OTIS Golf

Tournaments / 2015-2016

Hero World Challenge

2015-12-03 · Albany GC

Winner
Bubba Watson
Winning score
-25
Field
18
Field strength
+1.059 SG

The 2015-2016 Hero World Challenge was played at Albany GC, starting 3 December 2015. Bubba Watson won at 25 under par (263), 3 strokes ahead of Patrick Reed. The winning card was 67, 67, 63 and 66, and the win paid $1,000,000. Patrick Reed finished second, and Rickie Fowler was third. 18 players started the event. The field averaged +1.059 strokes gained per round against the tour baseline. The full leaderboard below lists every player's finish position, round scores and total to par. Every figure on this page comes from the published final leaderboard for the event — nothing here is estimated or modelled.

Final leaderboard

Top 20 of 18. Search finds any player in the field, including those who missed the cut.

Model score

Backtest · reconstructed

Our course-fit model re-run as it would have seen this week — using only data that existed before the first tee shot — then compared with how the 18 players actually finished. It was not published in advance, so this measures the model, not a call we made.

Fgrade
Rank correlation
+0.133
Top-9 hit rate
33%
Top-10 avg model rank
9.5

Grade is this event’s percentile (6th) against every other event we have scored — not an absolute pass mark. Rank correlation runs −1 to +1, where 0 is a coin flip and a full-field golf model landing near +0.35 is a genuine read.

Who the model liked

Its top 10, and where they finished.

PlayerModelFinish
Justin Rose1st13th
Jordan Spieth2nd4th
Dustin Johnson3rd15th
Bubba Watson4th1st
Hideki Matsuyama5th17th
Rickie Fowler6th3rd
Matt Kuchar7th14th
Adam Scott8th10th
Zach Johnson9th12th
Paul Casey10th5th

Where it was most wrong

Largest gaps between rank and result, either direction.

PlayerModelFinish
Justin Rose1st13th(+12)
Dustin Johnson3rd15th(+12)
Hideki Matsuyama5th17th(+12)
Patrick Reed12th2nd(−10)
Bill Haas13th5th(−8)
Matt Kuchar7th14th(+7)
J.B. Holmes15th8th(−7)
Chris Kirk17th10th(−7)
Jimmy Walker14th8th(−6)
Paul Casey10th5th(−5)

One known caveat. Player stats, form and course history are all restricted to what existed before this event. The course archetype is not — it is derived from the venue’s full history, including this edition. That flatters the model slightly and equally at every venue. How the model works.

This event in the model

OTIS ranks every field on how well each player's game matches the course, then prices their chances. Both are published in full and graded afterwards.

This week's modelProbabilities and the track recordHow the model works

The venue

This event was played at Albany GC in Albany, BAH. The venue page carries its scorecard, hosting history and every other tour event played there.

Common questions

Who won the Hero World Challenge in 2015-2016?

Bubba Watson won the 2015-2016 Hero World Challenge at Albany GC, finishing 25 under par.

Where was the 2015-2016 Hero World Challenge played?

The 2015-2016 Hero World Challenge was played at Albany GC, starting 3 December 2015.

What was the winning score at the 2015-2016 Hero World Challenge?

The winning score was 25 under par (263 strokes), posted by Bubba Watson.

How many players were in the Hero World Challenge field?

18 players started the 2015-2016 Hero World Challenge. Every one of them appears on the leaderboard below.

Where these numbers come from

Finishes, round scores and to-par figures are the published final leaderboard for this event. Nothing is estimated or interpolated — where no value was published, this page shows a gap rather than a guess. Full sourcing notes are on the methodology page, and every stat name is defined in the glossary.