Searching for a Specialist: Sentry Tournament of Champions

by Josh Culp (futureoffantasy) Last Updated 2019-01-03 13:43:29

Welcome back to the PGA TOUR grind!

If you are new to the Specialist article in 2019 then let me do a quick intro.

The idea of finding a specialist is to look at past results in similar course/event conditions to see who improves their game under particular conditions. To be labeled a specialist, you need to show up higher than your baseline in every angle. Not an easy task!

I also provide a table at the bottom with the stats for the entire field listed.

This week we look at Performance on Grainy Greens, Windy Conditions, Easy-to-Hit Fairways, Slow Greens, and Driver-Heavy Courses.

Here we go…

Performance on Grainy Greens

A few quotes on the greens here at Kapalua…

“Yeah, I actually really like the greens Bermuda and grainy. Being from New England, I putt Bermuda greens better than bent these days. I actually love them.” -Keegan Bradley

“The best putters are going to win. They’re so grainy and it kind of like, it reminds me a little bit of Augusta on the greens. You can have six feet and it might break a foot, foot and a half. And it’s all about speed on these greens. That’s kind of what it reminds me of a little bit. Just a little bit slower.” -Brooks Koepka

The greens are bermudagrass but the predictive power sees a slight uptick in this instance if we include other grainy green surfaces like Paspalum. They are very similar and paspalum is usually found by the coast like we have here.

The 10 Grainy Green Specialists:

Aaron Wise (2.138 sg:grainy vs. 1.617 sg:total)
Webb Simpson (2.464 sg:grainy vs. 2.026 sg:total)
Billy Horschel (1.771 sg:grainy vs. 1.474 sg:total)
Brice Garnett (0.945 sg:grainy vs. 0.658 sg:total)
Bryson DeChambeau (2.085 sg:grainy vs. 1.801 sg:total)
Matt Kuchar (2.401 sg:grainy vs. 2.143 sg:total)
Patton Kizzire (0.997 sg:grainy vs. 0.764 sg:total)
Justin Thomas (2.632 sg:grainy vs. 2.4 sg:total)
Rory McIlroy (2.984 sg:grainy vs. 2.754 sg:total)
Francesco Molinari (2.248 sg:grainy vs. 2.025 sg:total)

Quantity: The golfers that have the most strokes gained on Grainy Greens since 2014 are Justin Thomas, Webb Simpson, Charles Howell III, Billy Horschel, and Marc Leishman.

Aaron Wise comes from Cali and then went to school in Oregon. Now calls Vegas home. You’d expect poa and/or bentgrass to be his preference but early indicators have him leaning toward grainy greens. Let’s watch closely in 2019 to see if that trend continues.

Wind Specialists

DJ said it best last year, “The wind’s blowing always here and you really got to use the wind to help your ball get close to the hole or stop the ball or however you want to do it. But I enjoy playing. It’s always interesting, every day you’re out here, the kind of shots that you got to hit. I mean it’s all about controlling the ball and hitting it solid. “

The Top 10 Wind Specialists:

Scott Piercy (1.487 sg:wind vs. 1.123 sg:total)
Patrick Reed (2.328 sg:wind vs. 1.975 sg:total)
Jason Day (3.051 sg:wind vs. 2.743 sg:total)
Brandt Snedeker (1.976 sg:wind vs. 1.707 sg:total)
Charles Howell III (1.817 sg:wind vs. 1.577 sg:total)
Patton Kizzire (0.942 sg:wind vs. 0.764 sg:total)
Kevin Tway (1.216 sg:wind vs. 1.133 sg:total)
Webb Simpson (2.076 sg:wind vs. 2.026 sg:total)
Paul Casey (2.398 sg:wind vs. 2.354 sg:total)
Gary Woodland (1.809 sg:wind vs. 1.772 sg:total)

Quantity: Golfers with the most weighted strokes gained in the Wind since 2014 are Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Jason Day, Matt Kuchar, and Paul Casey.

Controlling your ball flight is critical when heading to a coastal course. You need to adjust to a lot of subtle wind changes throughout the round.

