Searching for a Specialist: Shell Houston Open
Welcome back, folks. Our search for a specialist continues this week in Humble, Texas.
Before we look at the Shell Houston Open, we have to spotlight he specialist we found last week in Tony Finau. It’s great to have our specialist perform like that, pulling off the win down in Puerto Rico. MacKenzie, Goosen, and Jacobson showed up as well. Noh and Curran were duds.
This week’s search will look at performance on Long Courses, Par 72 tracks, Bentgrass greens, and close out with Windy Rounds.
Here we go…
Long Courses
The Golf Club of Houston rewards long hitters, and part of that is due to its length. It stretches out past 7,400 yards which puts it in my long course bucket.
Golfers don’t have to be bombers to excel on lengthy venues, but they will need to be more precise with the long irons and/or scrambling.
The Top 10 Long Course Specialists are:
Scott Pinckney (0.884 sg:long vs. -0.155 sg:total)
Erik Compton (1.004 sg:long vs. -0.027 sg:total)
Carlos Ortiz (0.779 sg:long vs. -0.062 sg:total)
Whee Kim (0.374 sg:long vs. -0.277 sg:total)
Matt Jones (0.997 sg:long vs. 0.352 sg:total)
Chesson Hadley (0.233 sg:long vs. -0.31 sg:total)
Jason Kokrak (1.097 sg:long vs. 0.581 sg:total)
Charley Hoffman (1.144 sg:long vs. 0.638 sg:total)
Kyle Reifers (0.636 sg:long vs. 0.131 sg:total)
Jason Gore (0.542 sg:long vs. 0.068 sg:total)
This list is pretty ugly, but it’s just the beginning.
Brian Harman is one name we want to avoid here. In his last 17 starts on long courses, he’s lost strokes to the field in 13 of those. No need to get cute there.
Derek Fathauer is another name I want to avoid. He’s lost strokes to the field in five of his last eight starts on long courses. One was last week at the Puerto Rico Open when the field strength was absurdly low. He’s riding a hot streak, but now is most likely the time to jump off.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 69
Par 72 Courses
For the third week in a row, we have a par 72 course. That means birdie and eagle makers get an up-arrow next to their name.
Golfers that can capitalize on the par 5s usually succeed on these courses. You can have a look at par 5 scoring, or you can just look at the top par 72 specialists to see who does well here.
The top 10 remaining par 72 specialists:
Erik Compton (0.733 sg:par72 vs. -0.027 sg:total)
Scott Pinckney (0.322 sg:par72 vs. -0.155 sg:total)
Chad Collins (0.325 sg:par72 vs. -0.141 sg:total)
Kyle Reifers (0.591 sg:par72 vs. 0.131 sg:total)
Derek Fathauer (0.474 sg:par72 vs. 0.027 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.145 sg:par72 vs. -0.264 sg:total)
Jonas Blixt (0.421 sg:par72 vs. 0.029 sg:total)
Phil Mickelson (1.443 sg:par72 vs. 1.09 sg:total)
Chesson Hadley (0.035 sg:par72 vs. -0.31 sg:total)
Tony Finau (1.084 sg:par72 vs. 0.748 sg:total)
That puts Scott Pinckney, Erik Compton, and Chesson Hadley as the only golfers to appear on both top-10 lists so far.
Reifers is an interesting case because his par 72 performance is great as you can see above, but his bentgrass performance is pretty awful. He does sport good course history. This could be a case of two positive angles trumping one bad one. Or this could be the week he decides to flop.
We lost Henrik Stenson at this stage, but his -0.239 SGT difference on par 72s still puts him at +1.253. It goes to show that being elite and being a specialist is very hard to do.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 33
Bentgrass Greens
We didn’t look at the green surface stats last week because Seashore Paspalum is so rare. Rare equals small samples. Not what we want.
This week at GC of Houston, we have bermuda greens, but they heavily overseed them with bentgrass and ryegrass in preparation of this week’s event. They want to get the course as close to Augusta National as possible, which use bentgrass surfaces.
For anyone unfamiliar with overseeding, it’s basically when the turf crew puts extra grass seed on the greens (in this case bent & rye) which will then grow in unison with the bermuda. It’s usually done during the winter as certain grasses can’t survive the cold as well as others.
