Searching for a Specialist: Honda Classic

by Josh Culp (futureoffantasy) Last Updated 2017-02-27 19:44:28

Welcome back to another specialist search.

Let’s do a quick recap of last week, like always. Our three specialists (Holmes, Bradley, and Steele) were never in doubt of missing the cut (yeah, right) but in the end they all pulled out top 40s. Nothing earth-shattering but solid work considering they were all $7,500 or cheaper on DraftKings.

For this week’s Honda Classic we move away from the West Coast and plop ourselves down in Florida. Considering the huge switch in climates and grasses, we can lean more heavily on course fit and focus less on current form.

The angles we are going to target for the Honda Classic include: Less-than-Driver Performance, Florida Courses, Strong Field Events, Bermudagrass Greens, and Hard-to-Hit Greens.

Here we go…

Less-than-Driver Courses

This week’s courses, the Champion Course at PGA National, is a tricky bugger. It has plenty of trouble if you stray too far off the fairways. For this reason, most of the field will opt for less than driver for most of the round.

This doesn’t automatically mean we should target accuracy over distance. Some of the bombers don’t mind pulling out a three-iron and striping it 230 yards right down the fairway.

We can look at performance on similar layouts where driving distance is restricted off the tee, and see who outperforms their baseline.

The Top 10 Less-than-Driver Specialists are:

Matt Every (0.341 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.427 sg:total)
Steven Alker (0.83 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.106 sg:total)
Whee Kim (1.02 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.364 sg:total)
Jamie Lovemark (1.416 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.806 sg:total)
Willy Wilcox (1.324 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.714 sg:total)
Luke Donald (1.694 sg:less-than-driver vs. 1.105 sg:total)
Blayne Barber (1.087 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.515 sg:total)
Scott Brown (1.251 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.694 sg:total)
Padraig Harrington (0.733 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.183 sg:total)
Morgan Hoffmann (0.996 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.449 sg:total)

Lovemark is really the only surprising name here. Most of this list is full of plodders that rely on good scrambling or putting to get the job done. They are happy when the field gets restricted off the tee.

Lovemark can really pound it with his driver, but he has sneaky-good short game, as well. In this field, he rates out as the second-best scrambler for me, behind only Rickie Fowler.

Justin Thomas is another interesting case here. Overall, he sees a dip in performance on less-than-driver layouts but he’s still found top 25s in 10-of-18 on these restrictive layouts, so his upside is definitely still there.

Florida Courses

When the TOUR heads to the Sunshine State, we know it means bermuda greens, wind, and water hazards.

Let’s see who fares best in these conditions.

The 10 Florida Specialists remaining:

Matt Every (0.874 sg:florida vs. -0.427 sg:total)
Will MacKenzie (1.3 sg:florida vs. 0.352 sg:total)
Daniel Berger (2.25 sg:florida vs. 1.481 sg:total)
Padraig Harrington (0.918 sg:florida vs. 0.183 sg:total)
David Hearn (1.567 sg:florida vs. 0.863 sg:total)
John Senden (1.674 sg:florida vs. 1.026 sg:total)
Ken Duke (0.661 sg:florida vs. 0.019 sg:total)
Morgan Hoffmann (1.004 sg:florida vs. 0.449 sg:total)
Justin Thomas (2.18 sg:florida vs. 1.647 sg:total)
Camilo Villegas (1.165 sg:florida vs. 0.637 sg:total)

We see a lot of Florida connections here in terms of natives and/or current residents. We also see some steady ball-strikers who can navigate around water hazards and also shape their shots when the wind picks up.

Not on the list above, but certainly notable is Adam Scott. He’s found top 25s in eight of his last 12 starts in Florida. That includes a win here last year as well as a win the following week at Trump National Doral.

Strong Field Events

The field this week is slightly weaker than we usually see at PGA National (perhaps due to the WGC moving to Mexico instead of Doral) but it’s still much stronger than most of the early-season events.

Some golfers make a career out of finishing strong at the alternate-field events. We would rather avoid those type of golfers when a strong field comes around.

The Top 10 Strong Field Specialists:

Sung Kang (1.778 sg:strong vs. 0.782 sg:total)
Martin Flores (1.456 sg:strong vs. 0.672 sg:total)
Ernie Els (0.987 sg:strong vs. 0.488 sg:total)
Padraig Harrington (0.65 sg:strong vs. 0.183 sg:total)
Derek Fathauer (0.863 sg:strong vs. 0.424 sg:total)
Camilo Villegas (1.062 sg:strong vs. 0.637 sg:total)
John Senden (1.447 sg:strong vs. 1.026 sg:total)
David Lingmerth (1.15 sg:strong vs. 0.746 sg:total)
Jhonattan Vegas (1.046 sg:strong vs. 0.661 sg:total)
David Hearn (1.212 sg:strong vs. 0.863 sg:total)

We see plenty of veterans on this list (Els, Paddy, Villegas, Senden) who definitely don’t get star-struck when they arrive at these stronger field events.

The King of Strong Field Events? That would have to be Adam Scott, or at least in this week’s field. Since 2014, he’s played in 42 events with a 400+ OWGR strength of field rating, finding top 25s in 32 of those!

