The 15th Presidents Cup is upon us and once again the USA come in as heavy favorites to win the trophy after victories in every edition since 2005.
Jim Furyk has World No.1 and No.2 Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele at his disposal with his 12-man team featuring six Major winners versus Mike Weir’s three.
I looked at the 2024 PGA Tour Strokes Gained rankings as well as driving distance, accuracy, greens in regulation and birdie averages for all 24 players in this year’s teams and there were some interesting takeaways.
Here’s seven things that stood out after looking into the stats…
The US is strong
(Image credit: Future)
I looked at six strokes gained categories for the PGA Tour season this year and four other statistics – driving distance, driving accuracy, greens in regulation and birdie average.
In all 10 categories the US has the advantage. That surprised me. I was expecting to find that perhaps the Internationals were the better putters, or perhaps found more fairways, hit the ball further, made more birdies, hit more greens, just anything. But no, statistically, Jim Furyk’s side have the edge in every category I looked at.
The Americans also have the higher world rankings and also more Major and PGA Tour wins.
They’ve won nine consecutive Presidents Cups and are rightly the favorites.
That doesn’t mean they’ve won the 2024 Presidents Cup already, as luckily for the Internationals, the stats mean nothing once play in underway. And they’ll have the home crowd on their side, too, as they look to inflict what would be a memorable upset.
Scheffler and Schauffele
The world’s top two players are head and shoulders above the rest
(Image credit: Getty Images)
World No.1 Scottie Scheffler is the best player in the field in terms of Strokes Gained: Total, tee to green, off the tee and approach the green.
He is the fifth-best around the green out of the 24 players and the 15th-best putter.
For the core SG rankings, he has an average of 15.2, which actually ranks him 2nd. Xander Schauffele has an average ranking of 8.7 thanks to solid stats throughout and a much-better putting performance this year. He’s 10th in SG: Putting vs Scheffler’s 70th.
If there’s anything that lets Scheffler down, it’s his performance on the greens.
The player who is best around and on the greens…
When…
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