JGS: Strength of Tournament

Golfquant · July 27

How important/predictive is "Strength of Tournament" in JGS Rankings? If someone is ranked top 50, but has a very high (not good) Strength of Tournament rating, what does that imply?

leezer99 · July 27

1 hour ago, Golfquant said:

How important/predictive is "Strength of Tournament" in JGS Rankings? If someone is ranked top 50, but has a very high (not good) Strength of Tournament rating, what does that imply?

Know of one kid that committed to a top 25 school recently that always had a very high SOF JGS ranking but rarely broke par. He was also notorious for WD'ing after making an early triple or shooting in the 80's. A high SOF is able to fool coaches that chase highly ranked kids.

Golferdad9 · July 27

I’m not sure it implies the same thing for every kid. A kid living in Wisconsin playing locally obviously won’t have a great SOF. I would think a college coach would dig in a little bit to suss out why the SOF is what it is but I guess I don’t know that. In terms of rankings it doesn’t seem to be a huge determining factor. The rankings are much more sorted on differential than they are on SOF. I’d assume you’d want to get the appropriate level of competition for your kid given constraints of budget, time, skill level, etc and just let the SOF take care of itself.

In reality given the nature of the CCE I’d be MUCH more impressed if a kid can get a huge differential playing lesser competition. If a kid can somehow get to a -7 playing 6700 yard courses rated 72 that never get adjusted up his SOF will suck, but that would be one damn good golfer. Not sure how many others see it that way though.

Edited July 27 by Golferdad9

Tugu · July 27

3 hours ago, leezer99 said:

Know of one kid that committed to a top 25 school recently that always had a very high SOF JGS ranking but rarely broke par. He was also notorious for WD'ing after making an early triple or shooting in the 80's. A high SOF is able to fool coaches that chase highly ranked kids.

Does he share a surname with a prominent US Jnr am participant?🤣

ATXGolferGuy · July 30

On 7/27/2025 at 8:13 AM, Golferdad9 said:

In reality given the nature of the CCE I’d be MUCH more impressed if a kid can get a huge differential playing lesser competition. If a kid can somehow get to a -7 playing 6700 yard courses rated 72 that never get adjusted up his SOF will suck, but that would be one damn good golfer. Not sure how many others see it that way though.

Wouldn't that be a scoring average of 65 or is that not now JGS does it?

A 65 scoring average looks darn impressive, but once you get to college, how many times are you going to play a 6700 yard track...a quick perusal of the distances that Texas played ranged from 6913-7694 with 8 of 14 tournaments over 7200 yards. The other 6 were all between 6913-7092. The average distance was 7243 with the median 7259/7213. I would think a big time SEC/B1G/B12/ACC school would want a kid who's playing those longer courses already as a Jr. Of course, I'd love a -7 average myself😁