On the flip side, we have Scott Stallings who has a big fat ZERO top 25s over his last 20 starts against strong fields.

Bermuda Greens

We already looked at Florida performance which will pick up some of this same data, but not all bermuda greens are in Florida, obviously.

This list below will show us who “ups their game” when bermuda greens are on tap.

The 10 Bermuda Specialists:

Matt Every (0.303 sg:bermuda vs. -0.427 sg:total)
Steven Alker (0.664 sg:bermuda vs. 0.106 sg:total)
Brett Stegmaier (0.71 sg:bermuda vs. 0.272 sg:total)
John Peterson (0.735 sg:bermuda vs. 0.306 sg:total)
Fabian Gomez (0.828 sg:bermuda vs. 0.406 sg:total)
Luke Donald (1.49 sg:bermuda vs. 1.105 sg:total)
Bryson DeChambeau (0.999 sg:bermuda vs. 0.623 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.952 sg:bermuda vs. 0.605 sg:total)
Peter Malnati (0.113 sg:bermuda vs. -0.226 sg:total)
Blayne Barber (0.85 sg:bermuda vs. 0.515 sg:total)

This lists shows a good mix of ball strikers AND putters.

There is no magic recipe to putting on bermuda. It’s often a matter of comfort, whether you grew up playing on the surface or have a home course with bermuda greens.

Matt Every continues to show up on these lists, but his form is just too far off the tracks to trust.

Lucas Glover and John Peterson are a perfect duo here. Both elite ball-strikers but generally struggle with the flat stick. When we head to bermuda, it’s worth giving them a look.

Hard-to-Hit Greens

Since 2010, the field has averaged just 60 percent of greens in regulation.

This angle was also used last week, if you want to draw any kind of link with Riviera CC. This segment below was from last week’s article and still applies this week…

From a rational perspective that means we want elite approach play or elite scrambling (since plenty of greens will be missed).

This also brings course management into play, because golfers will have the option to taking aggressive routes and making costly mistakes if they miss offline. Or they can take a calculated safe play and know they are likely to miss the green but they put it in a spot that gives them a good chance to get up-and-down.

Ideally, this angle will pick out those intangibles and tell us who can perform on this tough test.

The 10 Hard GIR Specialists:

Cameron Percy (1.794 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.45 sg:total)
Matt Every (0.579 sg:hard GIR vs. -0.427 sg:total)
Bryson DeChambeau (1.624 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.623 sg:total)
Danny Willett (2.351 sg:hard GIR vs. 1.521 sg:total)
Brett Stegmaier (1.019 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.272 sg:total)
Daniel Berger (2.2 sg:hard GIR vs. 1.481 sg:total)
Alex Cejka (1.326 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.683 sg:total)
John Senden (1.624 sg:hard GIR vs. 1.026 sg:total)
Michael Thompson (1.014 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.417 sg:total)
Retief Goosen (1.161 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.626 sg:total)

Just like we imagined we mostly have a list of golfers with great short game. If you can’t hit all the greens in regulation, the next best thing is to scramble the course to death.

Brian Harman has shown the ability to thrive on these type of courses. Since 2014 he’s racked up nine top 25s in 21 events where the field has averaged less than 61% of greens in regulation.

Baseline Performance

We now have a list of six potential specialists but we can narrow that down by looking at baseline performance.

Looking at the field-average baseline this week, we want golfers with a baseline over 0.73 strokes gained per round (or we’d accept form of 1.46 SGT or better). That means we can isolate the following golfers as GPP-only specialists:

Scott Brown
Camilo Villegas
John Huh

All three are a good fit on paper but really need to exceed their baseline to pay off. Don’t play these guys in cash but feel comfortable sprinkling them into GPP lineups.

The Specialists

Daniel Berger
Daniel Summerhays
Sergio Garcia

Our specialist this week is Daniel Berger!

The Florida native has plenty of history in his home state as well as PGA National. He finished runner-up here just two years ago but returned with a missed cut. I would expect something closer to his 2015 result this week.

Summerhays is never going to impress off the tee, but his fairway-to-cup play is top notch. His history at the Honda shows a 4-for-6 record, including a pair of top 20s.

Lastly we have Sergio who is 6-for-6 here with a trio of top 15s. That includes last year’s runner-up finish. We should expect more of the same this week.

A few other names worth mentioning: If the criteria for Florida stats were set to 20 rounds instead of 25 then Martin Flores and Blayne Barber would both crack the list. Barber is the more appealing name there considering he has a third-place finish on his Honda resume and grew up in the state.

The Anti-Specialists

Looking for the opposite of our specialists, these golfers have negative numbers in all five angles!

Jason Bohn
Hudson Swafford
Spencer Levin

I won’t lose sleep over the decision to fade all three of these guys, so it’s a full fade for me.

Best of luck everyone!

Below is a table with the full specialist data. Any fields with a 0 in them mean the sample size is not large enough. There is a minimum of 25 rounds to qualify for each angle.

The SG:Total column is a baseline performance measure (since 2014),

Form looks at the performance over the last 10 weeks (PGA & Euro). Given the holiday break, form is still rounding back into shape.