Why do event previews and golf articles talk about players finish position (T5, for example) instead of their total strokes gained for the tournament?
Finish position leaves so many questions unanswered.
Strokes gained doesn’t.
What would strokes gained in a single event answer for you more than finishing position in terms of a preview article? Strokes gained doesn’t tell you exactly where you finished relative to the field. If I say Rory finished plus-2 strokes gained for the week, that could mean anything. You don’t even know if he missed the cut or finished in the top 20.
Finishing position has little to no predictive power forward. Strokes gained does.
This is why all of the DG information in their model is based on strokes gained data.
Plus, there are certain strokes gained benchmarks that tell you how likely someone is to win with a certain strokes gained performance.
So you’re talking just articles tied to betting? Even then, finishing position is certainly pertinent. Obviously it makes sense to include strokes gained and other non-traditional stats in there for strictly betting articles. But in regular previews that aren’t betting-centric, it will look Chinese to most of the people who want to read the article.