Searching for a Specialist: Arnold Palmer
Welcome back to this week’s search for a specialist.
Let’s start with a review of last week. It was another great showing for our specialists with 7-of-9 making through the weekend, six of those landing inside the top 25.
Now let’s build on that week as we hop over to Orlando.
Our search this week will look at performance on Less-than-Driver Courses, Par 72 tracks, Long Courses, and finish up by looking at performance on Bermuda Greens.
Here we go…
Less-than-Driver Courses
Much like last week’s Valspar, Bay Hill forces the golfers to club down on many of the par 4s this week. This takes away some of the importance of driving distance, although DD is still valuable in terms of scoring on the easy par 5s this week.
LT Driver was the angle that catapulted Haas up the specialist rankings last week, and paid off big time.
This week the top 10 less-than-driver specialists in the field are:
Matt Every (0.633 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.469 sg:total)
Blayne Barber (0.678 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.031 sg:total)
Matt Jones (1.034 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.365 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.365 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.291 sg:total)
Mark Hubbard (0.479 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.07 sg:total)
Sean O’Hair (0.641 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.103 sg:total)
Cameron Tringale (0.895 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.388 sg:total)
Vaughn Taylor (1.269 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.823 sg:total)
Brett Stegmaier (0.717 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.273 sg:total)
Davis Love III (0.114 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.318 sg:total)
What a surprise, Mr. two-time-defending-champ is great on LT Driver courses? Even if we remove the results from the last two Arnold Palmer Invite’s, Every still shows up as a LT Driver specialists. Interesting to note.
Matt Jones and Vaughn Taylor also pop out due to their SG:Total over 1 on courses like Bay Hill that yield a lower average driving distance.
Jason Day would have been #11 on this list. Considering his strong baseline SGT, we have to take note whenever he pops up as a specialist.
Tony Finau is the exact opposite, as he’s lost strokes to the field in nine of 13 starts on less-than-driver courses. Ouch! We can continue to fade him with confidence. He will turn it around eventually, but there is no need to push it on a week when the numbers don’t line up.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 54
Par 72 Courses
We’ve had a lot of par 71 courses lately which are my least favorite, but Bay Hill is a par 72, which is great.
Golfers that can capitalize on the par 5s usually succeed on these courses. That doesn’t always mean long hitters though. Short and accurate hitters can also thrive on par 5s, since they have less blowup potential and easy par 5s are well, easy for everyone.
The top 10 remaining par 72 specialists:
Andrew Loupe (0.525 sg:par72 vs. -0.066 sg:total)
Bud Cauley (0.617 sg:par72 vs. 0.067 sg:total)
Vaughn Taylor (1.336 sg:par72 vs. 0.823 sg:total)
Smylie Kaufman (1.138 sg:par72 vs. 0.67 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.107 sg:par72 vs. -0.291 sg:total)
Derek Fathauer (0.32 sg:par72 vs. -0.069 sg:total)
Peter Malnati (0.1 sg:par72 vs. -0.19 sg:total)
Francesco Molinari (0.994 sg:par72 vs. 0.704 sg:total)
Jim Herman (0.287 sg:par72 vs. 0.05 sg:total)
Matt Jones (0.593 sg:par72 vs. 0.365 sg:total)
Would ya look at that? We’re starting to see large enough sample sizes for rookies like Smylie Kaufman. Exciting times.
Matt Jones and Vaughn Taylor show up for a second straight angle. Good for them.
John Huh shows up on the wrong side of the specialist spectrum here. I’m only mentioning it due to his tremendous form entering the week. However, he’s lost strokes to the field in 14 of his last 25 starts on par 72 courses. Could be a good time to jump off the train if you’d been riding Huh during his great play recently.
We say goodbye to G-Mac at this step, which brings up a good reminder. Just because a golfer doesn’t fit the specialist criteria, doesn’t mean they are a bad play. G-Mac for example is an Orlando resident. So, he makes up for lack of course fit with his local knowledge.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 26
Long Courses
Bay Hill is a less-than-driver course AND a long course!? Yup, that explains why a majority of the approach shots this week will come from outside 200 yards.
Golfers that succeed on long courses are either great with their long irons or they make up their strokes around the green (scrambling and/or putting).
Three of our remaining 26 golfers stand out on long courses:
Matt Jones (1.071 sg:long vs. 0.365 sg:total)
Cameron Tringale (0.66 sg:long vs. 0.388 sg:total)
Russell Henley (0.38 sg:long vs. 0.146 sg:total)
There’s Matt Jones again!
The largest anti-specialist for this angle is Mark Hubbard. He’s lost strokes to the field in 5-of-7 starts on courses that stretch out past 7,400 yards. The longer the course, the harder he falls, for the DFS communities favorite cut-maker.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 10
Bermuda Greens
The API features fresh greens this week. After the 2015 edition, Arnie ripped up the carpet and put in fresh TifEagle bermuda greens. They were already bermuda, so this won’t be a huge issue in the long run.
There is more skill involved in putting on bermuda so top-class putters excel on bermuda. It also helps if a golfer grew up in Florida or anywhere in the South, really. Reading the grain on bermuda greens is a learned art, and it helps if you start early.
We have 10 specialists remaining but we lose a couple due to performance on bermuda:
Russell Henley
Jim Herman
GOLFERS REMAINING: 8
Baseline Performance
Due to the smaller field that comes along with an Invitational, we’ve already got a short list of specialists. That doesn’t mean we can skip this step.
During this step, we eliminate the golfers whose talent level is too low to begin with. It doesn’t help being a specialist, if they start with huge ground to make up. This list can be considered the GPP junkyard of high upside but very high risk plays. Use at your own risk.
Using our normal criteria of 0.250 strokes gained:total or worse, we can eliminate four of our remaining specialist hopefuls:
Jeff Overton
Sean O’Hair
Andrew Loupe
Lucas Glover
The Specialists
Matt Jones
Cameron Tringale
Matt Kuchar
Brendan Steele
This week’s specialist is Matt Jones! This probably isn’t surprising as he’s shown up frequently throughout this article.
The course history for Jones is good, as he sports a 4-for-5 record including top 15s in the last two editions of the API.
Tringale is a specialist for the second week in a row. He was one of the two disappointments last week, so let’s see if he can break out of his slump and redeem himself.
Check out the full Specialist Table for more detailed data. You can sort and filter to your heart’s desire. Best of luck in all your matchups this week.