For better or worse, the name Tiger Woods is just another data point among millions on the golf ratings/ golf picks hard drive. Woods’ Hawley Ratings number reflects what he’s done in the last two calendar years, his course fit number reflects just the current PGA Tour season, and so forth. The fact that he’s come back from the near-dead, not to mention the fact that he nearly tripled the TV audience last weekend, is lost on the computer. Thus Tiger is the computer’s no. 20 pick in this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, behind top pick Jason Day. Woods is right between Brandt Snedeker (50-1) and Adam Scott (55-1) on the Palmer Invitational odds per the Hawley computer, whereas you will find him at 5-1 or 6-1 on the various sports betting websites. Well, we’ll see.

“I think I’m a little bit better than I was a couple weeks ago at the Honda, and I keep getting a little bit shaper,” said Woods, 42, on Sunday in comments appearing on tigerwoods.com. That’s an understatement. “Today wasn’t as sharp as I would have liked, but I had a good shot at winning this golf tournament, and a couple putts here and there, it could have been a different story.”

Here and elsewhere, Day is the top pick among players not named Woods. In looking only at each player’s last four outings, Day has vastly outperformed the field, including Tiger. In Day’s case, that is only two 2017 appearances – he won the Farmers Insurance Open in January and was second in the Pebble Beach in February. Before that, he was 11th in the HSBC Champions in October and fifth against a minor field in the November Australian Open. Tiger was in the top 25 at the Farmers, missed the Genesis cut, and then made eyes pop with a 12th at the Honda and the runner-up spot last week in the Valspar. Next pick Justin Rose was top-25 at Abu Dhabi, top-10 at the Farmers, top-40 at the WGC-Mexico, and fifth at the Valspar.

Player performance at the Bay Hill course over the past eight years indicates that greens-in-regulation performance correlates most strongly with success. Putting, driving distance, and scrambling are next in significance, in that order. The player whose statistical performance best matches that profile, and by nearly a third of a stroke ahead of the rest of the field, is Tyrrell Hatton. Next are Henrik Stenson, Tommy Fleetwood, and Rickie Fowler.

In terms of a strong movement up in recent performance compared to the last two years, Scott Stallings leads the field with five straight made cuts including two top-10s. Also happy with the way things are going are Alex Noren and Luke List. Sam Burns, a 21-year-old former NCAA player of the year, is making an impression with an eighth at the Honda and a 12th at the Valspar.

Hawley Ratings thru March 11, 2018

Dustin Johnson has reached the one-year point in his reign as the world’s no. 1 player but we all know that no one is getting excited about the anniversary during this particular week. The talk is all Tiger Woods. Now that Woods has achieved the minimum eight appearances over the prior two years, he returns to the Hawley Ratings this week at no. 31, right between Steve Stricker and Tommy Fleetwood. Woods last qualified for the ratings on June 27, 2017 when he was 314th.

The Official World Golf Ratings has Woods in 149th place, between Richard Sterne and Brian Gay. That’s up from 388th a week earlier, and 656th at the start of the year. There are a number of differences between computation of the Hawley Ratings and the OWGR. Among them are that the OWGR does not reflect the eight-appearance minimum, and thus Woods has been rated but bouncing around below 500th for months.
A top-10 finish by Woods in this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, an event he has won eight times, would boost him up to somewhere around 16th in the Hawley Ratings, or higher depending on the exact finish position.

Johnson has had a steady but not dominating year on top of the ratings. In the 52 weeks since hitting no. 1, he has played 21 events, of which 19 were regular PGA Tour events, with the following results:

 2 wins (Northern Trust, Sentry Tournament of Champions)
 8 top-10s
 14 top-25s
 16 made cuts

His rating number has fluctuated between 1726 and 1974, with the margin between him and the no. 2 player fluctuating at around 100 points. You will recall that he missed a few weeks of the season last spring after slipping on the stairs of his rented home during Masters week. Johnson is inactive this week but is expected to appear at the WGC-Match Play in Texas next week.

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