1/14/25

LaMagna’s Weekly Update: Tiering Men’s Pro Golfers 25 and Younger

The third edition of Joseph's comprehensive weekly pro golf update

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Welcome to the third edition of LaMagna’s Weekly Update. There have been no changes to the tiering of the top players in the world since we last spoke. Thus, today I’ve tiered the 25 and under division of men’s professional golf (and yes, I know it includes an amateur). The below graphic highlights 10 young players that need to be on your radar. This is an exercise we’ll revisit regularly, so don’t panic if your favorite rising star was omitted. If he does anything worth noticing, he’ll get added. 

Tiering the Young Guns

A few notes: 

At 25 years and 3 months, Ludvig Aberg is King of the Youth. There’s nobody close to his level. He’s the sixth-ranked player in the world, and I believe he’s a strong contender to make a run at being a top-two player in the world over the next 12 months. 

From the beginning of Tom Kim-mania, I’ve been a consistent critic of his game not due to his accomplishments on the golf course or lack thereof but because of the way he was labeled the “next superstar” by some in media, which never squared with how he projects statistically. Still, Kim’s résumé is impressive for someone who hasn’t yet turned 23. He is one of 16 golfers in the world with at least six made cuts and two top 10s in the eight majors held since the start of 2023. He has three PGA Tour wins and almost grabbed a fourth in a playoff against Scottie Scheffler last summer at the Travelers. Those are all soft wedge-fests, but that’s beside the point. Right?

Kim lacks the firepower (170.6 mph ball speed – 138th on Tour last year), a skill often correlated with long-iron play, that translates to long-term success in professional golf on the biggest stages. He’s a nice player, but what takes him to the next level where he’s a legitimate top-10 player in the world?

The 25-year-old Davis Thompson took a huge leap last year starting in the summer. He has played consistently well, including a cozy four-shot win at the John Deere and a top 10 at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst. Do not sleep on Thompson.

Lastly, both Hojgaards, Michael Thorbjornsen, and David Puig are all in wait-and-see mode. Each of the four has speed and has flashed upside already in their young careers. I’m particularly intrigued by Rasmus Hojgaard, who has been playing exceptional golf over the last 12 months and has a pedigree that suggests serious potential. We’ll see where these four wind up at the end of the year. 

Player Spotlight: Nick Dunlap 

Nick Dunlap fully deserves the “Rare Prospect” designation assigned above. He won the American Express last year at age 20, becoming the first amateur to win on the PGA Tour since Phil Mickelson in 1991. 

He also nabbed another win last July at the weak-fielded Barracuda and finished T-5 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship to earn enough points and sneak inside the top 50 in the season-long standings to ensure his spot in all the Signature Events in 2025. Another performance last June also caught my attention and is illustrative of the Nick Dunlap experience. He finished T-12 at the Memorial, one of the most demanding tee-to-green courses in professional golf. During that week, Dunlap gained 1.08 strokes per round with his approach play, ranking 9th in a field stacked with the best players on the PGA Tour. Extremely impressive.

Dunlap is special, at least when he’s on. However, as he develops, he needs to improve his consistency. What has been the primary cause of some of his inconsistency? A tendency to absolutely spray the golf ball. 

He hit just 55% of his fairways in 2024, 164th on Tour out of 184 qualified golfers. Missing fairways won’t kill you as long as you keep the ball within the playing corridors, especially on some errancy-friendly PGA Tour venues. Dunlap’s issue, though, is a recurring wide miss. A couple of weeks ago, he hit just 30 of 60 fairways on a very wide Sentry setup in calm conditions, ranking dead last in the field. Nearly every missed fairway at Kapalua is a wide miss. Frankly, it was hard to only hit half the fairways in those conditions.

Similarly, his T-12 performance at the aforementioned 2024 Memorial Tournament could have been even better without a few loose tee shots on a golf course that is very unkind to wide misses.

This shouldn’t dampen your excitement about Dunlap’s future. He’s a tremendous talent, and he’s only 21 years old. He can take a couple of years to refine his skills, decrease the wide miss tendency, and he’ll still be young! I’m bullish on his future.

Nonetheless, if I were Dunlap or on his team, this is an area of improvement I’d be pretty focused on. Analyze those big misses. Are they due to technique? Shot selection? Club selection? Discomfort over certain types of shots? Something else? Big misses incur penalty strokes or, at a minimum, put you well out of position on proper championship setups.

