That's fair; would be interesting to break it down for the top 10. Still, the difference is fairly significant:
Winning Percentage:
Climo 48.9
Barry 43.7
McBeth 37.8
Ricky 33.6
Nikko 29.1
Feldberg 20.8
Doss 13.6
Would be interested to see if, for example, Doss only played A-tiers and higher for the most part, which could give context to the lower win rate.
Yeah. I feel like there's a distinction between players who prioritize bigger events and therefore have lower win rates, compared to "weekly warrior" players who are filling in their tour (and offseason) schedules with lower-tier events. I don't think one is necessarily "better" than the other, in terms of All-Time Greatness. But the two options do have very distinct impact on raw win percentage.
There is something to be said for playing more events -- even if it's just a smaller scale B or C tier -- but still being in more competitions and winning more often. Until 2019 World's, Emerson Keith's main claim to fame was playing in something like 70 tournaments in a year. (Well over one per calendar week!) And his career win % is over 30, very respectable, but I feel like moving to national-level touring is going to ding that statistic. (Unless he unlocked a new gear at World's and can maintain that level of performance. And if that's the case...watch out!)
Whereas a player like Paul McBeth is very selective about what tournaments he plays, at this point eschewing lower tier events to focus on big tour stops and majors. Some might say he's enjoying the luxury of not worrying about week-to-week expenses so he can skip the filler tournaments. But one thing is for sure: he's not swooping in on B and C tiers to hustle the locals for their lunch money. Actually looking at P McB's tourney results this year (and I'm not counting President's Cup because that's it's own thing) he's played nothing lower than A Tier, mostly Majors/NT/DGPT, and still won 61% of the time !! But that's still just one season. I guess that's the type of thing that gets picked up in the Player Of The Year stat. So maybe I
should care more about those 3 years for Nikko, even though I giggle everytime I see "POTY" brought up on this forum.
If there is a class of player that is truly favored by the raw win % stat, it's local pros. Guys who don't tour much nationally for whatever reason (maybe they have lives outside of disc golf) but are still very high level players. Christian Dietrich is a local hero here in MT, and he won BSF a few years back. He's been hovering around a 1020 rating for most of the last decade, but disc golf is not his full time gig. Christian has won 43.8% of the PDGA-sanctioned events he entered. So beating everyone but Climo on the list I quoted above! An even more extreme example is Joe Rovere; he's at over 50% career win rate! Madness.