The Memorial Tournament Projections Preview

Each week, I share the top 20 players in our model’s projections based on win percentage. I also include reactions to the initial results and context as to why certain players landed higher or lower than the market. Here are the results for this week’s Memorial Tournament:

• We are considerably lower on Shane Lowry this week despite him leading in total strokes gained over his last 20 rounds. The reason for that is his strokes gained putting are carrying him quite a bit as he’s averaging over one stroke gained putting. His play around-the-green, on approach, and off-the-tee aren’t terrible (ranks 19th, 23rd, and 14th, respectively, in those categories), but those are big enough dips to push him down a little.
• Another golfer that falls below market for us is Patrick Cantlay, who started off the year hot with four-straight top 10 finishes but has failed to finish there in all but one stroke-play tournament since then. Cantlay’s recent form is even worse than Lowry’s as he ranks outside the top 20 in all of the major strokes gained categories, but his long-form is what’s keeping him in the top 10 of our projections.
• With those two moving down, it’s given Xander Schauffle room to move up as he’s seventh in total strokes gained in his last 20 rounds. Though he hasn’t had a ton of success this year, he’s coming off of a T5 (AT&T Byron Nelson) and T13 (PGA Championship) in his last two tournaments played.

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