Momentum plays a big role in the FedExCup Playoffs

When the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees squared off on Oct. 20, 2004, they were tied three games apiece in the American League Championship Series. You couldn’t prove it, but one team was ahead -- and that team, the Red Sox, who had won three games in a row and had all the momentum, won Game 7 easily and went on to sweep the World Series.

Momentum is like gravity or fluoride; you can’t always see it or taste it, but you know it’s there. Which brings us to the FedExCup, and Bryson DeChambeau’s back-to-back victories at THE NORTHERN TRUST and Dell Technologies Championship the last two weeks.

Momentum rules in the Playoffs.

In the 12 iterations of the four-tournament Playoffs, a single player has reeled off multiple victories nine times, with five of those players going on to win the FedExCup crown – and possibly a sixth, depending on how DeChambeau fares at the TOUR Championship. He’s guaranteed to go in as the No. 1 seed and can secure the title with a victory.

Tiger Woods (who else?) set the tone in the inaugural FedExCup in 2007 when he won the BMW Championship and TOUR Championship en route to the overall title. The next year, Vijay Singh won the first two Playoffs events, then cruised to the FedExCup even while Camilo Villegas was winning the last two.

Rory McIlroy remains the only player to nab multiple Playoffs victories more than once, turning the trick with two wins in 2012 (Dell Technologies Championship, BMW Championship) and also in his FedExCup-winning campaign in 2016 (BMW, TOUR Championship).

Henrik Stenson in 2013 and Billy Horschel in 2014 also won two events while winning the FedExCup. And now we have DeChambeau knocking down two tournaments in quick succession as the post-season moves to Aronimink this week for the BMW Championship.

“Consistency has been a big thing for me,” DeChambeau said after his latest win. “I've been trying to get that week in and week out, and I was able to kind of figure something out (at THE NORTHERN TRUST) last week on the putting green, and that's kind of progressed me to move forward.”

How unusual is streakiness in the Playoffs? By comparison, in the last 11 seasons in the four World Golf Championships events, including 2018, a player has recorded multiple wins just five times: Hideki Matsuyama and Dustin Johnson in ’17, Tiger Woods in ’13 and 2007, and Phil Mickelson in ’09. (There have been just nine WGC-HSBC Champions tournaments.) And over the last 11 seasons, just four players won multiple majors in a season: Brooks Koepka in ’18, Jordan Spieth in ’15, McIlroy in ’14 and Padraig Harrington in ’08.

So, yes, nine times is a lot. Which begs the question: What is it about the Playoffs?

Hot-hand theory

Notoriously tricky to quantify, momentum is nonetheless very real.

“There absolutely is,” DeChambeau said when asked if there’s such a thing as momentum in sports. “And it relates to the brain, absolutely, and how the brain is working based on positive feedback from the environment. If you get positive responses and you execute shots and make putts and stuff like that, you're going to be positive in everything you do, no matter if a bad shot happens. OK, I'm still playing good. So, it does matter.”

Momentum looks like DeChambeau shooting 63-67 on the extended Labor Day weekend at TPC Boston to beat Justin Rose by two, winning for the fourth time in his last 31 PGA TOUR starts. But he’s only the latest example of big-time Playoffs mojo.

In 2016, McIlroy was having an unremarkable season, by his standards. But once he won the Dell Technologies at TPC Boston, he recalled last week, “it sort of gave me a spark to go forward and obviously win The TOUR Championship and the FedExCup.”

For years, statisticians and economists said sports momentum or “hot hand” didn’t exist in any statistically measurable way, sometimes pointing out that while a coin might land heads-up four or five times in a row, it still remains a 50/50 proposition whether it will be heads or tails.

In 2015, though, economists Adam Sanjuro and Joshua Miller found proof for the existence of the so-called hot hand in sports, bucking conventional wisdom. A hot basketball player, they argued, was quantifiably more likely to produce a positive outcome.

And in the March, 2017 “Journal of Nature and Science,” Seppo E. Iso-Ahola and Charles O. Dotson contended momentum in golf is also real. In studying PGA TOUR results from 2010-13, using ShotLink Mapping data, they found “6.8 percent more cuts were made in the next tournament after successfully making the previous tournament’s cut.”