To show up on this list you generally have to be considered an elite ball-striker or an elite scrambler. Those are the two paths to success when it comes to defeating the wind.

Easy-to-Hit Fairways

There fairways at Kapalua are very generous.

“It’s very nice just to be able to get up there and just rip it off the tee, knowing you got a hundred yards of fairway.” -Brooks Koepka

“Yeah, it’s some very wide fairways out here, so hitting the fairway isn’t the biggest problem I have. You just got to place your ball very well from the second shot and I did that very nicely today and made a lot of good putts.” -Danny Lee

The Top 10 Easy Fairway Specialists:

Patrick Reed (2.441 sg:easy fairways vs. 1.975 sg:total)
Xander Schauffele (2.076 sg:easy fairways vs. 1.679 sg:total)
Andrew Landry (1.058 sg:easy fairways vs. 0.702 sg:total)
Francesco Molinari (2.38 sg:easy fairways vs. 2.025 sg:total)
Rory McIlroy (3.101 sg:easy fairways vs. 2.754 sg:total)
Brooks Koepka (2.647 sg:easy fairways vs. 2.325 sg:total)
Brice Garnett (0.968 sg:easy fairways vs. 0.658 sg:total)
Marc Leishman (2.258 sg:easy fairways vs. 1.969 sg:total)
Aaron Wise (1.875 sg:easy fairways vs. 1.617 sg:total)
Troy Merritt (0.956 sg:easy fairways vs. 0.715 sg:total)

Quantity: Most weighted strokes gained on Easy Fairway Courses since 2014 are Dustin Johnson, Jason Day, Patrick Reed, Marc Leishman, and Justin Thomas.

Reed shows up on the stat sheet and his quotes also back it up, “Any time I can come out, set up with wide fairways, large greens and be able to just kind of shape the golf ball and do whatever I want with it and be creative, it kind of fits into my wheelhouse.

Slow Greens

The average stimpmeter on the PGA TOUR is roughly 11.75 feet.

The average stimp here at Kapalua since 2011 is just 9.6 feet. Due to the coastal conditions and slopes of the greens they keep these as some of the slowest greens on TOUR.

The Top 10 Slow Green Specialists:

Brice Garnett (1.451 sg:slow greens vs. 0.658 sg:total)
Patton Kizzire (1.377 sg:slow greens vs. 0.764 sg:total)
Michael Kim (0.851 sg:slow greens vs. 0.442 sg:total)
Scott Piercy (1.499 sg:slow greens vs. 1.123 sg:total)
Kevin Na (1.904 sg:slow greens vs. 1.677 sg:total)
Matt Kuchar (2.349 sg:slow greens vs. 2.143 sg:total)
Charles Howell III (1.769 sg:slow greens vs. 1.577 sg:total)
Webb Simpson (2.172 sg:slow greens vs. 2.026 sg:total)
Billy Horschel (1.557 sg:slow greens vs. 1.474 sg:total)
Gary Woodland (1.801 sg:slow greens vs. 1.772 sg:total)

Quantity: Most weighted strokes gained on Slow Greens since 2014 are Matt Kuchar, Dustin Johnson, Marc Leishman, Justin Thomas, and Charles Howell III.

This is an angle where you see a lot of overlap with performance on coastal courses. Most of the slow greens they play are out of necessity. They are generally courses exposed to the wind.

Driver-Heavy Courses

This is not a course where you NEED distance but it is a course where you can use your distance.

Thanks to the generous fairways, even the longest of hitters can pull driver more often than not.

The Top 10 Driver-Heavy Specialists:

Andrew Putnam (1.661 sg:driver-heavy vs. 0.995 sg:total)
Paul Casey (2.845 sg:driver-heavy vs. 2.354 sg:total)
Bubba Watson (2.221 sg:driver-heavy vs. 1.793 sg:total)
Michael Kim (0.796 sg:driver-heavy vs. 0.442 sg:total)
Xander Schauffele (2.028 sg:driver-heavy vs. 1.679 sg:total)
Jon Rahm (2.762 sg:driver-heavy vs. 2.465 sg:total)
Brandt Snedeker (1.994 sg:driver-heavy vs. 1.707 sg:total)
Matt Kuchar (2.426 sg:driver-heavy vs. 2.143 sg:total)
Gary Woodland (1.946 sg:driver-heavy vs. 1.772 sg:total)
Patrick Reed (2.109 sg:driver-heavy vs. 1.975 sg:total)

Quantity: Most weighted strokes gained on Driver-Heavy Courses since 2014 are Dustin Johnson, Paul Casey, Matt Kuchar, Justin Thomas, and Jason Day.

