I find the career progression of the Højgaards fascinating. I figured they are the perfect candidates to look at in the H2H tool. Not a deep dive by any means but a few thoughts:
Firstly results. Weighted Total Wins are very close: 1.8 to 1.7. Which makes sense given the Actual Wins. In terms of objectively the most impressive results Nicolai has 4 of the top 5 combined performances with the '23 DPWT Champs the clear no1. However looking at DG Points really smooths out the peaks and troughs and brings them closer together again:
Can see from the cumulative that their careers are very much tracking even if Y2Y True SG is volatile. Also of real note to me is the similarity of their respective peaks: Rasmus in 2024 at +0.87, Nicolai in 2023 at +0.85. The radar plots of these peaks shows this as well as highlighting how similar their games are:
The only thing I would venture to definitively conclude is that Rasmus has the better short game. He has three straight seasons of being a world class putter. Nicolai has had more volatile approach play but they net out quite similar since 2021.
I’m more intrigued by the questions posed going forward. A few I’d be interested to hear opinions or guesses on:
-
Are we essentially seeing what it would be like if you took the ‘same’ player and ran the sim twice?
-
How likely is it Rasmus remains the ‘better’ of the twins? If you had to set odds on who will have the better career what would we put the probabilities at?
-
Will one peak much higher than the other? Or are they fated to reach the same level of peak play but perhaps at different points in their career.
3 Likes
-
I did not fully realize how similar their skill profiles are, pretty wild.
-
Until 2023 Rasmus was always the better of the twins from an SG standpoint, but maybe Nicolai performs better on the bigger stage. I’d say 65% chance Rasmus has the better career (by total DG points).
-
I’d guess similar peaks, but it’s hard to guess what that peak will be. Should we expect them to have a +2 SG season at some point? That seems like a reach.
It’s also fun to put Spieth beside any promising young player. Makes you remember that most superstars are stars from day 1. By 21 Spieth had already accomplished what most of these young players will hope to accomplish in their careers.
1 Like
I do agree that the very upper end outcomes (Rory, Rahm, Scheffler, Spieth) seem unlikely given their progress.
However, and I’m about to fully indulge in Survivorship Bias here, but I would point out that if you look at (Rasmus) comps to Euro/Oz players who didn’t go through the American college system the outlook for 2+ doesn’t seem so fanciful:
Hatton
Tommy
Justin Rose (wildly close)
Cam Smith
I’ve always wondered if big talents who don’t compete at the American college level can be hurt in terms of SG profile by the low level of competition early in their careers. Again, aware I’m just picking those who made it but the belief in the Højgaards talent has been almost universal for as long as I’ve heard of them.
EDIT: And we get two bites at the 2+ cherry!
I’d also say 65% seems slightly too confident in Rasmus but I can’t back that up with anything other than ‘they are twins, they will regress towards each other’ lol.
Yeah… those are good comps. Olesen is also a decent comp whose career hasn’t been as good.
Si Woo also a pretty good comp.
Day interesting.
I guess it is pretty rare to play multiple years on one of the top tours before you are 21, so that puts the Hojgaards in pretty elite company right away. Tom Kim is pretty far ahead of them though, same with Niemann.
I agree that is harder to gain a lot of strokes on weaker tours if you are somewhat elite. Given that raw scores are relatively similar across all tours, there will be a cap on how much you can beat up on fields (i.e. you can only go so low). It’s also probably harder to gain strokes consistently when you are travelling around the world, compared to playing only in the US. This was one of our theories about why the elite guys were struggling to gain a ton of strokes on LIV, although this year kind of disproved that a bit with Rahm, Hatton, Bryson, and Niemann all having good SG years.
edit: not sure if ^ is what you were getting at with your comment about SG profiles / weaker competition.
And ya re: Spieth, I guess he can make anyone’s early career look bad (he was even ahead of Tiger until the age of 24!).
1 Like
That is exactly what I was trying to convey re:SG weaker competition. Hadn’t considered the travel aspect either.
Tom Kim and Niemann are very good rebuttal comps! They didn’t come to mind initially because I associate them with the PGA Tour but they (along with Sungjae who was ahead of the Twins) also played a crazy amount on elite tours at a young age.
Garcia is another relevant comp:
In general, Garcia’s career is pretty underrated. The 2nd-best European (behind Rory) of the last 30 years by DG Points. He kills Westwood:
