RotoBaller PGA: 2020's Winners and Losers

Joe Nicely looks back on the 2020 year in golf, listing the PGA Tour's biggest "Winners" and "Losers".

Hello RotoBallers and PGA DFS fans! While we're currently smack dab in the middle of winter, the PGA Tour will be cranking back up before you know it. With the "Hawaii Swing" kicking off in January, we'll take the next couple of weeks to scratch your golf itch by recapping a wild 2020 and looking ahead to 2021.

2020 was indeed a year unlike any other in every way and that was also the case in the golf world, as the season was halted and major championships were rescheduled or - in the case of the Open Championship - cancelled altogether. Some players adapted, while some didn't. This article will dive into the year's biggest "winners" and "losers". Thanks for joining me here at RotoBaller! Let's dive in!

You can find out who the smart money is on every week of the PGA Tour season by checking out Spencer Aguiar's PGA DFS: Vegas Report right here at RotoBaller!

Winners

Dustin Johnson 

It seems like a decade ago now, but Dustin Johnson entered 2020 with relatively little fanfare (or at least as little fanfare as a player of his caliber can garner). He’d won a couple of times early in 2019 - and posted runner-up finishes in both the Masters and the PGA - but finished out ‘19 with underwhelming outings at both the U.S. and British Opens, and headed into the fall season looking injured and somewhat disinterested (to be fair, DJ always looks disinterested). Johnson was pushed even further into the depths of the golf world’s consciousness due to how well many of his competitors were playing...Brooks Koepka had defeated Johnson to win the 2019 PGA Championship and contended in the other three majors. Justin Thomas was dominant throughout the FedEx Cup Playoffs and won on the Asia Swing, as did Rory McIlroy on the heels of a FedEx Cup victory. Even Tiger Woods - still basking in the glow of his improbable 2019 Masters victory - appeared to have a more promising year ahead than the then-35-year-old Johnson, as he guided the U.S. team to a President’s Cup victory as player/captain and won the ZOZO Championship in Japan to close out '19.

However, something funny happened on the way to DJ’s demotion in golf’s pecking order...the player that many argued was the most talented golfer since Woods actually began playing like it. The COVID-19 layoff was a disaster for many, but a blessing in disguise for Johnson. While he admittedly played none during the layoff, he did use the time to get fully healthy and when the PGA Tour restarted, he seemed to pay no mind to the lack of fans in the galleries, a “new normal” since the restart that appeared to negatively impact some elite players to a large degree, but seemed to be something that the imperturbable Johnson may-or-may-not have noticed. 

DJ won in his third start after golf returned, capturing the Travelers Championship. It kickstarted a run that was beautiful in its dominance, and somehow felt both surprising and long-expected simultaneously. The stretch included a runner-up at the PGA Championship, a ridiculous 30-under par romp to victory at the Northern Trust, a playoff defeat at the BMW Championship, and a career-first FedEx Cup title worth $15 million. After spending 11 days in a Las Vegas hotel room in isolation due to a positive COVID-19 test, DJ emerged seemingly unphased and posted a T2 in his return to action in Houston, before landing the coup de grace at Augusta National. Winning the Masters in historic fashion with a performance that was so good it was almost boring, was a welcome change of pace for a player that always managed to lose majors in dramatic ways. 

We’ve seen him look like the best player in the world at different times during his career, but those stretches of dominance have either never seemed to coincide with the major championships or ended in ways that would be comical if they weren’t so heartbreaking. That proved to be a different story for DJ in 2020, as he finally ascended to a different level, a multiple-major-champion level...a level that many thought he should have arrived at long ago. 

Bryson DeChambeau 

Bryson DeChambeau closed 2019 by promising to look like a different player in 2020. That might be the understatement of the century, as DeChambeau - a player whose fascination with the physics of golf has earned him the nickname “The Mad Scientist” - emerged from winter hibernation looking more like the Incredible Hulk than Dr. Banner, with 30-plus pounds added to his once-normal frame and a newfound emphasis on distance off the tee. He was just finding his groove - three consecutive top-fives over February and March - when the PGA Tour shut things down after the first round of The Players Championship.

