I love this place!

Entrants ranked on history in the event. The value reflects the player’s success and number of years competed within the last eight years, weighted in favor of more recent seasons. A value of 1.000 would mean the player appeared every year and won every time. A value of about .715 puts the player in the top 1 percent of all players who have played the event at least once in the last eight seasons, a value of .335 puts a player in the top 10 percent.

Player	History
Luke List	0.465
Scott Piercy	0.436
Daniel Berger	0.391
Jhonattan Vegas	0.329
Maverick McNealy	0.295
Stewart Cink	0.294
Scottie Scheffler	0.284
Beau Hossler	0.282

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Top of the heap

The top eight players (per the Hawley Ratings) among this event’s entries.

Player	Rank	Rating
Scottie Scheffler	1	2893.3
Wyndham Clark	10	1517.7
Sahith Theegala	11	1386.4
Will Zalatoris	12	1386.3
Jason Day	17	1349.1
Tony Finau	24	1241.1
Si Woo Kim	32	1123.4
Cam Davis	40	1061.1

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Sorry, can’t make it

The top four players (per the Hawley Ratings) who are not playing this event.

Player	Rank	Rating
Xander Schauffele	2	2345.0
Rory McIlroy	3	2151.6
Patrick Cantlay	4	2079.4
Jon Rahm	5	1780.5

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Ooh, that’s hot

Players are ranked by performance in their last four appearances in comparison with their current Hawley Rating.

Player	Upward change
Sahith Theegala	1708.6
Will Zalatoris	1200.7
Scottie Scheffler	1060.9
Andrew Novak	982.0
Doug Ghim	932.0
Alex Noren	928.6
Jake Knapp	853.8
Si Woo Kim	827.9

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Brr, that’s cold

Players are ranked by performance in their last four appearances in comparison with their current Hawley Rating.

Player	Downward change
Adam Svensson	-704.8
Taylor Pendrith	-624.1
JJ Spaun	-599.3
Alex Smalley	-588.6
Ryan Fox	-574.2
Thomas Detry	-537.5
Justin Suh	-498.4
Gary Woodland	-497.9

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Certain skills required

Among a set of 10 PGA Tour and DP World Tour statistics that reflect physical characteristics of the Memorial Park course, this table shows the four that have the highest unique correlation with player performance. Events on this course in two prior uses for this event are considered, and the minimum is 80 player appearances. In mathematical terms, the number shown is the partial correlation coefficient.

Stat value	Statistic
0.31	Driving distance
0.28	Driving accuracy
0.26	Shots gained around the green
0.23	Shots gained putting

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Location, location, location

Event entrants ranked by predicted score per 18 holes based solely on “course fit” — i.e. based on the player’s current percentile standing in each of the four statistics shown above.

Course fit	Player
Patton Kizzire	68.91
Carl Yuan	69.62
Billy Horschel	69.66
Nate Lashley	69.87
Aaron Rai	70.08
Martin Trainer	70.14
Matthias Schwab	70.21
Ryan Palmer	70.21

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Anyplace but here

Event entrants ranked by worst predicted score per 18 holes based solely on “course fit” — i.e. the player’s current percentile standing in each of the four statistics shown above.

Course fit	Player
Gary Woodland	74.7
David Lipsky	74.6
Brandt Snedeker	74.5
Adrien Dumont de Chassart	74.5
Kevin Kisner	74.4
Matthew NeSmith	74.2
Callum Tarren	73.9
Alexander Bjork	73.8

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Staying close to home

Exempt entrants ranked by miles between their listed residence as of January 2024 and Houston, the event venue.

Player	Residence	Distance
Michael Kim	Houston, TX	4
Jhonattan Vegas	Houston, TX	4
Cameron Champ	Houston, TX	4
Sahith Theegala	Spring, TX	20
MJ Daffue	Kingwood TX	21
Mark Hubbard	The Woodlands, TX	29
Chandler Phillips	College Station, TX	75
Sam Bennett	Madisonville TX	75

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Mathematically speaking

The following table shows the correlations between player ranking in the above tables and their actual finish positions. In other words, to what extent does the ordering of players in the table correspond to the order of finish.

Statistic	Correlation to results
Top of the heap	0.374
I love this place	0.179
Ooh, that’s hot	0.139
Location, location, location	0.053