ADJUSTING THE WGC ODDS

I wrote about course form in general here.

However, I realized I didn’t really look into how to adjust the value of a player properly for this week. There are two factors that I think are real, if not very important: Experience on course(# of rounds), and whether the course suits a players skills*.

*As I have stated, these are very small. You can come very close to evaluating a player’s chances to win by just 2-year rankings. But, I’m going to try to get a little closer based on course history.

Experience
I think it would be pretty dumb to overlook the benefits of playing in a tournament multiple times. Knowledge of the course and greens and even things like familiarity traveling or staying in the same hotel are definitely things that could affect a players value. This is the first part of defining any course form.

I used the graph that compared each players number of rounds played at Firestone to their results relative to two-year average. Then I adjusted for the overall average of field. Doing this, I came up with a number to add to the players score for number of rounds played.

It ranged from -.08 for Phil Mickelson who has played 64 rounds on Firestone’s South Course to .02 for every player who has never played a round at Firestone*.

It’s important to remember that compared to the field this turns into around -.05 to Phil, and +.05 for zero rounds. The numbers above just came out of the equation I used, but when compared to the field turn into range from -.05 to .05. That’s about a range of .3 strokes per round.

Skill
This part gets a lot harder. The first thing I need to do is take out any effect that experience might have. So, I took course form and adjusted it based on the number of rounds played. So, Tiger, based on his performance at Firestone can be expected to be about -.1 standard deviations better here, but since he’s played 44 rounds that accounts for about .04 of it. That means Tiger gets about a .06 bonus for his actual skills relating to the course*.

*At this point I’m assuming that Tiger any relationship is related to skill and not just variance. There is about a 5% chance that a player of Tiger’s caliber would play that far above average in one random tournament over 44 rounds. So, this could just as easily be randomness.

The second thing we need to do is standardize all the course performance numbers. For example, Hunter Mahan in 4 rounds has an average of -.77 which is significantly above his average. That gives him a huge bonus in my equation, but which is more impressive: Tiger who has played to about a -1.13 average(given strength of field, that’s probably .3 above average for him) in 44 rounds or Mahan, who had one good week? Obviously, Tiger.

In four rounds a players average can vary much more than in forty. So I took a players relative score to average, than standardized it based on the standard deviation of averages based on the rounds they had played. Tiger was around -2.7 standard deviations better than average performance. Mahan was only around -1.5. By doing this we can get a better feeling for how each player actually achieved at Firestone.

Finally, I took all that, through it into a few equations and here are the Odds I came up with for the week:

2-YEAR

Tiger Woods	18.6638%	436
Steve Stricker	6.9867%	1331
Phil Mickelson	4.4985%	2123
Lee Westwood	4.3714%	2188
Jim Furyk	4.3067%	2222
Paul Casey	3.1313%	3094
Anthony Kim	2.5207%	3867
Retief Goosen	2.1180%	4622
Dustin Johnson	1.9995%	4901
Camilo Villegas	1.9417%	5050
Padraig Harrington	1.9094%	5137
Zach Johnson	1.9066%	5145
Ernie Els	1.8899%	5191
Hunter Mahan	1.8727%	5240
Sergio Garcia	1.7298%	5681
Geoff Ogilvy	1.6812%	5848
Rory McIlroy	1.6659%	5903
Ian Poulter	1.6563%	5937
Luke Donald	1.5498%	6352
Henrik Stenson	1.5460%	6368
Kenny Perry	1.5326%	6425
Matt Kuchar	1.5308%	6433
Tim Clark	1.5149%	6501
Robert Allenby	1.5093%	6526
Sean O’Hair	1.4208%	6938
Justin Rose	1.3216%	7467
Lucas Glover	1.2908%	7647
J.B. Holmes	1.2692%	7779
Ross Fisher	1.2136%	8140
Ryan Moore	1.1762%	8402
Mike Weir	1.0739%	9212
Ben Curtis	0.9952%	9948
Martin Kaymer	0.9133%	10850
Robert Karlsson	0.8375%	11840
Vijay Singh	0.7938%	12498
K.J. Choi	0.7793%	12733
Graeme McDowell	0.7614%	13033
Angel Cabrera	0.7512%	13213
Bubba Watson	0.7399%	13414
Louis Oosthuizen	0.7252%	13689
Jason Day	0.7201%	13787
Ben Crane	0.7055%	14075
Y.E. Yang	0.6660%	14916
Soren Hansen	0.6443%	15421
Miguel Angel Jimenez	0.6380%	15573
Adam Scott	0.6221%	15976
Bill Haas	0.5679%	17508
Justin Leonard	0.5441%	18279
Chad Campbell	0.4837%	20576
Ryo Ishikawa	0.4819%	20652
Jason Bohn	0.4718%	21095
Alexander Noren	0.3981%	25018
Boo Weekley	0.3822%	26067
Ryan Palmer	0.3047%	32722
Oliver Wilson	0.3010%	33119
Troy Matteson	0.2753%	36220
Ross McGowan	0.2328%	42861
Stewart Cink	0.2253%	44287
Heath Slocum	0.2228%	44775
Martin Laird	0.1955%	51040
Simon Dyson	0.1918%	52044
Edoardo Molinari	0.1662%	60080
Gregory Bourdy	0.1591%	62743
James Kingston	0.0949%	105236
Marcus Fraser	0.0751%	133128
David Horsey	0.0680%	147020
Hennie Otto	0.0234%	426563
Yuta Ikeda	0.0136%	735639
Katsumasa Miyamota	0.0136%	735639
Simon Khan	0.0108%	926958
Michael Jonzon	0.0046%	2173721