For top-30 finishes, the number was 9.9 percent. And elite TOUR players were especially given to streakiness: “Importantly, as the intensity of the tournament outcome increases (from cuts made to top-10s), the degree of separation from the lower-ranked players strongly increases … These results powerfully demonstrate the influence of momentum on performance achievements on the PGA TOUR and simultaneously rule out any meaningful role for randomness …”

So, yes, golf momentum can be quantified. But why is it more pronounced in the Playoffs?

Diminishing field sizes

A typical PGA TOUR event has 156 players (or 144 when the daylight hours shrink). From the start of the Playoffs, though, players must beat fewer people, what with the 125-man field at THE NORTHERN TRUST. (The number was down to 119 this year, with injuries and other factors.) The field is whittled down to 100 for the Dell Technologies Championship; 70 for this week’s BMW; and just 30 for the finale at the TOUR Championship.

Now consider this: Three players have won the last two Playoffs events in the same year. When Woods won the inaugural FedExCup title in 2007, he beat a combined 94 other players at the BMW and TOUR Championship. The next year, Villegas won the last two events (but not the FedExCup title) by beating a combined 97 players. Horschel beat 96 players in 2014 when he rolled to the title with wins in the last two events.

Yes, the players in each of those fields are theoretically having the best seasons, and in essence, are more difficult to beat. But the talent depth in golf is such nowadays that having to face fewer players is a huge benefit.

Jordan Spieth, who won the 2015 FedExCup but has never won multiple tournaments in the Playoffs, is a big believer in sports momentum, and says you also can’t discount similarities in golf courses. (Historically, most of the Cup has been played on the East Coast.)

Like many, though, he also points to simple math.

“Let’s say you roll in and you’re in-form and you win,” Spieth said. “If you shoot 14-under and go to a similar golf course, you’re going to shoot a similar score. But then you start talking about knocking down the field sizes. Let’s say by the time you get to East Lake half the guys are in form and the other half have had an average Playoffs after a really good year.

“So, you end up having to beat fewer people than what you’re used to seeing during the season,” Spieth continued. “I think that’s why you see (Playoffs hot streaks).”

Scheduling quirks

The Dell Technologies Championship is the rare tournament that ends on a Monday, Labor Day, with the BMW looming close behind.

That’s how McIlroy came to win in Boston and at the BMW just six days apart in 2012.

“I think that's what the Playoffs make you do,” McIlroy said last week of post-season streakiness. “If someone gets hot, it's basically like one long tournament, instead of four.”

That may be a good way to think about it, given that McIlroy is the all-time Playoffs victories leader with four, one ahead of Woods. In 2016, McIlroy was just the second player to start the TOUR’s wild-and-wooly postseason outside the top 30 (he was 36th) and win the FedExCup.

This year’s Dell Technologies and BMW will also finish just six days apart.

“Guys sort of get confidence, they can get on runs, they can get going,” McIlroy said.

Conversely, strategically placed off-weeks have also led to streakiness. Villegas won the ’08 BMW and TOUR Championships three weeks apart, and he was grateful for the breather.

“I was a little drained after my first win,” he said, “so it was awesome to have a chance to go back home (to Colombia), spend some time with my family, my friends. Didn't even take my golf clubs. Then came back to Florida and just got ready for this week. You've got to recharge. You've got to have the right balance.”

After winning the 2013 FedExCup, Henrik Stenson also praised the off-week after TPC Boston, where he’d won. He scuffled at the BMW, but then won again at the TOUR Championship.

Similar courses

Asked about Playoffs streakiness, Jason Day, who won THE NORTHERN TRUST and the BMW in 2015, spoke of a FedExCup continuity from tournament to tournament.

“Well, they are kind of similar golf courses to a certain degree,” he said. “… So, we are kind of used to what we get. We usually go New York/New Jersey, straight to Boston, then to Chicago. So, they are very similar with how they actually play. It doesn't change.

