2014 - Week 9 Predictions/Statistics Online

The predictions and statistics for this week, the Tshwane Open (European PGA Tour) and The Honda Classic (US PGA Tour), are now available on Golf Predictor. The big guns are back in action this week; Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott and Tiger Woods are teeing it up in Florida after all three sat out the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship last week. That means an impressive eight out of the top ten in the world rankings are playing in the first event of the Florida swing (Dustin Johnson and last week's winner Jason Day are the only absentees from the top ten). Meanwhile, the European PGA Tour is heading back to South Africa, where recent home winners Thomas Aiken and George Coetzee are headlining the field.

2014 - Week 8 Winner

Jason Day (ranked 11th by Golf Predictor) won the WGC - Accenture Match Play Championship on the European/US PGA Tour. The 26 year old Australian continued his good run of form in the last few months by securing his first WGC title with a marathon win over Victor Dubuisson in the final. Day was two up with two to play, but the Frenchman hit back to force extra holes. Dubuisson pulled off two consecutive miraculous up and downs from the desert, but Day finally prevailed on the fifth extra hole. Rickie Fowler defeated Ernie Els at the 19th hole in the third place play-off. There were no other events on the two major tours this week.

2013 M2M Russian Open Predictions Updated

I have updated the predictions for the 2013 M2M Russian Open on Golf Predictor. I noticed today while updating the 2014 event with its course that this was not a new tournament last year as was indicated on the system. The Russian Open was in fact dormant since 2008 and so there was one year of same tournament information (previous five years) to process for the 2013 staging. This error came about due to the fact that the 2013 event was originally called the Russian Masters ( a new event) at the beginning of the season when the information was imported into Golf Predictor. However, as often is the case, the tournament details had changed between then and when the event actually took place. In this case, the tournament changed to be a reincarnation of the Russian Open and I forgot to update Golf Predictor accrodingly.

I  apologise for this oversight and I have updated the predictions so that tournament history is now correct for all golfers. In any event, it did not have a significant effect on the prediction rankings for the event.

2014 - Week 8 Predictions/Statistics Online

The predictions/statistics for this week, the WGC - Accenture Match Play Championship (European/US PGA Tour) are now available on Golf Predictor. Although Golf Predictor is designed primarily for stroke play events, like previous seasons, the Accenture Match Play Championship has been put through the prediction engine. There are no other tournaments on this week.

2014 - Week 7 Winners

Thomas Aiken (ranked 1st by Golf Predictor) won the Africa Open on the European PGA Tour. The 30 year old South African won his third tour title at the first hole of a sudden death play-off with Oliver Fisher. Aiken won in style, holing a 35 foot putt for birdie to become the latest South African to win on home soil. Including the winner, we had ten of the top twenty plus ties (10/26).

Bubba Watson (ranked 15th by Golf Predictor) won the Northern Trust Open title on the US PGA Tour. The 35 year old American finally won his first tournament since the 2012 Masters with a two shot victory over Dustin Johnson. Watson also did it in style, finishing with 64-64 over the weekend and topping it off with a closing birdie of his own. Our top ranked player, Matt Kuchar, missed the cut. However, he wasn't the only big name to disappoint as we had only five of the top eighteen plus ties (5/19).

2014 - Week 7 Predictions/Statistics Online

The predictions and statistics for this week, the Africa Open (European PGA Tour) and the Northern Trust Open (US PGA Tour) are now available on Golf Predictor. It's the last week of the California swing this week on the US PGA Tour and it marks the season début of Justin Rose, the last of the world's top ten to get his 2014 campaign under way. Meanwhile, the European PGA Tour continues its South African swing with the Africa Open and its usual weak field. With none of the top 100 golfers in the world competing, it promises to be a bit of a lottery!

2014 - Week 6 Winners

George Coetzee (ranked 2nd by Golf Predictor) won the Joburg Open on the European PGA Tour. The 27 year old South African finally won his first tour title after 24 previous top ten finishes. It must have been all the sweeter for Coetzee to break his duck on home soil and keep up a great home track record in the event. That makes it five home winners in the past six years at Royal Johannesburg. Our top ranked player, Charl Schwartzel, finished in tied 59th and we had five of the top sixteen plus ties (5/21) in this large field event with a relatively poor field.

Jimmy Walker (ranked 9th by Golf Predictor) won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on the US PGA Tour. The 35 year old American continued his great early wraparound season form by securing his third victory in eight starts (a feat only previously managed by Woods, Mickelson and Duval). Walker made it hard on himself, letting a six shot lead slip with a nervy back nine performance. Indeed, he had to hole a tricky par putt on the last to win by a single shot. Our top ranked player, Phil Mickelson, had a very lacklustre final day and finished in tied 19th. Overall, we had seven of the top thirteen plus ties (7/18) in this weather affected event.

'Player History' Page Updated Slightly

The recently added  new 'Player History' page  and other similar pages have been slightly updated on  Golf Predictor. Thanks to some very useful user feedback, I have made the following minor enhancements to the 'Player History' page:

1. I have added a key table to the page to explain what the columns represent. This was already on similar pages (e.g. the Compare Form pages) and it was an oversight not to include it on this new page.
2. I have replaced the "300" that represents non-finishes (for sorting purposes) in the system with "NF", as the columns on this page are not sortable. Also, it reduces confusion on how the average and standard deviation are calculated (see next point).
3. I have added a note above the key table to state that non-finishes (WD/DQ/DNS) are ignored for average and standard deviation calculations. This was already on similar pages also.