Looking at the correlation of each grass type to success at this particular event, we see that bentgrass grades out as #1, which means it plays as the predominant grass type this week.
The Top 10 Bentgrass Specialists that remain are:
Tony Finau (1.144 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.748 sg:total)
Steven Bowditch (0.037 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.34 sg:total)
Adam Hadwin (0.55 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.224 sg:total)
Scott Pinckney (0.136 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.155 sg:total)
Whee Kim (-0.008 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.277 sg:total)
Bernd Wiesberger (0.579 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.312 sg:total)
Cameron Tringale (0.64 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.398 sg:total)
Hunter Mahan (0.594 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.388 sg:total)
Stewart Cink (0.427 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.3 sg:total)
Hudson Swafford (0.225 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.139 sg:total)
Pinckney shows his face for a third straight list! Very interesting.
There are rumors on Twitter that the Secret Tour Pro is Bernd Wiesberger. Those rumors are clearly false, but his stats on bentgrass are true. In 26 PGA TOUR rounds on bentgrass, he’s gained two or more strokes in eight of those (~30%). Anything over 25 percent is good in that regard. Then add in the fact that all eight of those starts came in majors or WGC events. This week’s field is a step down, making him a great play despite him not having enough wind rounds, which we’ll get to in a second.
Brendan Steele is another one I want to point out. He will be very popular this week, but not for me. In his last 21 starts on bentgrass, he’s lost strokes to the field in 12 of them. That’s kind of a coin flip, but he’ll be owned as if he sports a 75 percent chance of making the cut. He’s boom-or-bust, probably a good spot to pivot.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 17
Windy Rounds
Whenever we head to Texas, it’s important to look at wind stats. Currently, there are gusts forecasted for 30 mph+ on Friday. It’s starting to look like Saturday could get windy as well.
Scott Piercy put the wind situation on this course best when he said, “ If it’s blowing 10 miles an hour, it plays probably close to 20 yards worth of distance.” That means wind impact is stronger than most weeks.
Having wind specialists in our corner should help our cause.
The Top 5 Wind Specialists that remain are:
Patrick Reed (1.428 sg:wind vs. 0.768 sg:total)
Retief Goosen (0.554 sg:wind vs. 0.099 sg:total)
Jordan Spieth (2.175 sg:wind vs. 1.728 sg:total)
Stewart Cink (0.742 sg:wind vs. 0.3 sg:total)
Hunter Mahan (0.723 sg:wind vs. 0.388 sg:total)
Surprise, surprise, three of the five top wind players remaining are Texans (Reed, Spieth, Mahan). Growing up and playing in these windy conditions is a big advantage.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 12
Baseline Performance
This is the stage where we cut out the fat. Some golfers are too bad to begin with. Specialist status won’t help their cause enough to be worth the risk.
If we look at the baseline strokes gained of at least 0.250, then we can expect our specialists to gain at least one stroke over the field during the week.
Using that criteria, we can remove the following golfers:
Adam Hadwin
Hudson Swafford
Retief Goosen
Scott Pinckney
Whee Kim
We can consider these golfers GPP-only plays. We saw Pinckney show up a lot in the lists above so I would consider him a very solid option. Adam Hadwin just missed out on specialist status since his SG:Total is +0.224, just short of the cutoff.
The Specialists
Jordan Spieth
Patrick Reed
Hunter Mahan
Stewart Cink
Cameron Tringale
David Hearn
Lee Westwood
Holy buckets, we have a Jordan Spieth specialist sighting!
The Golden Child starts with a baseline strokes gained of +1.728, so we know it’s a big deal if he meets all the criteria for specialist status. Don’t be scared off by his hefty price tag.
Patrick Reed is a Houston resident, so I like that narrative to go along with the stats which suggest he should thrive at GC of Houston.
Mahan also lives relatively nearby (Dallas) and he’s proven his worth at this course (2012 Win & four other top 15s in 10 starts).
Cink is at a point in his career where top-heavy finishes are rare, so that would be quite a treat if he popped this week. It’s more likely that he goes on to make the cut and finish T40.
Hearn has really struggled with the anchored-putter ban, but finished T20 in his last start (Arnold Palmer Invitational). Maybe it’s time we get back on the Canadian who used to provide steady results.
Check out the full Specialist Table for more detailed data. You can sort and filter to your heart’s desire. Best of luck in all your matchups this week.