by Welcome to the eighth edition of my weekly professional golf update! Last week we took a look at how Team Europe is shaping up in advance of the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage. This week we’re running through the same exercise but for Team USA. Plus, a player spotlight on a young talent subject to frequent debate and a reader-submitted question. Let’s dig in.
Tiering Team USA
A few notes:
Maverick McNealy is playing very solid golf right now. He’s picked up some speed, has hit his irons well, and he’s always been strong on and around the greens. He nearly won the Genesis Invitational last week, which would have been his second victory in seven starts. I expect him to be on Team USA in September. Still, it’s February. We need to pump the brakes a little bit. Some of the online McNealy Ryder Cup discourse this week has gone way too far. He’s made two cuts in eight major championship starts. We’re going to get a lot of information about the state of his game over the next few months. Let’s hold off on using the L-word.
Harris English is probably higher on my list than others. English is healthy again and his game has been trending in the right direction dating back to October. Coming off a win at the Farmers Insurance Open a few weeks ago, English is poised to have a strong season. He made the cut in all four majors last year, which is more than a lot of players can say. English is a true flusher of the golf ball, with more than a decade of consistent performance supporting that description. If the Ryder Cup started tomorrow, I’d probably put him on my team.
Keegan Bradley is the captain of the team. He is not a serious consideration to play on the team. Watching a playing captain would be very amusing, but it is a terrible idea. We are not entertaining this.
For those of you eager to whine about his omission, Jordan Spieth’s performance at the WM Phoenix Open was highly encouraging. Last week’s missed cut at the Genesis Invitational was not. I need to see some impressive ball-striking numbers in strong fields from Spieth before putting him in the mix. Also, the golf course they’re heading to in September isn’t exactly an ideal course fit. Bethpage is a big, driver-heavy course, much closer to Torrey Pines than to TPC Scottsdale. And before you rebut that Spieth finished T-3 at Bethpage in the 2019 PGA Championship, keep in mind he finished six shots back of the winner despite gaining 10.6 (!) strokes putting in that tournament.
With respect to how the two teams stack up against one another, it’s very close right now. Europe may have a slight edge at the top, but the home advantage should be fairly significant. Pricing Team USA as a current slight favorite seems reasonable, but a lot is going to change between now and September.
Player Spotlight: Joaquin Niemann
If you’ve followed golf for the past 10 years, you know that Joaquin Niemann is an extremely talented golfer with a solid résumé and plenty of career ahead of him. If you’ve had a LIV Golf fan in your Twitter replies, you know that Joaco is Tiger Woods. So what should be made of the former top-ranked amateur in the world, who has five worldwide wins in the last 15 months and is still just 26 years old?
Niemann turned pro in the Spring of 2018 at age 19 and had immediate professional success. He finished T-6 at the Memorial in June of 2018, a head-turning performance from a teenager in a stacked field at one of the most demanding venues in golf. The quick success shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise. Joaquin has been a proven winner at nearly every level. To date, his most significant victory came at the 2022 Genesis Invitational, where he beat the field by two shots.
The black eye for Niemann is a major championship track record that doesn’t square with his talent. Like at all. And the sample size isn’t small anymore. He’s played in 22 major championships and has zero top-10 finishes to his name. His best finish came at the 2023 Masters, where he finished T-16.
How many golfers play poorly in 20-plus majors and then eventually figure it out? Is there a precedent? I queried my major championship dataset, which is complete back to 2000, for golfers who have played their first 20 major championships without registering a single top 10. I got back a list that includes a bunch of names like Jason Kokrak, Byeong Hun An, and Emiliano Grillo. Those are all talented players, but Joaquin is better. At least, he should be. One of the most interesting names that came back is Russell Henley, who played 32 major championships without a single top 10 before breaking through with a T-4 at the 2023 Masters. He has since recorded two more top 10s, both of which came in 2024.
Henley is an interesting reference point. He’s playing the best golf of his career at age 35, but he’s a much different golfer than Niemann. Henley lacks speed – a limiting factor, especially on long major championship setups. He’s made gains with his short game and iron play, which has helped him ascend to where he is more of a threat in majors. Niemann doesn’t lack speed. He is excellent off the tee. He reps a 180-plus mph ball speed while driving the ball accurately. What’s holding him back?