I have also slightly updated the Compare Form pages in the following manner:

1. I have replaced "300" with "NF" for non-finishes, similar to above.
2. Like the new 'Player History' page, there are now pop-ups when there are no matching results for a golfer, i.e. when T1-T10 contains "-".

These small enhancements make these pages even better, so keep the feedback coming so that everyone can get the most out of Golf Predictor, the premium professional golf statistics site.

'Player History' Page Added to Golf Predictor

Composite screenshot showing US PGA Tour results for Tiger Woods up to the 2014 GP Season.  Pop-ups show his performance in the Farmers Insurance Open and more info on his T3 result for the WGC - Cadillac Championship.

I am delighted to announce the addition of a very useful new 'Player History' page to Golf Predictor. This new page is available from the 'Results' menu and shows each player's record in all tournaments on the selected tour, starting with the selected GP season and going back a maximum of ten stagings of the event (including the GP Season chosen). This is shown in the screenshot above for Tiger Woods up to 2014 on the US Tour.

Consolidating this data on this new page should make it much easier to spot good fantasy golf selections for the season. While this information was available previously on Golf Predictor, it was only available on different pages for each individual golfer. This new 'Player History' page is perfect for a quick overview of the performance of a golfer in all tournaments. It also shows at a glance which tournaments the golfer likes to leave off his schedule. Some notes on this new page:

1. You may have to reload your current Golf Predictor page to see this new 'Player History' menu option.
2. Golf Predictor results go back to the start of the 2003 season. Keep this in mind if you select an older GP Season on this page.
3. Like other similar pages on Golf Predictor, this page uses T1-T10 to label the ten most recent results from each tournament (where T10 is the most recent).
4. Some events on the European PGA Tour have actually been played twice in the same season, so it wasn't possible to use the GP Season (i.e. year) as the column headers, instead of T1-T10.
5.  If you select the current GP season, these ten results will contain the current season's event, which may not have been staged yet. In that case, this will be marked with a "-" (see next point).
6. Unlike other pages on Golf Predictor, this page shows the years/stagings when the golfer did not play the event. These are marked with "-" and have a pop-up to that effect.
7. Tournament stagings that the golfer didn't play in are colour coded green. Stagings not in Golf Predictor (i.e. pre-2003) or years before a relatively new tournament began are colour coded white. Both such cells are marked with "-" but the colour coding lets you easily distinguish between them. Both these can be seen in the row for the Puerto Rico Open in the screenshot above.
8. For each tournament, the average result and standard deviation are displayed in the table. The number of tournaments played is shown in the pop-up on the player name (see next point). 
9. As usual, you can hover over a tournament name for more information, as shown above for Tiger's performance in the Farmers Insurance Open. For each tournament,  it displays the number of results in each category (wins/top tens/missed cuts/non-finishes) and the actual number of tournaments played.
10. You can also hover over a tournament result to see more information. This is shown in the composite screenshot above for Tiger's T3 (eight most recent) tournament result for the WGC - Cadillac Championship.
11. Because this new page is relatively computationally intensive, it shows the field in tranches of 25 golfers.
12. You can sort the results table by week number or tournament name.
13. Only golfers who have played at least 15 tournaments on the selected tour up to and including the selected GP season are displayed in the player dropdown box. This was done to cut down on the number of golfers unnecessarily loaded into the player dropdown box. Golfers with a low number number of tournaments played will mostly display green blanks (see point 7 above) in the table anyway.

This new functionality should be very useful for fantasy golf in particular. Like other such computationally intensive pages, non-subscribers can only see limited statistics. In this case, non-subscribers can only see the player stats for the first three events of each season. Therefore, sign up today and reap the full benefits of Golf Predictor, the premium professional golf statistics site.

2014 - Week 6 Predictions/Statistics Online

The predictions and statistics for this week, the Joburg Open (European PGA Tour) and the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am (US PGA Tour) are now available on Golf Predictor. The South African event has its usual large local contingent of unknowns among its huge field in general! Meanwhile, the California swing continues on the US PGA Tour with the annual pro-am with the stars at scenic Pebble Beach and two other nearby courses. Coincidently, both events this week are held on multiple courses of differing pars - a scenario which Golf Predictor doesn't like!

2014 - Week 5 Winners

Stephen Gallacher (ranked 7th by Golf Predictor) won the Omega Dubai Desert Classic on the European PGA Tour. The 39 year old Scot became the first person to ever defend the title with a brilliant back nine display over the weekend. Having set the European PGA Tour record for the closing nine holes to par (-9) on Saturday, Gallacher had to settle for a more modest -4 on Sunday to see off the impressive closing charge of Emiliano Grillo by a single shot. Our top ranked player, Tiger Woods, finished tied 41st in another disappointing outing. At least he has the reputed large appearance fee to console himself with! Overall, in a bad event for the bigger names, we had only four of the top thirteen (4/19) in total.

Kevin Stadler (ranked 54th by Golf Predictor) won the Waste Management Phoenix Open on the US PGA Tour. The 33 year old American finally won his first tournament, despite seemingly being unable to putt on the final day! In a strange finish where no one appeared to want to win, Stadler prevailed when Bubba Watson bogeyed the final hole. Our top ranked player, Phil Mickelson, finished tied 42nd, but we had seven of the top fifteen plus ties (7/18).