Ask me off the top of my head who’s been playing the best golf in 2026 and I’d tell you Matt Fitzpatrick, Cameron Young, probably Chris Gotterup and even Jake Knapp. But instinct only takes you so far so I went and pulled the Strokes Gained numbers to see what the data says. The results confirmed a few things, complicated a few others, and threw up some names I genuinely wasn’t expecting.
The overall leaderboard: Scheffler still stands alone
Even in what counts as a quiet year by his standards, Scottie Scheffler is playing a different sport than the rest of the field. His SG average of 2.22 leads the PGA Tour by nearly half a stroke. That’s down from 2.74 at the end of 2025 and he’s still lapping the field.
The risers: A new-look top 10
Ludvig Åberg leads all players with a +1.23 swing—from 0.51 at the end of 2025 all the way to 1.74 this year, backed up by a sixth-place FedEx Cup position. Min Woo Lee (+1.21) and Sahith Theegala (+1.00) round out the top three with Cameron Young (+0.86) and Matt Fitzpatrick (+0.86) close behind.
Fitzpatrick (+0.86) is perhaps the most compelling story of the season. He has three PGA Tour wins in 2026: the Valspar Championship, the RBC Heritage and the Zurich Classic alongside his brother Alex. He is third in FedEx Cup points.
The fallers
Garrick Higgo has seen the single biggest drop on Tour, falling from +0.78 to -1.23. It has been a season to forget for the South African, most memorably at the PGA Championship where he was two-over par before he even stepped foot on the first tee at Aronimink, arriving one minute late for his tee time and receiving a two-stroke penalty as a result. Without the penalty, he would have been tied for the first-round lead. He ultimately missed the cut by one shot and subsequently parted ways with his caddie. He sits 152nd in the FedEx Cup standings.
Emiliano Grillo (-1.46), Kevin Yu (-1.35) and Lucas Glover (-1.33) have all tumbled sharply, with their FedEx positions deep in the standings confirming what the numbers suggest. Adam Schenk (-1.26) and Nico Echavarria (-1.21) round out a group of players who have gone from contributing positively to the field average to dragging below it in the space of a single season. Echavarria is the interesting outlier. He still sits 35th in FedEx points thanks to a win at the Cognizant Classic.
The bottom line
With the back half of the season still to play, the question is which trends hold and which ones reverse. Who do you think is going to move up and down?
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