The Bucket System is a tool that analyzes lead-in stats for top 10 finishers at any PGA Tour event. The purpose of this analysis is help us identify the pieces we need to target the Optimal Lineup. More often than not, the top 10 of leaderboards are full of golfers you would not expect there. How often have you seen some random rookie or old guy finishing inside the top 10? How many times have you seen a golfer miss the cut 3, 4, or even 5 weeks in a row only to finish inside of the top 10 of a signature event or a major championship the following week? Most of the industry calls this “variance”. Meaning, “we cannot calculate this randomness.” Well… why not?

There are six (6) stat categories that the Bucket System analyzes.  They are: Last Year, Last Week, Course History, Recent Form, Salaries, and Strokes Gained. All stats are captured before the beginning of an event. Hence, they are all lead-in stats that we can use to analyze current tournament fields.

Last Year – the finishing position at an event from the year before. This includes golfers who have not played last year. For inaugural years, there are no Last Year stats to analyze.

Last Week – the finishing position from last week’s event. This includes golfers who have not played last week. If there is no event last week, Last Week stats are not analyzed.

Course History – (also called Tournament History/Event History) Average finishing position at any event that dates back to 2013. I require at least two years of event history to have completed before calculating course history.

Recent Form – average finishing position for the last 7 weeks. Match play events are ignored. 7 weeks + current week = two full months. To me, golfers forget about anything that happens prior to two months ago. This is completely arbitrary, but it is in my experience that this works for “recent form” analysis. I would never go further than two months of analysis. I also would never go shorter than one month. In the future, we will be able to shift these periods for more advanced analysis.

Salary – This is straight forward. The reason I look at salaries is because they’re a “power ranking” from DraftKings (or whatever fantasy site you use). Why not track this? It proves to help when building lineups. Does the cream rise to the top or do we see scrubs finish inside the top 10 more often?

Strokes Gained – this is a unique stat for analysis. I look at the last 365 days of strokes gained data. In the future, you will be able to research by different periods. This is also the newest stat added to The Bucket System. I combine SG: OTT + SG: Putting to create all of the buckets for this stat. A breakdown is shown below:

SG1 = All strokes gained stats are positive (OTT, APP, ARG, PUTT).
SG2 = SG: OTT and SG: Putting are positive and either ARG or APP is negative.
SG3 = SG: OTT is positive and SG: Putting is negative. ARG and APP can be anything.
SG4 = SG: OTT is negative and SG: Putting is positive. ARG and APP can be anything.
SG5 = All strokes gained stats are negative (OTT, APP, ARG, PUTT).
SG6 = There are no strokes gained data for the golfer in the last 365 days.


This is a good segway to let you know that there are six (6) buckets for each stat category (like I showed above with the Strokes Gained stats). That means there are a total of 36 buckets within The Bucket System. The number six (6) just works perfectly in fantasy golf. You can only put together six (6) golfers in a lineup (for major fantasy sites). And when I had created The Bucket System, the cut rules for PGA Tour events were top 70 and ties. If more than 78 golfers made the cut, a secondary cut would be made after round 3. The top 60 golfers would then continue to play in round 4. That means a total of 78 golfers COULD have made the cut. That number is really close to 80. And when I was creating the ranges for the last week or last year buckets, I first had to consider 1) golfers who did not play and 2) golfers who either missed the cut, withdrew, or got disqualified. So, that left me with nearly 80 golfers to evenly split into other buckets. It just made sense break them into 4 different buckets (20 in each). Here’s a break down of each stat and their buckets:

Last Year and Last Week Buckets:
Bucket 1 = 1-20 finishes
Bucket 2 = 21-40 finishes
Bucket 3 = 41-60 finishes
Bucket 4 = 61-80 finishes
Bucket 5 = Missed Cuts, Withdraws, Disqualifications
Bucket 6 = Did not play

Recent Form and Course History Buckets:
Bucket 1 = 1-20 averages
Bucket 2 = 20-40 finishes
Bucket 3 = 40-60 finishes
Bucket 4 = 60-80 finishes
Bucket 5 = Missed Cuts, Withdraws, Disqualifications
Bucket 6 = Did not play

Salaries:
Bucket 1 = 10K and above
Bucket 2 = 9K
Bucket 3 = 8K
Bucket 4 = 7K
Bucket 5 = 6K (or 6.5 and above)
Bucket 6 = 5K (or 6.4 and below)

Strokes Gained buckets were explained above.