Lots of these names make sense that they’d use your driver to their advantage. Others like Kim, Sneds, and Kuchar crack the list because lots of drivers means lots of opportunities to set up wedges.

The Specialist

Gary Woodland

It’s a small field of just 34 golfers so it’s not a big surprise to see just one golfer walk away with the specialist tag.

gary-woodland-800x480

Woodland isn’t ELITE in any of these angles but when you stack all the angles together, you start to build a pretty good course fit for him.

Combine that with his uptick in putter confidence since the summer, and we start to see a great pick taking shape.

Super Simple Specialist Ratings

The goal of this article is to isolate course fit, to see who should outperform their baseline.

However, anyone with common sense knows that baseline talent (and current form) can’t be ignored when handicapping golf.

Combining Baseline Strokes Gained with Current Form and Specialist Rating, we get a Top 20 ranking that looks like this:

Dustin Johnson
Jon Rahm
Rory Mcilroy
Jason Day
Patrick Reed
Matt Kuchar
Justin Thomas
Marc Leishman
Webb Simpson
Gary Woodland
Paul Casey
Xander Schauffele
Brooks Koepka
Francesco Molinari
Bryson DeChambeau
Bubba Watson
Aaron Wise
Charles Howell III
Brandt Snedeker
Cameron Champ

A pretty stacked list here with DJ and Rahm at 1-2 which is how they finished on the leaderboard here last year.

Something I’m considering is rust. Looking at the last 10 winners here, nine of them had played in Week 48, 49, or 50 (Hero, QBE, or Australia) before their win.

If you remove some golfers that haven’t played real recently (Rory and Kuch) then you have a Top 5 of DJ-Rahm-Day-Reed-JT with guys like Leishman and Woodland right on their heels.

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 30 rounds to qualify for each angle.

The SG:TOTAL column is a baseline performance measure (since 2014). It is time-weighted so more recent results count for more than finishes from years ago.

HISTORY column is a weighted performance metric based on course history. I’ve made small adjustments for sample sizes but be sure to check on number of course rounds before blindly following this number.

FORM looks at the total strokes gained, adjusted to field strength, over the last 6 weeks (PGA TOUR and European Tour).

SIMPLE RATING looks at SGTotal, FORM, and SPECIALIST RATING to create a simple rating that includes course fit but doesn’t overweight it.

