1/29/25

Early Season Stock Movements, Tony Finau, and TGL Hammer Strategy

The fifth edition of LaMagna’s Weekly Pro Golf Update

by

Welcome to the fifth edition of my weekly professional golf update. How about a dive into some early-season stock movers and likely the most words that have ever been written on TGL hammer strategy?

Stocks Up, Stocks Down

Nearly a month into 2025, most golfers have made their season debuts. The vast majority of professional golfers have made only a couple of starts, so we should take caution in reacting too much to what we’ve seen so far. Nonetheless, there has been enough action to glean which golfers might be trending in a positive or negative direction this year. Given the limited starts, I think it would have been harsh to include a “Stocks Way Down” section on the below graphic. Stay tuned: that category may appear in a future edition.

Joseph's tiers for the week.

A few notes:

Through three starts, Hideki Matsuyama has posted a dominant win at The Sentry, a T-16 at Sony, and a T-32 at Torrey Pines Pt. 1. In all three appearances, he’s been impressive with his irons, flashing the kind of upside that makes him a threat to win any time he’s healthy. Matsuyama has won three times in the last 12 months, all against stiff competition. If the Masters started tomorrow, there wouldn’t be too many golfers with a better chance of winning than Hideki.

Sungjae Im played poorly to start the 2024 year. Since early last summer, though, he’s been remarkably solid and consistent. Excluding a small-fielded Hero World Challenge, Sungjae has nine top-10 finishes in his last 17 PGA Tour starts, including two in 2025 through three starts. Now entering his seventh year on Tour, the 26-year-old needs to add a few high-profile wins to his trophy case. To date, he only has two PGA Tour wins, a Honda/Cognizant and a Shriners. He hasn’t been a threat to win too many big-time golf tournaments, but he’s playing some great golf.

I went into 2025 expecting Sahith Theegala to have a strong season. After injuries plagued the back half of his 2024, the 27-year-old former college standout should be positioned for success this year in his fourth season on Tour. With three starts under his belt, the results have been mediocre at best. He’s yet to crack a top 30 through Kapalua, Waialae, and Torrey. The season is young, but it’s time for Theegala to pick it up.

Jon Rahm has only played one golf tournament in 2025, so it’s premature to hit the panic button. However, a missed cut at the Dubai Desert Classic on the DP World Tour is a very poor performance from someone whose standard should be playing like a top player in the world. Rahm got off to a slow start in 2024, and he needs to get off to a better start in 2025 with majors season in the not-too-distant future. The Masters commences in just over 70 days.

Player Spotlight: Tony Finau

Let’s talk about Tony Finau, shall we?

Between 2018 and 2021, Tony Finau had as many top 10s in major championships as any golfer on the planet besides Brooks Koepka.

Major championship results from 2018-2021.

Since then, Finau’s posted just one top 10 and only two top 20s in majors across 12 appearances. For reference, 31 golfers have posted at least three top 20s in majors over that span, including names like Thomas Detry who has three top 20s in just five major starts over the last three years.

Is…is Tony Finau nearing the end of his competitive window?

I suspect the overwhelming majority of people would quickly reject that notion. After all, Tony has been a consistently strong player year in and year out on Tour. Last year, Finau entered the Tour Championship 15th in the FedEx Cup standings. He’s made it to East Lake every year since 2017, and he hasn’t ranked outside the top 30 in the Official World Golf Ranking since July of 2018. Why the concern?

The concern is that many great golfers have 5-8-year windows, and the 35-year-old’s game might be trending in the wrong direction. Or, framed differently, the standard in professional golf elevates each season, and Finau may not be able to keep pace. He’s currently ranked 29th in the OWGR, and he’d be ranked lower if LIV tournaments received OWGR points. He is also coming off two straight missed cuts on the PGA Tour, both of which came in non-Signature Events. In his most recent start, Tony missed the cut at Torrey Pines, one of his favorite stops on Tour.

In the interest of fairness, I’d be remiss not to mention an offseason knee surgery from which Finau is recovering, a significant contributing factor to his slow start this season. But when he regains his health, what takes him from being a top 20-ish player to being a legitimate threat to win a major championship? And how much time does he have to do it?

One area Tony could improve is with the putter. He routinely goes through stretches where he putts too poorly to contend against a strong field. Last week, Finau lost over two strokes putting in his lone ShotLink round at Torrey Pines, and he lost more than three strokes putting two tournaments ago in his only ShotLink-equipped round at the American Express. You can’t really compete when you’re putting like that.

However, another area I’d like to see Tony explore is improving his off-the-tee performance. Over the last five PGA Tour seasons, Tony has only ranked in the top 25 in SG: Off-the-Tee in one season — the 2021-22 season. Given his seemingly effortless ball speed and high-level ballstriking ability, I’d expect Tony to be a premier driver of the golf ball. And he hasn’t been particularly close.

Looking forward, I’m eager to see if Finau can pair his excellent short game and iron play with either better driving or putting. If he can improve the putter like a late-career Adam Scott did, perhaps the rest of his career will age gracefully and he’ll find his way back into top 10s of majors. Or, he’ll need to improve his off-the-tee play either by finding more fairways or better leveraging his speed.