Perhaps Niemann’s low ball flight has been a slightly limiting factor in majors. He’s always had a low ball flight, rarely hitting drives with an apex height over 100 feet. Unless your shot has a bunch of spin, it’s difficult to hold long irons into firm greens with a low trajectory. Imagine, for example, trying to hit the 15th green in two at Augusta with a low ball flight. No bueno.
As detailed in a Golf.com article this week, Niemann must play with a high spin, high loft equipment stack to compensate for his low launch. Yet, it’s hard to say that his ball flight is holding him back too significantly in majors, though. Plenty of low launchers have had major championship success. Furthermore, Niemann’s ball-striking numbers in majors aren’t even too bad. Typically, some combination of poor short game and putting have derailed his chances of contending.
So can he win a major?
The short answer is yes, of course he can. And there is historical precedent. One golfer in the modern era has played 20 major championships without a top 10 and ultimately gone on to win.
Gary Woodland played 27 majors without a top 10 before finishing T-6 in the PGA Championship. He then went on to win the 2019 U.S. Open. It is possible!
The counterargument is that Joaquin Niemann may not quite have the game to play to a major championship-winning level. Winning on LIV is difficult. It is not, however, as difficult as winning a PGA Tour Signature Event, and it is certainly not as difficult as winning a major championship. He’ll need to play to a much higher level than what we see week in and week out, and he hasn’t shown the ability to do that in a major championship environment. That doesn’t mean he can’t. I’m just skeptical that someone will go from playing two dozen majors without any success to giving himself multiple opportunities to win a major. He’s competing against guys like Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy, and Jon Rahm – who have all had early success on the biggest stages.
I don’t have a particularly strong opinion on how Niemann will perform in majors this year. My expectations are … moderate? Maybe a couple of T-26s and a T-7? He’s capable of achieving more than that, but having higher expectations seems aggressive.
Niemann is a great player. And he’s young. But if you insist on having the Ludvig Aberg versus Joaquin Niemann debate, it isn’t much of one. If someone offered you the next two years of Niemann or Aberg’s average earnings per start in major championships, you take the Aberg side and you don’t think twice about it.
Reader-Submitted Question
Reader: Is there anything you’ve changed your mind about over the last few years from a data perspective?
Answer: Yes, I’m always updating and tweaking things, usually in small magnitudes. One of the most significant adjustments I’ve made in recent years is giving more weight to a player’s course history.
I used to take a pretty hard line that I only wanted to consider course fit, not course history. My rationale was that you need to understand why a course sets up well for a golfer, and not just blindly follow past performance on a specific golf course. I was wrong about that. There is predictiveness in course history, even if it’s difficult to attribute reasons for the outperformance or underperformance.
Every golfer will tell you that certain courses just fit their eye better than others. Or that they’re able to “enter a zone” at specific courses. There are only so many times you can watch K.H. Lee win at TPC Craig Ranch or 50-year-old Brian Gay bag a top 10 in Bermuda before you accept that there’s something to it. I think it speaks to how much mental golf is. As robotic and mechanical as golfers try to be, they’re human beings. Some places just jive with them beyond what we can capture with course fit characteristics.
I will say, though, that it’s easy to go overboard with this. I will keep banging the drum that we’ve reached a point where a player’s current form is underrated in public discourse. In Ryder Cup conversations, in major championship leadups, and in other prediction-oriented discussions, there’s a tendency to overlook poor form out of deference for a player’s history in that event or on that golf course.
A good example is to look at Jordan Spieth’s results at Augusta National. It’s no secret that Jordan plays well at Augusta, and I would expect him to continue to outperform his baseline at Augusta in the ensuing years. But don’t overlook the baseline. The below table shows Jordan’s Strokes Gained per Round for each PGA Tour season and then his finish in the corresponding year at the Masters.
Strong performances across the board, but they do follow his form. Jordan’s results in the Masters are much better when his form is strong. It’s all intuitive, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the importance of form, especially as we approach Ryder Cup pick discussions.
Ok, that’s it for this week! Have a question you’d like me to answer next week? Email me at joseph@thefriedegg.com
