Searching for a Specialist: John Deere Classic

by Josh Culp (futureoffantasy) Last Updated 2016-08-11 14:28:09

Welcome back to another specialist search.

Last week our specialist was Matt Kuchar and he (slightly) exceeded his baseline with a 17th-place finish. That was despite a four-putt on his opening hole of the week. It would have been easy for him to pack it in and head to Rio early, but I’m glad he didn’t. Other than Kuchar, Harman and Chappell both flopped, but so did the anti-specialists. Overall, not a week to write home about.

This week, I wanted to look at Rio for the specialists, but with Seashore Paspalum greens and a links-style par-71 layout, our options were very limited. Especially with a small field. So, I will provide some Seashore Paspalum specialist and Links specialists at the bottom, but we will focus our full attention on the John Deere Classic first.

The angles we will look at are Bentgrass Greens, TPC Courses, Weak Field Events, and Easy-to-Hit Fairways.

Here we go…

Bentgrass Greens

This week’s course is TPC Deere Run which features bentgrass greens.

Bentgrass greens don’t have the grain you see in bermuda, so less savvy putters are often able to figure them out.

The Top 10 Bentgrass Specialists are:

Tim Herron (-0.002 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.849 sg:total)
D.H. Lee (-0.748 sg:bentgrass vs. -1.473 sg:total)
Steve Marino (0.256 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.309 sg:total)
Ben Curtis (-0.565 sg:bentgrass vs. -1.085 sg:total)
Johnson Wagner (0.393 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.061 sg:total)
Robert Garrigus (0.362 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.033 sg:total)
Andres Romero (0.31 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.085 sg:total)
Bud Cauley (0.529 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.138 sg:total)
Michael Kim (0.297 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.048 sg:total)
Chris Stroud (0.611 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.267 sg:total)

A few names stick out in his primary list.

First is Bud Cauley who has posted top 25s in 36% of his starts on bentgrass greens (since 2014). That is eighth in the field in terms of raw bentgrass numbers.

Next we have Robert Garrigus. He is interesting because his top-25 rate increases more than 10 percent when heading to bentgrass courses. It’s no wonder he arrives with such good form, as we’ve seen a lot of bentgrass greens lately.

On the negative side we have Matt Every and Peter Malnati who see their strokes gained per round dip more than a whole stroke when taking on bentgrass greens.

Others that decline more than half-a-stroke per round on bentgrass include: Will MacKenzie, Blayne Barber, Jason Gore, Andrew Loupe, Boo Weekley, and Zac Blair. This is the type of weak field where they could defy those odds, but the numbers are not in their favor.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 44

TPC Courses

This is the first time using this angle here in the article, but it’s a good week to start. TPC Deere Run, like many other TPC network courses, is setup to give the public a “TOUR experience.”

Since they are run by the same network, they get a lot of the same maintenance done to them, and setup the venues in a similar fashion. One characteristic of (many) TPC courses is generous fairways, at least by TOUR standards.

The Top 10 TPC Course Specialists remaining:

Scott Pinckney (0.362 sg:TPC vs. -0.205 sg:total)
Greg Owen (0.026 sg:TPC vs. -0.459 sg:total)
Steven Bowditch (-0.245 sg:TPC vs. -0.699 sg:total)
Mike Weir (-1.624 sg:TPC vs. -2.077 sg:total)
Brendon Todd (0.659 sg:TPC vs. 0.239 sg:total)
Tyrone Van Aswegen (0.231 sg:TPC vs. -0.184 sg:total)
Jerry Kelly (0.857 sg:TPC vs. 0.513 sg:total)
Robert Streb (0.905 sg:TPC vs. 0.606 sg:total)
Derek Ernst (-0.698 sg:TPC vs. -0.979 sg:total)
Angel Cabrera (-0.078 sg:TPC vs. -0.329 sg:total)
.
There is nothing to inspiring about the list above, but we do weed out quite a bit at the bottom.

It’s no surprise to see Jerry Kelly excel on TPC courses since I consider them to be not tricked out, requiring good ole’ fashioned fairways-and-greens golf. That’s exactly what Kelly does.

One name that just missed the cut with small sample size is Michael Kim. He’s only teed it up in six TPC courses in his young career, but posted top 25s in three of them. That’s a great ratio, but doesn’t reach our minimum sample size quite yet.

