Top player in the world this year? That’s easy.

Hint: It’s not Justin Thomas, no. 1 in the Hawley Ratings. It’s not Justin Rose, no. 1 in the Official World Golf Ratings. It’s not Xander Schauffele, no. 1 on the 2018-’19 PGA Tour money list and FedEx Cup points list. It’s not Dustin Johnson, Matt Kuchar, or Schauffele, i.e. a player with two victories on the PGA and/ or Euro Tour this season. You probably could guess that it’s not Gary Woodland, even though he is the leader in top-10 finishes on the Tour (six).

Measuring by average rating in all 2019 events, it’s Rory McIlroy. McIlroy by a mile.

McIlroy has four appearances in 2019 – the Champions and Farmers in January, the Genesis and WGC Mexico in February. His finishes, in that order, have been fourth, fifth, fourth, and second. If you take the average Hawley Rating for those events, it’s 2709, with Thomas second at 2146. If you take the median

rating for those events, it’s 3079, with Jason Day second at 2596.

The only thing missing is a win, something he would like to address in this weekend’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he is the defending champion. Gotta be frustrating to be playing so well without a win, right? “No, I’m not frustrated, because it seems like I can only do what I can do and I can only control me,” McIlroy told cbssports.com after the WGC-Mexico Championship. “I’ve played well. Xander went out and shot 61 in Hawaii and beat us all. [Justin Rose] and Adam [Scott] sort of separated themselves from the field at Torrey. I maybe had a little bit of a chance last Sunday in L.A. because it was so difficult. And then this week. I’ve played well. I’ve done what I’ve wanted to do and needed to do.”

At a minimum, it seems fair to say that McIlroy is ready to win. “I think I’m 56 under par for my first four events of the year,” he said. “So the game’s good. It’s just about staying patient, and hopefully one of these weeks it will fall my way.”

Among the others who will draw nice galleries at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge are Day, whose can match McIlroy’s string of top-five finishes for his most recent two events. He also has a streak of seven straight top-20s going back to September Tour Championship. A fourth at Pebble Beach was his best in that stretch.
Rickie Fowler has been doing kind of a teeter-totter thing the last few months, with top-five finishes in the Honda, Phoenix (a win), World Challenge, and Shriners, interspersed with finishes a bit farther back in intervening events. The Palmer is the “down” event in the sequence.
Brooks Koepka has made only two U.S. stops in 10 appearances since the Tour Championship. He has a runner-up finish las week in the Honda plus the win at the October CJ Cup. His travel itinerary has included China, France, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, not to mention Hawaii as his only other U.S. appearance before last week.
Hideki Matsuyama is getting his game back in shape with four straight top-20s, including a third at the Farmers and a top-10 at the Genesis.
Justin Rose probably disappointed fans with a missed cut at the Euro Tour Saudi International last month, plus he wasn’t too great with finishes outside the top 30 at the Desert Classic in January and outside the top 10 at the Indonesian Masters in December. In between he has been fine, winning the Farmers and the Turkish Airlines and finishing in the top 10 in two other events since September.

According to the Hawley course fit statistics, greens in regulation is the top statistic in correlation with success on the Bay Hill course. There is a lesser correlation in driving distance, putting, and scrambling. Rose is the player with the best stat profile per that analysis. Shane Lowry, Haotong Li, Lucas Glover, Louis Oosthuizen, and Charles Howell also have good course-fit numbers.

Among players outside the top 50, Chris Stroud and Matt Every (a two-time winner of this event) have outplayed their rating number by the biggest margin in recent appearances. Stroud has done it with back-to-back top-10s at the Phoenix and Pebble Beach events while posting lackluster finishes in three other 2019 events. Every has four straight top-20s since last fall’s web.com Tour Championship.

Other lesser names showing flashes recently include Trey Mullinax, Talor Gooch, and last week’s Honda winner, Matt Wallace.