Searching for a Specialist: OHL Classic
Welcome back to another edition of Searching for a Specialist. Each week we take out an ax and chop away at the field until we crown a specialist.
To kick things off, we have a baseline of strokes gained:total since the start of the 2013-14 season. From there, we look at various angles to find golfers that perform better or worse under this week’s conditions.
This week in Playa del Carmen we will look at short courses, weak fields, easy courses, par 71 tracks, and end up by looking at very unique type of grass that is used on this week’s greens.
Short Course Performance
This week’s top angle will be short course performance. To classify, a course must be less than 7,100 yards in length, so this week’s El Camaleon Golf Club certainly fits the bill.
There are 14 golfers in the field that perform at least half a stroke better (per round) on short course. Here they are:
Bryce Molder (0.83 sg:short vs. -0.065 sg:total)
Stuart Appleby (1 sg:short vs. 0.122 sg:total)
Pat Perez (0.968 sg:short vs. 0.256 sg:total)
Matt Kuchar (2.08 sg:short vs. 1.377 sg:total)
Harris English (1.489 sg:short vs. 0.812 sg:total)
Shawn Stefani (1.157 sg:short vs. 0.525 sg:total)
Blake Adams (0.007 sg:short vs. -0.6 sg:total)
Brian Harman (1.023 sg:short vs. 0.44 sg:total)
Aaron Baddeley (0.633 sg:short vs. 0.069 sg:total)
Brice Garnett (0.295 sg:short vs. -0.258 sg:total)
Brendan Steele (1.357 sg:short vs. 0.83 sg:total)
Justin Leonard (0.348 sg:short vs. -0.17 sg:total)
Will MacKenzie (0.651 sg:short vs. 0.139 sg:total)
Rory Sabbatini (0.642 sg:short vs. 0.14 sg:total)
The biggest surprise here is Will Wilcox. Taking a look at the chart linked at the bottom of this article, we can point out his extreme split as loses nearly a whole stroke per round, when teeing it up on short venues. He’s still young in his PGA TOUR career so there is time to turn this trend around, but it’s not looking good so far.
A couple others drop out at this point, including Keegan Bradley and Scott Brown. See ya!
GOLFERS REMAINING: 53
Weak Fields
There is something to be said about golfers that consistency perform against weak competition.
It’s easy to get complacent and drop down to the level of your playing field. That’s not the case for the next list as they do their best work in these smaller, weak-field events.
The top 10 specialists when it comes to weak fields are listed below:
Jason Bohn (1.375 sg:weak vs. 0.623 sg:total)
Scott Stallings (0.237 sg:weak vs. -0.479 sg:total)
Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano (0.278 sg:weak vs. -0.407 sg:total)
Tim Clark (0.537 sg:weak vs. -0.097 sg:total)
Roberto Castro (0.098 sg:weak vs. -0.489 sg:total)
Brendon Todd (1.318 sg:weak vs. 0.748 sg:total)
Ben Crane (0.288 sg:weak vs. -0.278 sg:total)
Kyle Stanley (0.188 sg:weak vs. -0.371 sg:total)
Will MacKenzie (0.67 sg:weak vs. 0.139 sg:total)
Camilo Villegas (0.643 sg:weak vs. 0.174 sg:total)
The appearance of Jason Bohn here is the least surprising thing I’ve seen all month. He’s known for under performing when the bright lights are on him, but he can really tear through a course and field like this weeks.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 44
Easy Courses
Since the OHL Classic moved to the wraparound schedule a few years ago, it has played incredibly easy. If you are shooting even-par on the day, you are losing ground on the field and two rounds of par or worse and you are basically out of the tournament.
Of the remaining 44 potential specialists, these are the 10 golfers that perform best on easy courses:
Justin Leonard (0.705 sg:easy vs. -0.17 sg:total)
Jason Bohn (1.264 sg:easy vs. 0.623 sg:total)
Alex Cejka (0.754 sg:easy vs. 0.123 sg:total)
Justin Hicks (0.448 sg:easy vs. -0.11 sg:total)
Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano (0.13 sg:easy vs. -0.407 sg:total)
Jeff Overton (0.7 sg:easy vs. 0.168 sg:total)
Tim Clark (0.382 sg:easy vs. -0.097 sg:total)
Kyle Stanley (0.059 sg:easy vs. -0.371 sg:total)
Kevin Streelman (0.493 sg:easy vs. 0.077 sg:total)
Steve Wheatcroft (0.463 sg:easy vs. 0.057 sg:total)
There is that name again, Jason Bohn! Even if he doesn’t make the final list, he looks like a great play this week.
There is actually a decent correlation between weak fields and easy courses. It’s largely due to the fact that major championships are all bucketed in the hard course and strong field buckets. Weak field events are often much easier, and this event is no exception.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 31
Par 71 Performance
There are many golfers that get bucketed as par 72 specialists or par 70 specialists. It usually comes down to how well they perform on par 5s.
This next group of golfers could be consider the in-betweeners. They provide a balanced approach that doesn’t force them into the extreme categories.
These five golfers all perform at least a quarter of a stroke better on par 71 tracks:
Alex Cejka (0.761 sg:par71 vs. 0.123 sg:total)
Steve Wheatcroft (0.567 sg:par71 vs. 0.057 sg:total)
Roberto Castro (-0.022 sg:par71 vs. -0.489 sg:total)
Kevin Streelman (0.452 sg:par71 vs. 0.077 sg:total)
Robert Garrigus (0.122 sg:par71 vs. -0.159 sg:total)
GOLFERS REMAINING: 16
Seashore Paspalum
Grass stats are becoming more widely used across the industry, but this week’s type of grass is not widely used. It’s known as Seashore Paspalum and its only used in tropical climates.
To narrow down our list of specialists, we are going to drop the Paspalum hammer on them and see who is left standing. Here they are:
Chris Stroud (1.792 sg:paspalum vs. 0.365 sg:total)
Alex Cejka (1.232 sg:paspalum vs. 0.123 sg:total)
Will MacKenzie (1.154 sg:paspalum vs. 0.139 sg:total)
Jerry Kelly (0.912 sg:paspalum vs. 0.582 sg:total)
The Specialist
We’ve narrowed down the field to just four specialists. They include the following names:
Chris Stroud
Alex Cejka
Will MacKenzie
Jerry Kelly
Considering the weak nature of the field, it makes sense that we get an output of weak specialists.
Jerry Kelly has the highest baseline of 0.582 strokes gained: total since the start of 2013-14. However, he’s the weakest specialists of the remaining four.
On the flip side, there is Alex Cejka who gets to wear the crown this week as he is the specialist for the OHL Classic.
Cejka has already made an early-season splash with a pair of top 20s to kick off the new campaign. The German is not someone I generally feel comfortable placing on my lineups, but this week is different. There is no denying how tailor-made this event and course are for his play style. Fire him up!
The full Specialist Table is available for you to sort and filter to your heart’s desire. Best of luck in all your matchups this week.