"As golf enters its own Moneyball Era, every number counts..."

It's been a longtime coming, but the Moneyball mentality has finally come to golf, reports Tim Rosaforte in this week's Golf World.

Most notably, Brandt Snedeker and Zach Johnson are attributing some of their recent success to more numbers crunching by outside sources, and it's not all ShotLink stats helping the players prepare. Snedeker won't reveal much other than the role Mark Horton has played.

"The lines [between a good and great season] are so thin, so I'm trying to find any edge I can get," Snedeker said. "Mark's done a great job for me of understanding who I am as a golfer. We, as professional golfers, have a tendency of thinking we're strong in particular areas, and that may not be the case at all. He does a great job of identifying what I need to work on, what my strengths are so I play to those, and what my weaknesses are, so I can play away from them."

At East Lake a year ago, Horton worked his computer in the clubhouse, and Snedeker executed a game plan that resulted in a sweep of the final playoff event and the FedEx Cup title for an $11.44 million payday. At the end of the year, Snedeker said Horton was the difference for him in jumping from 38th to ninth on the World Ranking.

Johnson was less secretive about his work with Peter Sanders, whose Shot By Shot website is part of the numbers crunching process.

Sanders, who works out of his house in Connecticut, contends that ShotLink stats are "myopic" and "one-dimensional answers to multi-dimensional questions." The blunt comments point to the theory that identifying tangible areas of improvement that can truly help improve scoring comes from a more focused exploration of the data.