Otherwise, we might be seeing the beginning of the end of a legitimately great golfer whose skillset translated on the biggest stages. The next 12 months will give us a lot of information about how much upside remains in his future.

Reader-Submitted Question

Reader: I might be the only person who cares about this, but do you have any thoughts on the TGL Hammer?

Answer:  Oh, baby. The pinnacle of golf analytics: the TGL Hammer.

For those who are not familiar, the Hammer is a feature of the new simulator golf league (TGL) in which a team can throw the Hammer at any point during a hole and, if accepted, add a point to the value of a hole, which is worth one point initially. If the opponent rejects the Hammer, the team that threw the Hammer immediately wins the hole (one point), and the hole is over. And, crucially, once you’ve thrown the Hammer, the other team takes possession of the Hammer until they throw it. Hammers are a somewhat common feature of traditional golf gambling games, so the concept is not entirely new.

Inside the Sofi Center for a TGL match. (Photo: Fried Egg Golf)

Ok, a couple things to consider with respect to smart Hammer usage. 

When you throw the Hammer, your goal is to maximize your expected points on a hole. Actually, check that, your primary goal is always to maximize your win probability in the match, which is often – but not always – the same as maximizing your expected value. 

The biggest consideration is that holding possession of the Hammer is intrinsically valuable. Suppose my team is up by one point on the final hole of the match, and we’re standing over a 10-foot putt to tie the hole. If we hold the Hammer, the worst-case scenario is that we miss the putt and the match goes to overtime. And if we make the putt, we win the match. Make or miss, we can’t lose more than one point and thus we can’t lose the match in regulation. But if we’re standing over a 10-foot putt to tie the hole and our opponent throws the Hammer, we either reject the Hammer and go straight to overtime or we accept the Hammer and now our putt is either to win the match or outright lose the match. Possession of the Hammer is worth something.

Jake Nichols posted a good thread in which he concludes that possession of the Hammer is worth ~0.3 points. One piece of his thread I’ll clarify is that it does state in the TGL Rules that possession of the Hammer changes even when the Hammer is rejected.

The bottom line is that when you throw the Hammer, you’re losing the Hammer, which is extremely valuable to hold, especially late in the match. If you throw it when your opponent is standing over a five-footer to tie you on a hole, it’s pretty dumb usage because your opponent should make that putt ~75% of the time, though maybe the make percentage is slightly lower on the TGL green since it appears difficult to read and make putts on those greens. In any event, your opponent has about a 25% chance of losing the hole, so their expected points for the hole are -0.25 (25%*1) which doubles to -0.50 (-0.25*2) if they accept the hammer. Even if you think the additional pressure increases the chances they miss the putt, you’re giving away possession of the Hammer for roughly 0.25 points, which is a pretty light price. 

Lastly, the TGL Rules state that if the Hammer is thrown on a hole prior to both team’s tee shots, the opponent must accept it. This is a massive consideration. It means that if you’re down by two points going into the last hole but possess the Hammer, you’re alive. You have outs. It also means that if you’re leading going into the last hole, you can deny your opponent win equity by keeping the Hammer in your pocket. Therefore, from a win probability perspective, it’s immensely valuable to hold the Hammer late in the match, to the extent that I’m fairly certain you shouldn’t throw the Hammer unless it’s worth well over 0.3 points. 

Rory threw a seemingly good Hammer during Monday night’s match as Tiger stood over a 7-foot putt that he was probably ~50% to make. Tiger accepted the Hammer and barely made the putt. Had Tiger missed, Boston Common would’ve earned two points and led by one with two to play. Instead, they remained down one with two to play and ceded possession of the Hammer. 

Rory threw the Hammer in about as strong of a spot as you can throw it, and it still may have been the wrong decision. Yes, if Tiger had missed the putt, Boston Common very well could’ve won. However, if Tiger had missed the putt without Rory throwing the Hammer, Boston Common still would have been in a strong position to win, tied with two to play and in possession of the Hammer. Essentially the question in that specific case is: how different is your win probability when you are tied with two holes to play and in possession of the Hammer versus being up by one point with two holes to play while your opponent possesses the Hammer? My guess is that it’s not enough of a difference to justify the 50% chance that Tiger makes the putt, in which case now you’re down one and your opponent holds the Hammer. In that scenario, if your opponent wins the next hole, you’re drawing dead. You’re down by two with one to play and you’re unable to double the points value of the final hole since you don’t hold the Hammer. 

So overall, that’s how I see it. The Hammer is so valuable at the end of the match that there probably aren’t many situations within the current rules where it’s actually smart to throw it. Having possession at the end is just too valuable. 

If anyone quibbles with any of the above logic, feel free to email me, and I’d be happy to publish your work in a future edition of this update. Bonus points if you want to build out a full-blown simulation. Could be a fun project! 

That’s it for this week! Have a question you’d like me to answer for next week? Email me at joseph@thefriedegg.com