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Whether you’re playing the Oakmont Country Club golf course or gutting it out in the electric vehicle (EV) marketplace, tough courses and tough times demand tough winners. On a course that almost unplayable, J. J. Spaun grinded it out and pulled off his first major win in his long career. Will Tesla be able to do the same?
Golf architect Gil Hanse redesigned Oakmont to strategically test the world’s best golfers. Rain did the rest. Similarly, Presidents Biden and Trump have ping-ponged the EV market through the on-again off-again rebates and incentives. Economic uncertainties will do the rest.
How do you win in tough, changing times? Agility favors the winner. And one-off markets often favor the one-off winner – maybe even the unknown. I’m going to show you the analytics that drove J.J. Spaun to win, and the customer analytics that will drive Ford, Tesla or a new underdog company to win in the EV market.
Mark Broadie’s Strokes Gained and wRatings Value Gap metrics show where you are beating the field – and where you’re falling behind.
Winning Tough Golf: It’s All About Agility
Just as we did for The Masters, we use the Strokes Gained (SG) metric created by Columbia Business School professor Mark Broadie to analyze how J.J. Spaun out-dueled Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, and Rory McIlroy. The SG metric shows you where within the golf game each player is gaining their advantage, whether in driving (off the tee), iron shots (approach), chipping (around the green), and putting (on the green).
Oakmont Country Club, hosting the 2025 U.S. Open, is a par-70 course known for its difficulty. From a Strokes Gained analytics perspective, winners at Oakmont need to address a few things.
● Narrow fairways that require off-the-tee (OTT) accuracy.
● Small, fast greens (until the Final Round!) make approaching (APP) the green critical. For example, 2016 champion Dustin Johnson was stellar in his strokes gained on approach.
● Top 10 finishers in 2016 averaged both a positive SG Approach (APP) and Tee-to-Green (TTG).
Going into the tournament, winning was all about the short-game. Oakmont small greens demand more precision, favoring players that rank high in SG Approach. Putting was less critical and is often less reliable in pressure situations.
Through the end of the US Open 3rd round, these analytics held true. The top 5 players at that time were far superior at SG Approach (+1.22) than the other three SG metrics. In fact, putting in the top 5 was actually worse than the next five average at –0.32.
The final round separated the winners from the losers though, and it wasn’t about approach anymore. It came down to stellar putting mixed in with some strong off the tee. This favored J.J. Spaun’s game. Going into the final round, Spaun was a +2.62 SG Putt. When he lifted the trophy, he was still at +2.63.
Scottie Scheffler, the worlds #1 golfer for the past 141 weeks, was just outside of the top 10 at #11 going into Sunday’s final round. His highest SG? Putting at +1.01. SG Approach was just +0.66. When Sunday was over, his SG Putting was +0.60 and SG Approach at +1.44. Scottie zigged when he should have zagged. More ability in his game could have made him a winner.
What was that agility worth on Sunday? The top 5 players took home an average of $1.2M+ more than the next 5. Agility matters.
Winning Tough Markets: It’s All About Agility
Similar to golf’s Strokes Gained metrics, we breakdown a company’s Value Gap – customer expectations minus company delivery – into metrics that measure functional performance, emotional performance, and customer willingness to pay (WTP).
Government subsidies continue to whipsaw the electric vehicle (EV) market. Political divisiveness has upended the largest EV company in the market, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), as Elon Musk has now exited or greatly reduced his government duties.
Ford (NYSE: F) announced last year that they are making substantial changes to their EV plans, focusing more on hybrids and affordability. They cite customers becoming increasingly price-conscious and range-anxious. Based on wRatings data (see Moat Profile), they got half of it accurate in their customer’s lack of assurance. Several other key value sources remain more important to customers, notably safety, simplicity, and availability/choices.
Back in 2023, we detailed how the EV market was a classic Challenger (Tesla) versus Standard (Ford) industry. It’s a one-off market – similar to Oakmont Country Club golf course – making a one-off winner more likely. It favors the Challenger.
But hold on, as ESPN announcer Lee Corso says, “Not so fast, my friend.” In just the last two years, customer expectations for Ford and Tesla have become much more in line with one another. The competitive field has become level, although performance differences still favor Ford over Tesla.
Tesla customers have lower expectations, and lower satisfaction levels than Ford customers. Somewhat surprisingly, even with all their issues in 2025, Tesla still holds one key advantage over Ford: Innovation. And that appears to favor Tesla in another key wRatings metric: Customers are willing to pay ~1.3% more for a Tesla vehicle than a Ford vehicle.
Each company can win their share of EV customers by focusing on their strengths over the other:
● Ford has advantages in pricing, safety and availability/choices. The latter two are more important to customers than pricing. Emphasize those advantages and customers will buy.
● Tesla remains the innovative leader, but Ford is right on their heels. Tesla also wins when it comes to showing their concern (being anxious) about EVs and their flexibility in meeting customer needs. Emphasize those advantages and customer will buy. But work remains: Tesla must also resolve/fix their emotional bonds with customers for trust & creativity.
Just two years ago, Ford and Tesla customers were different. That’s no longer true. Tesla needs to become more like a Standard industry player. Agility is critical now.
It’s a race now. Can Tesla become a Ford? Can J.J. Spaun become a Scottie Scheffler? If they all pay attention to their metrics and remain agile, all can be winners.
Find Your Agility
Let the wRatings platform show you the customer analytics where you need to be agile to grow your market share.
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