BlogThoughts on 2024 and 2025, new things and special anniversaries

by Sal and Jason

So, with 2024 gone, what should we expect from 2025?

I have done a lot of soul-searching over the last 3 months. My problem was finding it tough to make ends meet when playing DraftKings. Golf is challenging to play on DraftKings, but since I first started playing in 2015, I would say that for every $50 spent, I made $55 in winnings. There was nothing to write home about; I wasn’t getting rich, but my systems of Performance Charts, Key Fantasy Stats, Who’s hot and Who’s not, and my previews, were all useful tools. But in 2024, for every $50 spent on DraftKings, my earnings were down to $48 in winnings. This started to bother me, and I ran an analysis on what I was doing differently. It wasn’t the instruments on Golfstats; the problem was more in the fact that professional golf is drastically different. First is LIV golf; it has changed the landscape of the PGA Tour in which there is a lot more money, and it’s created other opportunities for players, and the way they play the game is different. You can always rely on players playing well on specific courses, in various conditions, either course or weather, and players play better in certain areas and different courses. So, I saw a lot more of my picks missing the cut. Sometimes, I would shake my head at some sure picks not playing well and missing the cut.
The most significant change was that too many top-125 players didn’t have as much as a top-ten finish in events between the Sentry and Tour Championship (non-fall events). Did you know that six players didn’t have a top ten?

Lucas Glover in 21 events; best finish was 11th at the Valspar, but he finished 78th in the FedExCup. (had two top-tens in the fall).
Lee Hodges in 24 events; best finish was T-12th at the Arnold Palmer but finished 79th in the FedExCup (had two top-tens in the fall).
Rickie Fowler in 20 events; best finish was T-18th at the RBC Heritage but finished 108th in the FedExCup (had two top-tens in the fall).
Ben Silverman in 22 events; best finish was T-13th at the Mexico Open but finished 109th in the FedExCup (had one top ten in the fall).
Taylor Montgomery in 15 events; best finish was T-11th at the Players but finished 116th in the FedExCup (had no top-tens in the fall).
Jacob Bridgeman in 20 events; best finish was T-12th at the Wyndham but finished 121st in the FedExCup (had no top-tens in the fall).

Despite that, Lucas Glover won $2.9 million, Lee Hodges won $2.5 million, Rickie Fowler won $1.8 million, Ben Silverman won $1.3 million, Taylor Montgomery won $1.2 million, and Jacob Bridgeman won $1.2 million. This may seem hard to believe, but 137 players earned over a million dollars on the PGA Tour in 2024! This is the quiet secret of the PGA Tour and could be one of the reasons the tour is changing, making only the top 100 qualify for PGA Tour cards in 2026. This will help with the perception that having a PGA Tour card means you can make a lot of money.

Another misnomer is that only 87 players had three or more top-ten finishes.
Another thing that will surprise you, it sure surprised me, was that of the 210 players who played in 10 or more events in 2024, only three made all their cuts: Corey Conners in 23 events, Xander Schauffele in 22 events, and Scottie Scheffler in 19 events.
Of the 210 players, only 13 made 90% of their cuts, while 55 made 75% of their cuts.
That is a big problem, especially in DraftKings games. If you miss the cut, your chances of winning are slim.

So, we have designed new charts for most of our DraftKings points. We will have a chart for those events going back to the 2024 Sentry, a chart for players’ records in the last event they played in, and a chart for players’ average finishes. After that, I will access those charts to pick players best suited for a high finish while also making cuts.

Other things we want to add:

Information is the king of any contest. Jason and I want to get better information on the rank-and-file players on tour. Sure, it’s easy to get stories on Scottie Scheffler, but we need to improve on players like Sungjae Im, Sam Burns, and Corey Conners. For those players who have been little reported on, we have to get information on what changes they are making to their swing and mental aspect, along with what equipment changes they are making.

There are some significant anniversaries for Sal and Golfstats.

I hope everyone had a great holiday, and we all look forward to a great 2025. Without you, the subscriber, all of this wouldn’t be possible.

Over the holidays, I realized a few things. First of all, it is incredible how time flies. In 2025, it will be my 50th year in the golf media. On 19 and 20 February 1975, I was caddying for the little pro Eddie Merrins at the Los Angeles Open. Unfortunately, Merrins shot 75-82 and missed the cut, leaving me with nothing to do over the weekend. Looking for something to do, Merrins mentioned that ABC Sports was looking for some runners. I went to the area where their trucks were parked and found the man doing the hiring. He was production assistant John Coulter, and when I tracked him down and asked for some work, he said they had hired a whole crew from UCLA. On the spur of the moment, I barked back at Coulter, saying that I was a student at UCLA, and told him to show up. Coulter shot back that Wednesday was the day to report, but as I learned months later, Coulter liked my “lies” and hired me. I did some meaningless stuff, like running around the course handing out color cards of what the players were wearing to the cameraman to help him pick out the players by what they were wearing. I also did more mundane tasks, such as delivering lunches to the crew around the track. Coulter liked how fast I did these deliveries and gave me some other tasks. On Sunday, as the last putt fell in, I thanked Coulter and asked if there were other things I could do for ABC in the future; he said if I wanted to be a traveling “runner,” where I would pay my expenses to an event, get a room with five other runners and be paid $25 a day. For a 17-year-old who didn’t know what he wanted to do other than be a professional golfer, it opened up some new possibilities, leading to a job I worked in for 29 years at ABC. It opened up a new thing for me to do: collect golf scores and put them into a database, which helped me bring in new information statistics for ABC broadcasts. It also opened up a new endeavor in which I have spent the last 30 years working for publications such as Golf World, Golf Digest, Golfweek, Golf Magazine, and Sports Illustrator for 17 years.

This led to another thing that is close to my heart: Golfstats. In 1999, I worked for GolfWeek along with ABC, and I had an idea to turn all my Golfstats into an information website. The bad news was I couldn’t get a proper deal with Golfweek, but when I spoke to George Peper, the editor of Golf Magazine at the time, he was very interested. He put me in touch with Julie Hansen, who ran the Golf Magazine website. We hit it off, and I went to work for George and Julie. On 1 January 2000, we launched Golfstats, and it was an instant success. 2000 was the height of the golf media. Every major newspaper in the country had its own golf writer, and to show the boom times, over 1,200 US media members were accredited to the 2000 British Open at St Andrews. To show how different things have become, only 25 US media members attended last summer’s Open at Troon.

To summarize, George left Golf Magazine two years later and Julie a year later, as Golfstats moved to Sports Illustrated. But in late 2006, they faced financial problems because the person running the Sports Illustrator website paid a record $25 million for the Golf.com URL, so they dropped Golfstats. At that time, I also owned another site called Golfobserver.com, and after raising $20,000, I made Golfstats part of Golfobserver.
2008, 09, and 10 were tough because advertising money was tight or impossible. Despite dire warnings from everyone, I decided to make Golfstats a subscription-based site, the first time in golf that a site wasn’t free. It took a couple of years, but we gained the trust of people who subscribed and were happy with the server.
This week is Golfstats’ 25th anniversary, and we can’t thank all of you who have subscribed over the last 15 years enough.