He used the time off to continue to bulk up, gain swing speed, game on Twitch livestreams, and film cringe-worthy social media posts. Upon the Tour’s restart, DeChambeau quickly proved to be a force, winning the Rocket Mortgage in impressive fashion - while averaging just over 350 yards (!) off the tee - and posting a top-five result - his best career finish in a major - at the PGA Championship. Those outings were just a glimpse of what was coming, as he shocked the golf world by overpowering legendary Winged Foot Golf Club - a course that’s infamously brutish - en route to running away with the U.S. Open for the first major championship win of his career. Many met DeChambeau’s “distance” philosophy with skepticism - he was already a very good player, why mess with it? - and his failure to launch at the Masters was a sign to traditionalists that he’s yet to “break the game”. We’re only guessing as to how DeChambeau will emerge from a winter’s worth of protein shakes and chocolate milk, but we have to believe that the Hulk will continue to SMASH in 2021.

Golf's Future 

Ask any keen observer of the sport and they’ll tell you that young players are unequivocally better than ever before. The PGA Tour’s rookie class reinforced that theory in resounding fashion throughout 2020, as players like Collin Morikawa, Matthew Wolff, and Viktor Hovland emerged onto the professional landscape with fully-formed games and little-to-no fear. 

Morikawa - a 23-year-old baby-faced assassin out of Cal-Berkeley - scored one for the young guns at the year’s first major, capturing the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park by driving the Par-4 16th hole in a shot that you’ll be seeing replays of for decades to come. It was his second career start in a major championship. 

One of the players that Morikawa outlasted at Harding Park was Matthew Wolff, a 21-year-old that’s as long off the tee as Bryson DeChambeau, presumably without the steady diet of protein shakes. Wolff was making his first career start in a major and finished in a tie for fourth-place at the PGA Championship. In his second major start he nearly won the U.S. Open, but eventually settled for runner-up honors after being outlasted by Bryson DeChambeau at Winged Foot Golf Club.

The third musketeer is a 23-year-old Norwegian named Viktor Hovland. Hovland looks like a mix between Rory McIlory and Ashton Kutcher with a laid-back personality that is quickly making him a fan favorite. He won the last official tournament of 2020, the Mayakoba Classic, to give him his second victory of the year. The former U.S. Amateur champion is a ball-striking prodigy with a game that’s built to compete in major championships. 

In addition to the trio of Morikawa, Wolf, and Hovland, the PGA Tour has players like Joaquin Niemann, Cameron Champ, Sungjae Im, and Scottie Scheffler that possess true superstar potential, which indicates that the future of the game is very bright.

Fantasy Golf 

Be it fair or unfair, it feels as though fantasy sports players are always struggling to gain acceptance from the "mainstream". That acceptance is (finally) coming in waves for PGA DFS grinders, as the PGA Tour named DraftKings as the "Official Daily Fantasy Game" of the Tour, while also embracing the gambling aspect of the sport and partnering with DraftKings' sportsbook arm. We also saw a major star, Bryson DeChambeau, sign an endorsement deal with DraftKings this year...something that felt impossible just a couple of years ago.

Why is this important for fantasy nuts like us? Well, the most impactful change will be the progression of coverage and the availability of live shot tracking. As we all know, this is an area where the PGA Tour needs to improve dramatically, as we're often left wondering how to watch some of the players on our DFS rosters live. The acceptance of gambling and fantasy will/should accelerate the growth of options for the demanding fantasy golf fan or bettor. We've seen what the future of golf looks like with the Masters' amazing "watch every shot from every player" offerings. While we're not there yet, the Tour's partnership with DraftKings inches us closer to having every shot from every player available to us in every tournament of the year.

Losers

Rory McIlroy 

If Dustin Johnson is one side of the “COVID coin”, Rory McIlroy is, unfortunately, the other...as perhaps no player was more negatively impacted by golf's COVID-19 layoff. As much as DJ was an afterthought entering 2020, Rory McIlroy was at the forefront of the golf world’s minds. After a couple of years over which McIlroy didn’t seem too interested in golf, the superstar appeared refocused and rejuvenated in 2019, winning The Players Championship, the RBC Canadian Open, and the FedEx Cup title. 