This is where we lose course horses Zach Johnson and Steve Stricker, It’s not too shocking to see Stricker with a small sample size but ZJ surprisingly doesn’t schedule many events on TPC courses. Looking at the other three angles (and course history) they are obviously great plays.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 21

Weak Field Events

The John Deere Classic has never attracted the strongest field, but it’s even weaker this year with the Olympics taking place opposite and many golfers resting up for the Playoff push.

Looking at all events with an OWGR strength of field rating below 250, we can bucket our weak-field performance.

Of the 21 remaining possible specialists, we lose four golfers at this stage:

Tyrone Van Aswegen
Robert Garrigus
Angel Cabrera
Geoff Ogilvy

Geoff Ogilvy and Angel Cabrera both get up for the biggest stages at this point in their careers, but can’t seem to light the fire in regular TOUR events.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 17

Easy-to-Hit Fairways

I already mentioned how many of the TPC Courses on TOUR feature relatively easy-to-hit fairways and TPC Deere Run is no exception. Since 2010, the field has averaged 71.4% of fairways hit.

This is a crucial part of what makes this track so score-able since hitting approach shots from the fairway is always going to yield higher GIR rates.

The top 5 remaining Easy-to-Hit Fairways are:

Steven Bowditch (-0.177 sg:easy fairways vs. -0.699 sg:total)
Johnson Wagner (0.413 sg:easy fairways vs. -0.061 sg:total)
Hudson Swafford (0.544 sg:easy fairways vs. 0.146 sg:total)
Chris Stroud (0.522 sg:easy fairways vs. 0.267 sg:total)
Brendon Todd (0.494 sg:easy fairways vs. 0.239 sg:total)

GOLFERS REMAINING: 9

Baseline Performance

If we look at our filter for recent form, we can eliminate a few names that have lost strokes to the field over the last 10 weeks of stroke play.

Johnson Wagner
Greg Owen
Brice Garnett
Brendon Todd
Steven Bowditch

These names would be considered deep GPP options. Bowditch told gamers on Twitter to send it last week, so he may be close, and this might be the venue for that big bang. Wagner has found a lot of success here over the last few trips.

The Specialists

Chris Stroud
Jerry Kelly
Hudson Swafford
Brian Harman

Our specialist this week is Chris Stroud!

Stroud is not someone you’d expect to see atop a specialist list, but when you see his course history, it makes sense. He is 7-for-7 here at TPC Deere Run including a T5 last year. It’s easy to see the course fit is nice for Stroud who doesn’t rely on distance, but instead gets it done after the tee ball.

Jerry Kelly fits all the categories and is also a Wisconsin native, so he also has the Midwest connection on his side, as well.

Hudson Swafford continues to trend toward that first win, but can’t avoid the big number. Maybe, just maybe, this course with generous fairways will be the perfect venue.

Lastly, we have Harman who just disappointed us last year. Now he’s a specialist again, as well as a past champ. We know he can contend, but it’s always hit-or-miss with the lefty.

The Anti-Specialists

The golfers below are negative in all angles this week. Basically the exact opposite of our specialists and we should try to avoid them this week or limit our exposure at the very least.

Andrew Loupe
Erik Compton

Compton actually has a T13 here at TPC Deere Run, but I wouldn’t bank on a repeat based on what the numbers show. Loupe is 0-for-2 here and fresh off a Friday performance where he went from co-leader to missed cut.

Rio 2016 Olympic Golf Competition

Doing a brief rundown of this week’s Olympic Competition, we will have a quick peek at performance on Seashore Paspalum Greens and Links Course since 2014.

Seashore Paspalum greens are not common on either tour, but these golfers have seen an uptick in performance on the tropical-climate surfaces:

Julien Quesne
Scott Hend
Anirban Lahiri
Nicolas Colsaerts
Alex Cejka
Emiliano Grillo
Felipe Aguilar
Gregory Bourdy

Of those eight golfers, there are three that also perform better on Links courses:

Felipe Aguilar
Nicolas Colsaerts
Emiliano Grillo

Of the three potential specialists, only Emiliano Grillo passes the baseline performance filters, meaning he would be the specialist this week in Rio.

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 2013-14),

Form is the strokes gained per round over the last 10 weeks (including European Tour) and all the other columns will show you their performance for that angle (per round) in comparison to the baseline strokes gained with positive numbers being a good thing.