New Winner World Ranking Stats & Charts

For the first time ever, Twitter has been responsible for new statistics and charts being added to Golf Predictor! Following a discussion about the average world ranking (WR) of winners so far this season on the US PGA Tour started by former Ryder Cup captain and major winner Paul Azinger (during which I rowed in with some statistics extracted from the Golf Predictor database!), I have added the capability for users to easily retrieve this information from the site. The world ranking for each tournament winner is now displayed on "View Options - Tourn Winners" page in the member section of Golf Predictor, along with the season average for the selected tour and four related charts. These four new bar charts are:

1. Winners with the highest WR for the US PGA Tour in a given season.
2. Winners with the highest WR for the European PGA Tour in a given season.
3. Winners with the lowest WR for the US PGA Tour in a given season.
4. Winners with the lowest WR for the European PGA Tour in a given season.

This new functionality brings the number of charts on the site to 245! The screen shot above shows the winners on the 2011 US PGA Tour season thus far. The new WR column is visible in the table as is the season average WR and the links to the two new charts for each tour just above it. Note that these new WR statistics are only available for events we have predicted (since some way into the 2008 season), while the average and charts are only available for 2009 (our first full season) onwards. These new charts and statistics display some interesting information, including:

1. The average WR of tournament winners is much higher than you would think. For the US PGA Tour, it has hovered around 100 for the two available seasons (2009 & 2010) in the database. The European PGA Tour average is a little lower, in the region of 120-150.
   
2. The top guys don't win that much, especially now that Tiger is off the boil!
3. Following on from point one, the European PGA Tour tends to have lower ranked winners than the US PGA Tour.
4. Despite the previous point, the highest ranked 2011 winner so far on the US PGA Tour is only 33 (Bubba Watson). The European equivalent is 3 (Martin Kaymer).
   
5. The lowest WR by far to win on the US PGA Tour since 2009 was Michael Bradley (816) in the 2009 Puerto Rico Open.
6. The lowest WR to win on the European PGA Tour since 2009 was then amateur Shane Lowry (unranked/outside the top 1000) in the 2009 Irish Open.

The first two points above in particular have importation ramifications for anyone trying to pick a winner for a professional golf tournament, so I'm glad I noticed Zinger's tweets on the subject! Everyone can view these new charts and statistics, so sign up today and see this information and much, much more on Golf Predictor, the premium professional golf statistics site.