The American Express, Desert Classic · 7 editions, 2019–2026 · 1,086 rounds analyzed
We measure how a course plays by comparing the same players here against everywhere else they tee it up. La Quinta Country Club has not accumulated enough rounds in our archive for that comparison to mean anything yet, so there is nothing here rather than a number we do not stand behind.
We do not publish a course-fit read for La Quinta Country Club. Venue weights are kept only where they predicted results on seasons the model had never seen, and this course has not yet accumulated enough history to clear that bar — 7 editions in the archive.
That is deliberate. It would be easy to generate confident-looking numbers from 1,086 rounds of scoring data; they would just not mean anything. Until the signal is testable, every category is weighted equally here and course fit is not scored. The winners below are still worth reading as history — they are simply not a forecast.
Strokes gained per round for every champion here since 2019. The highlighted figure is that winner's best category for the week. A dash means the category split is not published for that event — only the total is.
| Year | Winner | To Par | OTT | APP | ARG | PUTT | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Scottie Scheffler | -9 | — | — | — | — | +4.42 |
| 2025 | Sepp Straka | -8 | — | — | — | — | +4.75 |
| 2024 | Nick Dunlap | -12 | — | — | — | — | +8.04 |
| 2023 | Jon Rahm | -8 | — | — | — | — | +5.35 |
| 2022 | Hudson Swafford | -2 | — | — | — | — | -0.87 |
| 2020 | Andrew Landry | -8 | — | — | — | — | +5.22 |
Every tournament week we score the field on course fit and player quality. Lab Notes lands every Tuesday with what the numbers say, free.
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