Searching for a Specialist: Safeway Open

by Josh Culp (futureoffantasy) Last Updated 2016-10-13 14:21:01

Welcome to the opening specialist article for the 2016-17 PGA TOUR season.

Over the lengthy two-week off season I was able to do something I’ve been needing for a long time. I finally adjusted all the strokes gained numbers for strength of field. Crazy that I went this long without that but it will be a solid step toward tightening up these numbers ahead of the new season.

This week’s event is held on a Par 72 layout in California with Poa Annua Greens. So, those are the three stat categories we will search for this week.

Here we go…

California Courses

Every year we have a few golfers that crush during the West Coast swing. There is something very unique about the grasses and climate that help it cater to certain golfers.

We want to find the golfers that continually thrive year-after-year, so we’ll look at California performance since 2014 and compare it to each golfer’s baseline strokes gained.

The Top 10 California Specialists are:

Martin Laird (1.408 sg:cali vs. 0.322 sg:total)
Scott Stallings (0.815 sg:cali vs. -0.205 sg:total)
Kyle Reifers (1.115 sg:cali vs. 0.269 sg:total)
Adam Hadwin (1.137 sg:cali vs. 0.413 sg:total)
Kevin Streelman (1.06 sg:cali vs. 0.374 sg:total)
Hunter Mahan (1.039 sg:cali vs. 0.386 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.594 sg:cali vs. -0.055 sg:total)
Colt Knost (1.044 sg:cali vs. 0.427 sg:total)
Andres Gonzales (0.25 sg:cali vs. -0.349 sg:total)
Jon Curran (0.794 sg:cali vs. 0.208 sg:total)

Martin Laird loves teeing it up in the Golden State. Since 2014 he’s collected top 25s in 6-of-10 starts in Cali, including a T3 at this venue two years ago. Only five golfers have gained more strokes in Cali since 2014, but none of them are in the field.

Stallings is another interesting case. He’s made over 20% of his career earnings at the Farmers Insurance Open alone. He’s still very boom-or-bust but many of his booms have come in California, so it’s a decent week to take a chance in GPPs.

On the flip side, David Hearn has found just three top 50s in his last 12 starts in California. He’s finished T21 twice over that stretch but nothing better. Probably a good idea to let someone else take that chance this week.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 46

Par 72 Courses

With a par 72 on the slate, we see four par 5s each round, so 16 on the week assuming our golfers make the cut.

We want to target golfers that play better when they face a par 72 layout that gives them more bounce-back scoring opportunities rather than grinding out par 4s all day.

The 10 Par 72 Specialists remaining:

Chad Collins (0.305 sg:par72 vs. -0.127 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.373 sg:par72 vs. -0.055 sg:total)
Jamie Lovemark (0.639 sg:par72 vs. 0.26 sg:total)
Kyle Reifers (0.642 sg:par72 vs. 0.269 sg:total)
Jonas Blixt (0.47 sg:par72 vs. 0.107 sg:total)
Roberto Castro (0.386 sg:par72 vs. 0.111 sg:total)
Retief Goosen (0.519 sg:par72 vs. 0.246 sg:total)
Derek Fathauer (0.169 sg:par72 vs. -0.058 sg:total)
Charley Hoffman (1.047 sg:par72 vs. 0.833 sg:total)
Colt Knost (0.637 sg:par72 vs. 0.427 sg:total)

It’s always scary taking a chance on Glover but with four par 5s on the docket, he can lean a bit more on his ball-striking and just hope he rolls in a few putts. You may have to deal with a three-putt par or two but he could catch lightning and splash home an eagle or two, as well.

Castro is another interesting name here. He’s increased his strokes gained more than a quarter-stroke per round on par 72s and enters with some of the better form in the field.

On the opposite side of the spectrum you have Fabian Gomez who relies heavily on his flat stick. When others may have eagle looks this week, Gomez will need his best tee-to-green game just to line up birdie looks. After considering that, it’s easy to see why he’s lost 39 strokes to the field during his last 24 starts on par 72s.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 28

Poa Annua Greens

The last angle is our search for a true specialist is performance on poa annua greens.

Poa greens are known for their varying difficulties from the AM to PM. Basically they are a fast-growing weed, so when the afternoon comes around there will be bits and pieces that weren’t their in the morning and cleat prints can add to the bumpiness.

There are typically two types of golfers that excel on poa annua greens.

First, are the golfers that can mentally survive the unlucky bounces they may receive throughout the round. If you let it get in your head then you’ll start over-adjusting and before you’ll know it you are a mess on the greens.

Second, are great ball-strikers who are poor putters. They don’t rely on making putts anyway, so they are more than happy if the poa annua greens cause more misses from the rest of the field.