When the 2020 Players Championship was halted after one round, it seemed as though McIlroy might never finish outside of the top-five in a tournament again. That’s because he hadn’t in the six months since winning the FedEx Cup. He was absolutely dialed in and looked like the player that captured four major championships between 2011 and 2014. However, it was not to be for Rors, as he was never close to the same form after emerging from the COVID-19 layoff. Used to playing with galleries of fans since he was teenager, McIlroy - by his own admission - struggled mightily without fans on the course. He and his wife also welcomed their first child in August, which had to be a big - although happy - distraction off the course. He failed to log a top-10 until the Tour Championship and though his finishes at the U.S. Open and Masters look good on paper, he was never in serious contention in either.

While McIlroy's talent makes him a natural bounce-back candidate in 2021, after entering the season in such elite form, it undoubtedly feels as though he lost a "prime" year in 2020.

Justin Thomas 

In a just world, it would be incredibly unfair to dub Justin Thomas - a player that logged two wins during the calendar year - a “loser” in 2020. However, we all know that golf is an unforgiving - and often unfair - game. A player of JT’s caliber measures success in major-championship victories and the 27-year-old Kentucky wunderkind is walking away from 2020 empty handed in the department that matters most. 

He had his chances. Thomas fired a beautiful opening-round 65 at the U.S. Open only to unravel with a Saturday 76. He shared the 54-hole lead at the Masters before eventually settling for a career-best fourth-place finish at Augusta National thanks to a putter that failed to cooperate over the weekend. Those struggles on the greens were a recurring theme for Thomas in 2020, as his ball striking was extraordinary throughout the year - leading him to finish first on the PGA Tour in the coveted Strokes Gained: Tee to Green statistical category - but he was regularly undone by a putter that failed to do his bidding and landed him at 112th on the Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting by year’s end. 

Thomas is an elite talent that should have many more chances to win major championships in the coming years, though the struggles of JT’s close friend, Jordan Spieth, have taught us that opportunities must be seized in the ever-fickle game of golf.

Tiger Woods 

It’s never going to be popular to term the G.O.A.T a “loser”, but it’s safe to say the ultra-competitive Woods would agree that his 2020 campaign was a huge disappointment. He entered the year in confident form after tying Sam Snead’s all-time win record of 82 at the ZOZO Championship last November, but he never came close to 83.

His year never really got started, as the 15-time major champion’s first start of the year - a T9 at the Farmers Insurance Open in January - ended up being his best. Tiger’s next start at the Genesis Invitational was the beginning of a concerning pattern for his 2020 starts, as he didn’t look fully healthy en route to shooting 76-77 at Riviera over the weekend.

Many thought the COVID-19 layoff might be a blessing in disguise for Woods, with the break - and rescheduled major championships - giving him time to get right physically. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. He came out of the layoff in similar form with which he’d entered it. While he made the cut in both the PGA Championship and the Masters, Woods was never a factor in either. Woods strode into 2020 feeling good about his game and prospects, but as he limps into 2021, the outlook is quite the opposite.

Brooks Koepka 

Listen, the term "loser" is relative when you're going home to Jenna Simms every night, so Brooks is still way up in the "W" column of life. However, the four-time major champion did struggle on the golf course this year. Koepka battled a nagging knee injury that led to both trust issues with his swing and a hip injury. The injury was severe enough to force him to miss the U.S. Open on a Winged Foot golf course that was a tremendous fit on paper.

On the few occasions that Koepka did appear to be "himself", he didn't get it done. A blistering opening-round 62 at the WGC - FedEx St. Jude ultimately resulted in a T2 after he made a mess of TPC Southwind's back nine in the final round. He did carry positive momentum into the PGA Championship the following week, but after being in serious contention through 54 holes, the wheels came off in very un-Brooksy-like fashion with a disastrous final-round 74 implosion at TPC Harding Park.

Koepka's brash confidence and bluntness had always felt refreshing in what's traditionally a very bland sport, but his belittling comments about Dustin Johnson during a press conference at the PGA Championship sounded more like those of a schoolyard bully than a cool, fresh superstar.

He eventually put forth a solid T7 showing at the Masters, which gives us reason to be bullish on a bounce-back year in 2021, but as we head into the new year I'm left wondering how Koepka will react to being on the canvas a bit in 2020. Will he get up off the mat like Rocky Balboa or will his Mike Tyson-esque mystique evaporate after a 2020 in which he looked very human?

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