I have no doubt that Dunlap can figure out how to harness his speed and reduce the big misses, and he has plenty of time to develop his game. But accuracy off the tee is the biggest skill to monitor as you watch Dunlap’s promising young career unfold.

Reader-Submitted Question

Reader: In your experience analyzing data for professional golfers, what’s the most underrated or counterintuitive insight you’ve found?

Joseph: A great question. I’ll give you two.

Probably the most important insight I’ve gleaned is that a proper test of professional golf assesses a penalty to a narrow miss and a significantly stiffer penalty to a wide miss. Golf holes configured this way prevent the pro from swinging out of his shoes without fear of consequence.

When I offer this perspective, sometimes I get blowback in the golf architecture community that this type of thinking is too black-and-white, overly formulaic, and contributes toward dulling down golf course architecture. I will push back. I would never argue that every golf hole should follow this exact pattern, with a three-quarter stroke penalty for a super wide miss and a quarter-stroke penalty for a narrow miss applied equally on both sides of each fairway. However, I do think the overall composition of a golf course should adhere to this principle, at least to adequately test professional golfers.

The opening hole at Augusta National is my favorite example of this concept.

The first at Augusta National. (Photo: The Masters)

The hole elegantly assesses a small penalty for narrow left misses and a slightly larger penalty for narrow misses down the right into the fairway bunker. Wide misses on both sides meet steep penalties, with challenging approach shots into a diabolical green, obstructed by trees. Is that too formulaic?

So all in all, I appreciate when a golf course demands accuracy off the tee by penalizing golfers in accordance with the magnitude of their miss, even if it isn’t strictly proportional. Understanding golf design in greater detail is recognizing that the narrow fairways at Torrey Pines don’t require as much accuracy as people think and that the wider fairways at Augusta National require more accuracy than people think. I think that qualifies as counterintuitive.

I’ll also highlight one other design-related insight, which is subtle but important.

Many pro golf data-driven insights ultimately boil down to understanding the severity of different “penalty” areas and how those penalties change at different distances. Specifically, the penalty for finding a sand trap is not uniform across all yardages. For example, controlling for distance, the expected difference between hitting an around-the-green shot from the fairway versus a greenside bunker is roughly 0.25 strokes. To be clear, those are aggregated numbers. You can absolutely find a 15-yard green side bunker shot that’s easier than a 15-yard shot from the fairway.

At mid-iron approach length, the penalty for finding sand versus finding the fairway is not overly severe, either. It’ll typically cost you 0.3 to 0.35 strokes. However, the penalty becomes quite severe for finding a bunker at short-wedge length, especially between 50 and 100 yards, which will often cost you half of a stroke. The common refrain that the 60-yard bunker shot is one of the hardest shots in golf is not a myth.

This is an intuitive insight, but it’s probably an underrated one. It solidified my appreciation for holes like the 10th at Waialae Country Club, one of the most underrated short par 4s on the PGA Tour.

The tenth at Waialae

I’m much more keen to watch pros tackle a hole like the 10th at Waialae, which features a penal bunker down the left at short-wedge length, than one of the many iterations of short par 4s on Tour designed with a water hazard on one side and a welcoming greenside bunker on the other. Holes like these tend to be straightforward and play one-dimensionally. Holes like the 14th at Quail Hollow and the 15th at TPC River Highlands come to mind.

Should every short par 4 in professional golf feature an in-play bunker 50-100 yards away from the green? No, let’s not get too formulaic here! But well-designed holes with treacherous bunkers at short-wedge distances pose a serious threat to the professional golfer, which is a good thing. Threatless golf courses are thoughtless golf courses.

In the near future, we’ll see a hole like this on display at Fields Ranch East, a recently-built Gil Hanse design in Frisco, Texas, constructed to host major events like the upcoming KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, the 2027 PGA Championship, and future Ryder Cups.

I like the way the bunkers down the left punish errant, aggressive tee shots and result in a delicate 50-yard bunker shot into a shallow green, particularly to a left pin. Understanding the relative penalties of different types of shots not only assists with course management but can also inform design and which features ask pro golfers complex questions. You may not have needed data to know that a 75-yard bunker shot is difficult, but it doesn’t hurt to see the proof represented in the numbers.

Ok, that’s all for this week. Thank you for reading! Have a question you’d like me to answer next week? Email me at joseph@thefriedegg.com!