Last year’s winner, Grillo, falls under the second category as he actually lost strokes putting on his way to victory.

The 10 Poa Annua Specialists remaining:

Scott Stallings (1.03 sg:poa vs. -0.205 sg:total)
Kyle Reifers (1.326 sg:poa vs. 0.269 sg:total)
Derek Fathauer (0.865 sg:poa vs. -0.058 sg:total)
Jamie Lovemark (0.926 sg:poa vs. 0.26 sg:total)
Will MacKenzie (0.725 sg:poa vs. 0.063 sg:total)
Kevin Streelman (0.995 sg:poa vs. 0.374 sg:total)
Chez Reavie (0.913 sg:poa vs. 0.323 sg:total)
Jonas Blixt (0.679 sg:poa vs. 0.107 sg:total)
Andres Gonzales (0.139 sg:poa vs. -0.349 sg:total)
Steven Bowditch (-0.191 sg:poa vs. -0.623 sg:total)

A few names that are also on the positive side of poa annua performance are Keegan Bradley and Lucas Glover. They DEFINITELY fit the second category from above, great ball-strikers who are happy others great brought back to the field in terms of putting.

As expected, this angle has a very high correlation with performance in California. Of course there are a handful of courses outside of Cali that use poa annua greens, so this is sort of a double-check angle.

Of the golfers in the field, the following have ZERO top 25s on poa greens (since 2014). Number of starts in parenthesis: Danny Lee (13), Brendon de Jonge (9), Ricky Barnes (9), Russell Henley (8), Johnson Wagner (8), Chris Kirk (8), Webb Simpson (6), and Martin Flores (6). Of course, that doesn’t guaranteed they won’t find a top 25 this week, but personally I’d rather take my shots on golfers that have performed on this grass type in the past.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 23

Baseline Performance

We now have a list of potential specialists but we want to avoid the super-long shots. The first filter we’ll use is baseline strokes gained since 2014. If they lose strokes to the field then we don’t want to trust them:

Michael Thompson
Lucas Glover
Derek Fathauer
Mark Hubbard
Scott Stallings
Andres Gonzales
Steven Bowditch

The farther down the list you go, the biggest the risk is. Consider these GPP flyers at best.

In 2016, Glover, Fathauer, and Stallings all finished on the positive side of SG:Total, so they may be the three to target from this list.

We’re not done filtering just yet, though. We also want to avoid those golfers going through a rough patch of form. Looking at the past 10 weeks of stroke-play events, the following golfers are losing strokes to the field:

Retief Goosen
Brendan Steele
Jamie Lovemark
Seung-Yul Noh
Bryce Molder
Jonas Blixt
Will MacKenzie
Hunter Mahan
Colt Knost

Brendan Steele is the most interesting name here. He finished the 2015-16 season outside the top 60 in four of his last six starts. On the bright side, he’s cracked the top 25 in both appearances at Silverado. Maybe leave him off the cash squad due to form, but fire him up in GPPs.

The rest of the names should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Was their poor form on completely different style of layouts? Were they playing on the FedExCup bubble and maybe had too much pressure weighing on them? All the names line up well for the course, but they cannot be fully trusted due to recent play.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 7

The Specialists

Kyle Reifers
Kevin Streelman
Chez Reavie
Adam Hadwin
James Hahn
Keegan Bradley
Aaron Baddeley

Our specialist this week is Kyle Reifers!

It’s odd to see a Wake Forest product as a specialist on the West Coast. However, he grew up in Ohio, so he likely played a lot of golf growing up on bentgrass and/or poa greens. On top of the raw numbers, we also see he’s collected a T39 and T6 in two visits to Silverado, so the small sample of course history lines up nicely.

Keegan Bradley easily boasts the highest baseline strokes gained (since 2014) of the bunch. Of course, his struggles in 2016 are well-documented. If we look at just performance in 2016 then Chez Reavie, Adam Hadwin, Kevin Streelman, and Aaron Baddeley are all ahead of him.

Overall, we have a lot of value in these specialists this week. None are priced over $7,700 which makes it easy to sprinkle throughout your lineups while also loading up on some stars at the top.

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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.

This week the anti-specialists are:

John Huh
Troy Merritt
Carl Pettersson
Ken Duke
Ricky Barnes
Chad Campbell
Graham DeLaet

In past seasons I’d worry about an all-out fade of DeLaet given his great top-10 rate. However, his short game is still in shambles so he is easy to overlook until he gets things figured out.

Nobody else on the list is really all that tempting, so this is an easy week to fade all seven anti-specialists.

Best of luck everyone!

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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 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.