily a career-best. That buoyed one of his worst seasons driving the ball; he ranked 44th in SG: Off-the-Tee. Finau’s historical performance indicates a bounce-back with the driver is likely, while the approach play has shown no sign of leveling out.

Another surprising name just outside the top five was Sungjae Im, who slotted at No. 6. The model also valued Im’s consistency. He has yet to miss a TOUR Championship in his career.

4. Simpson and Montgomery among TOUR Championship surprises

Across 1,000 simulations of the 2024 PGA TOUR season, the model predicted 13 players will make the TOUR Championship who didn’t in 2023. Some are names that you would expect – Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama, Will Zalatoris and Cameron Young. Others are a bit more surprising.

Webb Simpson is projected to return to the TOUR Championship for the first time since 2019-20. The 38-year-old’s track record on the upcoming slate of TOUR venues played a role. He has shown himself to be a member of the “horses for courses” category, often on historic par-70s. He has carded three top-four finishes in the last five years at the Sony Open in Hawaii, and he has amassed 10 top-10s in 15 appearances at the Wyndham Championship. The question will be whether Simpson will play enough events to put himself back in position to crack the top 30. He played 19 events last season, the lowest of his career.

Several players were projected to make their first TOUR Championship. Taylor Montgomery, Alex Noren, Alex Smalley and Christiaan Bezuidenhout were the final four players in the top-30 projection and would all be making their TOUR Championship debut.

Montgomery’s putting stats fared well in the model; he ranked second in SG: Putting last season. He was first in putting average, birdie-or-better conversion, one-putt percentage, putting from 4-8 feet and putting from longer than 25 feet. Noren and Smalley both indexed high par-3 performance and execution from the rough.

5. Is regression coming for Tommy Fleetwood, Keegan Bradley?

With so many new faces expected in the top 30, there are bound to be a few notable names that will miss out.

Two players who finished in the top 10 of the 2022 FedExCup failed to make the TOUR Championship last year: Justin Thomas and Tom Hoge.

The model predicts a similar outcome for 2024, with Keegan Bradley and Tommy Fleetwood projected to finish outside the top 30 in the FedExCup and miss the TOUR Championship. Fleetwood finished T6 last season; Bradley finished T9.

Neither is predicted to fall off dramatically. Bradley finished 31st in the model’s projections with Fleetwood at 37th. Yet, notably, it serves as a reminder of the never-ending fluid nature of pro golf.

Bradley may be due for some natural regression following a resurgent 2022-23 season. He won twice (ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP and Travelers Championship) and finished runner-up another time. He notched 11 top-25s for the third time in nine years. Yet he ranked 24th in SG: Total, a slight drop from his T21 finish in 2022 when he finished 54th in the FedExCup. It was Bradley’s wins that vaulted him into the top 10. He had the same number of made cuts (19) and top-10s (six) in both seasons. Last year was also Bradley’s best statistical putting year of his career (20th in SG: Putting). If that reverts to his historical averages, the model’s projection begins to make sense.

Fleetwood is similarly coming off of his best PGA TOUR season. His T6 in the FedExCup was his highest career finish and best since 2018-19 when he finished 16th. He missed the TOUR Championship in three straight seasons before climbing into the top 10 last year. The question is whether the latest version of Fleetwood is the one that will stick moving forward.

The model favors players who make loads of birdies. Despite a career year, Fleetwood ranked just 60th in birdie average a year ago. He has also never played more than 21 PGA TOUR events in a year. That leaves him with a smaller margin of error than most of his competitors.