Golfer	DK	FD	FDRFT	SG: Total	History	Form	Grainy	Wind	Slow Greens	Easy FW	Driver Course	Specialist Rating	Simple Rating
Brice Garnett	$6,400	$7,300	$11,700	0.658	0	0	0.287	-0.247	0.793	0.311	-0.215	0.186	123
Aaron Wise	$7,500	$8,200	$14,900	1.617	0	0	0.521	0	0	0.258	0	0.156	91
Patton Kizzire	$6,200	$7,600	$13,000	0.764	1.265	0	0.233	0.178	0.613	0.041	-0.406	0.132	113
Matt Kuchar	$7,600	$9,000	$14,600	2.143	1.229	0	0.258	0.026	0.206	-0.213	0.283	0.112	54
Charles Howell III	$7,100	$8,500	$13,800	1.577	0	0	0.109	0.24	0.192	0.054	-0.045	0.11	97
Patrick Reed	$8,200	$10,300	$16,600	1.975	2.257	9.718	-0.209	0.353	-0.207	0.466	0.134	0.107	51
Webb Simpson	$8,500	$10,000	$15,900	2.026	1.384	0	0.438	0.05	0.146	0.022	-0.173	0.097	60
Gary Woodland	$8,000	$9,400	$15,700	1.772	0.14	9.823	0.142	0.038	0.03	0.049	0.174	0.086	63
Xander Schauffele	$8,300	$9,500	$15,800	1.679	0.432	10.323	0	0.021	-0.36	0.397	0.349	0.082	68
Rory McIlroy	$9,600	$10,700	$17,800	2.754	0	0	0.23	-0.369	0	0.347	0.108	0.063	42
Scott Piercy	$6,700	$7,700	$13,600	1.123	0.442	0	0.052	0.364	0.376	-0.05	-0.428	0.063	115
Michael Kim	$6,100	$7,000	$11,000	0.442	0	0	-0.22	-0.284	0.409	0.049	0.354	0.062	137
Dustin Johnson	$11,000	$12,000	$19,100	3.055	2.755	11.823	0.018	0.003	0.027	0.219	-0.004	0.053	22
Andrew Putnam	$6,600	$7,900	$12,200	0.995	0	0	-0.452	-0.001	0	-0.163	0.666	0.01	121
Billy Horschel	$7,000	$8,100	$14,600	1.474	1.322	0	0.297	0.018	0.083	-0.164	-0.196	0.008	113
Cameron Champ	$8,100	$9,100	$15,800	1.634	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	102
Satoshi Kodaira	$6,000	$7,200	$11,000	0.04	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	144
Jason Day	$9,000	$10,800	$17,300	2.743	1.644	4.323	0.047	0.308	0.021	-0.182	-0.195	0	49
Andrew Landry	$6,100	$7,500	$11,400	0.702	0	0	-0.406	0	0	0.355	0	-0.01	138
Marc Leishman	$7,700	$9,300	$15,700	1.969	1.712	15.69	0.196	-0.3	-0.074	0.29	-0.225	-0.022	60
Paul Casey	$7,900	$9,700	$15,300	2.354	0.362	0	-0.006	0.044	-0.697	-0.014	0.49	-0.037	65
Jon Rahm	$9,800	$10,500	$18,500	2.465	2.432	20.323	0	-0.058	-0.554	0.095	0.296	-0.044	36
Troy Merritt	$6,300	$7,200	$11,400	0.715	0.582	1.19	0.081	-0.011	-0.626	0.241	-0.026	-0.068	137
Brandt Snedeker	$7,400	$8,900	$14,300	1.707	1.887	0	-0.255	0.27	-0.514	-0.152	0.288	-0.073	98
Kevin Tway	$6,500	$7,800	$12,400	1.133	0	0	-0.276	0.083	-0.296	-0.011	0.112	-0.078	126
Francesco Molinari	$8,400	$10,200	$15,700	2.025	0.241	0	0.224	-0.447	-0.068	0.355	-0.505	-0.088	82
Kevin Na	$6,900	$8,500	$13,100	1.677	0.39	0	-0.012	-0.408	0.227	-0.087	-0.209	-0.098	107
Keegan Bradley	$7,300	$8,300	$14,300	1.668	0.824	5.823	-0.082	-0.518	-0.315	0.238	0.118	-0.112	105
Justin Thomas	$10,500	$11,200	$18,200	2.4	1.556	8.323	0.232	-0.551	-0.284	-0.044	0.071	-0.115	58
Ian Poulter	$6,800	$8,600	$13,500	1.562	0.878	0	0.22	-0.015	-0.819	-0.151	0.027	-0.147	125
Bubba Watson	$7,800	$9,800	$15,200	1.793	0.846	7.323	-0.343	-0.11	-0.393	-0.466	0.428	-0.177	91
Ted Potter, Jr.	$6,000	$7,600	$11,200	0.748	-0.266	0	-0.121	-0.301	0	0.214	-0.793	-0.2	145
Bryson DeChambeau	$8,700	$10,900	$17,200	1.801	0.265	7.823	0.284	-0.288	-0.968	0.051	-0.189	-0.222	88
Brooks Koepka	$10,200	$11,600	$18,200	2.325	-0.768	0	-0.679	-0.35	-0.343	0.322	-0.205	-0.251	81