“The only thing that does change is Atlanta with the (Bermuda) grass,” he added. “I don't know. I think it's because guys get off to a good start. If they win one on the first, they usually gain a lot of confidence from that knowing that they are into the TOUR Championship and it relaxes them. … A win definitely settles the nerves a lot in the Playoffs.”

Even when the Playoffs venture farther afield, to places such as Aronimink for the BMW this week, or Cherry Hills, outside of Denver, for the 2014 BMW, there’s a certain continuity.

“Cherry Hills and East Lake are both tough, they both require good driving of the ball,” Horschel said. “I do really well when the winning score is between 8- and 14-under-par, because it means you’ve got to strike the ball well. It means you’ve got to think your way around the golf course.”

Go-for-broke mentality

Winning is tiring.

“Your mental awareness is so sharp, and you’re so tuned in, it uses so much energy, you can only sustain that for so long,” said Scott Piercy, a four-time TOUR winner who finished 15th in the 2012 FedExCup. “Most guys, fatigue catches up to them.”

But in the Playoffs, with everything on the line, your TOUR card sewn up for the following year, and a vacation just weeks or days away, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. All of which can inspire more aggressive play than regular-season TOUR events.

“The Playoffs—like any sport, you had a great season, now it’s time to be aggressive, let’s take chances,” Horschel said. “You’re not going to be able to back your way into winning a FedExCup, or a Super Bowl, or a World Series.”

The history of the FedExCup is littered with amazing do-or-die shots, perhaps none more so than Bill Haas’ incredible, Cup-winning par save from East Lake itself in 2011.

Horschel believes the post-season mentality was best typified by the Philadelphia Eagles’ call on 4th-and-1 at the New England Patriots’ goal line in last season’s Super Bowl. The Eagles not only went for it, they ran a short pass play to quarterback Nick Foles, who’d sprung free and was in the end zone.

“For them to run that play on 4th and 1, a play they’d never run in a game and hardly ever practiced, it just told you they were thinking: If we’re going to win a Super Bowl, we’re going to have to be aggressive,” Horschel said. “In the FedExCup, the season’s almost over. You’re playing for bonus money. It’s like, I can go out there and have a hot start, I’m just going to keep the pedal down.”

The failure factor

DeChambeau was asked at THE NORTHERN TRUST whether he’d learned more from his successes or his failures. “From losing,” he said. “For sure.”

By the time the Playoffs come around, elite TOUR pros have had all season to identify what’s working and not, to spot problems before they happen, and to make course corrections.

Horschel could’ve won three tournaments in the ’14 Playoffs, but he misplayed his second shot, with a 6-iron, into the hazard at the par-5 18th hole at TPC Boston. He tied for second, two strokes back, as Chris Kirk picked up the biggest win of his career.

Given every opportunity to wallow in self-pity, Horschel instead told himself he was doing the right things and was vindicated when he won the BMW and TOUR Championship. By the time it was all over, he had gone from 110th in Stroke Gained: Putting, entering the Playoffs, to 4th in the Playoffs themselves. And he’d gone from 66th to 11th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green.

“People say, ‘Oh, you hit that shot in the hazard. You could’ve won three,’” Horschel said. “But if I won that one, I may not win Cherry Hills, I may not win East Lake. I’m happy I hit that shot in the hazard, because I won the next two weeks and I won the FedExCup.”

After he won the 2016 FedExCup, McIlroy was asked about having missed the cut at the PGA Championship at Baltusrol heading into the Playoffs.

“I think you need weeks like that,” he said. “I've always benefited from things like that in my career, from low points. I always feel like from a low point you can work yourself back up, and you can really assess what you need to do. I think it was blatantly obvious what I needed to do after Baltusrol, in terms of trying to fix my putting or to at least address some issues in it.”

He found something at TPC Boston, and not just on the greens. And, crucially, he kept on going, hitting the jaw-dropping shot of the post-season at East Lake: a 137-yard wedge shot that went into the hole on 16 and pulled him within a shot of the leaders. As with the Red Sox in ’04, he wasn’t yet nominally ahead, but you could sure see it coming.

One trophy led to two, which led to a third, the FedExCup itself, because McIlroy had found momentum and held on for dear life. Welcome to the Playoffs.