COURSE EXP AND FORM ADJUSTED

Tiger Woods	27.2507%	267
Steve Stricker	5.9276%	1587
Phil Mickelson	5.3998%	1752
Jim Furyk	5.3067%	1784
Paul Casey	3.7472%	2569
Lee Westwood	3.3262%	2906
Ernie Els	2.1829%	4481
Sergio Garcia	2.1652%	4518
Zach Johnson	2.1317%	4591
Ian Poulter	2.0947%	4674
Hunter Mahan	2.0338%	4817
Anthony Kim	1.9869%	4933
Vijay Singh	1.7804%	5517
Padraig Harrington	1.7710%	5546
Henrik Stenson	1.7608%	5579
Retief Goosen	1.6466%	5973
Luke Donald	1.6408%	5994
Robert Allenby	1.5636%	6296
Dustin Johnson	1.5591%	6314
Kenny Perry	1.5310%	6432
Justin Rose	1.4924%	6600
Camilo Villegas	1.3520%	7297
Mike Weir	1.2231%	8076
Lucas Glover	1.1688%	8456
Geoff Ogilvy	1.1308%	8743
Angel Cabrera	0.9857%	10045
J.B. Holmes	0.8823%	11234
Justin Leonard	0.8556%	11588
Rory McIlroy	0.8498%	11667
Tim Clark	0.8324%	11913
Sean O’Hair	0.8283%	11973
Ross Fisher	0.7233%	13725
K.J. Choi	0.6583%	15090
Matt Kuchar	0.6514%	15251
Adam Scott	0.6513%	15255
Ryan Moore	0.6431%	15451
Ben Curtis	0.6121%	16238
Y.E. Yang	0.5190%	19167
Miguel Angel Jimenez	0.5187%	19178
Stewart Cink	0.5033%	19769
Ben Crane	0.4833%	20591
Graeme McDowell	0.4349%	22894
Robert Karlsson	0.4177%	23841
Ryan Palmer	0.4096%	24315
Chad Campbell	0.4074%	24449
Bubba Watson	0.3458%	28819
Jason Day	0.3403%	29285
Martin Kaymer	0.3361%	29654
Louis Oosthuizen	0.3253%	30639
Oliver Wilson	0.3068%	32491
Bill Haas	0.2970%	33566
Soren Hansen	0.2598%	38391
Ryo Ishikawa	0.2486%	40118
Boo Weekley	0.2418%	41248
Jason Bohn	0.2253%	44285
Alexander Noren	0.2207%	45202
Troy Matteson	0.1759%	56764
Ross McGowan	0.1124%	88888
Heath Slocum	0.0998%	100073
Martin Laird	0.0970%	102972
Simon Dyson	0.0794%	125893
Gregory Bourdy	0.0755%	132368
Edoardo Molinari	0.0463%	215676
James Kingston	0.0334%	299233
Marcus Fraser	0.0300%	333271
David Horsey	0.0271%	368415
Hennie Otto	0.0147%	678578
Yuta Ikeda	0.0070%	1427314
Katsumasa Miyamota	0.0070%	1427314
Simon Khan	0.0039%	2546173
Michael Jonzon	0.0016%	6442087