How good IS Brooks Koepka?

A very poor use of data got me wondering.

It is not a great piece of insight to say that we, the public, can be very much swayed by the moment. And in professional golf, right now that moment belongs to Brooks Koepka who reached relatively rarified air with his fifth major win last weekend. But like everything, there are reactions and there are overreactions. And in the latter case, it is very easy to misuse data to prove almost any point you’d want. A case in point was this tweet:

At first blush, that’s really impressive! But anyone who actually pays attention to golf should look at something like this and realize something smells wrong. Because Tiger Woods is not someone ANYONE can compare their stats to with the possible exception of Jack Nicklaus. And Koepka himself had a very slow start to his career - he started older than Tiger and others because he wasn’t a prodigy.

And then you realize that Tiger’s stats here are up to his current age - he’s 47 years old, 14 years older than Brooks. Surely, that’s not a fair way when you’re looking at raw percentages.

So let’s be better. Let’s look at Tiger vs Brooks equitably. How can we do that?

Well, Brooks has played in 36 majors. He’s been playing professional golf for 11 years. And he’s 33 years old. Let’s look at ALL those vs Mr. Woods. We will use the same finishes and, just for fun, see how many times each missed the cut.

Look, that’s pretty good by Brooks, but Tiger has twice as many wins and a sizeable lead in all categories (including zero missed cuts!). But remember, Brooks took 11 years to do this. Let’s look at the two over their first 11 years.

It’s not getting better. How about at age 33?

OK, so we’re done here. But, again, NOBODY is going to look good vs Tiger. He’s one of one. So…how about vs Rory McIlroy? Folks are keen to hate on Rors these days, and he’s certainly been fairly unconvincing that he’s still a menace when it comes to majors. The last year McIlroy won a major was Koepka’s first full year as a pro.

My friend, who will go unnamed, got a bit over his skis (in my opinion) in a message saying that Brooks is CLEARLY better than Rory over these parts of their careers

In their first 36 majors, was Brooks “waaaay” better than Rory?

Brooks is better. For sure. But WAY better? I’d suggest this is startlingly close. How about in their first 11 years as a pro?

That’s even closer. And Rory has edged ahead in Top-10’s if that matters (I would suggest it doesn’t, much.)

How about at the same age?

Huh. Interestingly, that doesn’t look great for Brooks! Yes, he has one more major but in all other aspects (including Cuts, if we’re being fair), Rory has Brooks.

You can tell here that Rory has played a lot more majors than Brooks, so he SHOULD have more raw numbers given his talent. And of course, the original post used percentages, so let’s go back and look at Brooks vs Rory using percentages.

Folks, I can’t call this one. It’s really close. The most important stat - wins - Brooks has it. Of course he does, that’s why we’re even having this conversation. The important thing here is that you can use data to tell ANY story you want. It’s both great and awful in that regard.

People have also started talking about how many majors Brooks is going to end up with, and the over/under between my group of friends (and also on the Shotgun Start podcast) is 6.5, meaning folks feel sure he’ll win at least one more, and maybe two.

I would just note that after Rory won HIS fourth major, the idea that nine years later he’d still be looking for his fifth would have been the hottest take out there. Brooks has battled massive injuries, and things just happen.

As I noted earlier this week, Brooks was already considered one of the best golfers of his generation - and the win this week moves him even higher. He deserves all the praise he is getting - but we should ALSO try and put things in perspective a bit. If we can do such a thing.