Searching for a Specialist: Sony Open
Welcome back for another edition of Searching for a Specialist. If you read last week then you know easy was the theme of the week. The course lived up to those expectations as Jordan Spieth ripped it apart the to the tune of 30-under-par on the week. Not a bad showing by our specialist of the week.
It was a good week for our specialists in general. The final list of six specialists finished 1st-2nd-3rd-10th-15th-18th.
For our search this week we will look at performance on short courses, par 70 courses, bermudagrass greens, and finish up with some fairway statistics.
Editor’s Note: Haven’t heard? We’ve got DraftKings PGA incentives, which include full projections and expert picks from Notorious, as well as top plays from 2014 FSWA Golf Writer of the Year, Gibbathy, and a weekly course breakdown! Find out more about our incentives offerings here!
Short Courses
This week’s course is Waialae Country Club. It’s one of the oldest tracks on the PGA TOUR circuit. Classical tracks just don’t have the length of most modern venues. This stat has the greatest correlation with success at the Sony Open.
The top 10 Short Course specialists are listed below:
Jimmy Walker (2.464 sg:short vs. 1.02 sg:total)
Graeme McDowell (2.24 sg:short vs. 0.932 sg:total)
Brian Gay (0.362 sg:short vs. -0.427 sg:total)
Gary Woodland (1.428 sg:short vs. 0.642 sg:total)
Webb Simpson (1.464 sg:short vs. 0.691 sg:total)
Pat Perez (0.917 sg:short vs. 0.248 sg:total)
Stuart Appleby (0.692 sg:short vs. 0.054 sg:total)
Peter Malnati (0.415 sg:short vs. -0.17 sg:total)
Harris English (1.364 sg:short vs. 0.795 sg:total)
Scott Piercy (0.91 sg:short vs. 0.347 sg:total)
The biggest surprise here for gamers will be Will Wilcox. In 30 rounds on short courses, he’s lost a total of 3.810 strokes to the field. The caveat is that one of those starts was his T8 at the 2014 Sony Open. He owns one other top 20 on a short course (T17; 2016 Mayakoba) but the eight other starts all yielded finishes outside the top 60. Ouch. This brings up our first chance to differentiate because Wilcox will be heavily owned on DraftKings this week.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 59
Bermudagrass Greens
Statistics based on putting green surfaces are not easy to come by, but don’t worry we have them here. Much like last week’s Plantation Course at Kapalua, this week’s venue is known for its “grainy bermuda.”
If you look at a list of Sony Open course horses and compare that to a list of top bermudagrass performers, you will notice a ton of overlap at the top of those lists. Don’t ignore this stat category this week!
Of the 59 golfers remaining, there are 35 that qualify as bermuda specialists. Here are the 10 highest rated:
Pat Perez (1.025 sg:bermuda vs. 0.248 sg:total)
Fabian Gomez (0.622 sg:bermuda vs. -0.084 sg:total)
Luke Donald (0.99 sg:bermuda vs. 0.399 sg:total)
Ryan Palmer (1.475 sg:bermuda vs. 0.93 sg:total)
Stuart Appleby (0.59 sg:bermuda vs. 0.054 sg:total)
Blake Adams (-0.043 sg:bermuda vs. -0.572 sg:total)
Gary Woodland (1.137 sg:bermuda vs. 0.642 sg:total)
Rory Sabbatini (0.638 sg:bermuda vs. 0.15 sg:total)
Roberto Castro (0.152 sg:bermuda vs. -0.324 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.041 sg:bermuda vs. -0.421 sg:total)
The 11th golfer on this list is none other than Jimmy Walker himself. It’s important to note the list is ordered by the differential on bermuda versus their baseline of expected strokes gained. That is why someone like Blake Adams shows up even though he’s still worse than the field average on bermuda (he is even worse when playing on other putting surfaces).
The curious case in this section is Tony Finau. The bomber has established himself as a bentgrass specialist, but is how does he fare on bermuda? Over his last 11 starts on bermuda greens, he has three top 25s while the other eight finishes have landed outside the top 50. A top 25 ratio of 3-for-11 is not terrible, but it looks much worse when you compare it to his 15-for-23 ratio on non-bermuda courses over that same period of time. This is our second chance to think outside the box and pull off an educated fade of Finau.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 35
Par 70 Courses
We’ve talked about short course and bermuda greens but par 70 performance rounds out the trio of most important stat angles this week.
There are six golfers remaining that really stand out in this area when comparing it to their overall expected strokes gained on all courses. Here they are:
Pat Perez (0.95 sg:par70 vs. 0.248 sg:total)
Camilo Villegas (0.797 sg:par70 vs. 0.186 sg:total)
Chris Kirk (1.184 sg:par70 vs. 0.596 sg:total)
Stuart Appleby (0.564 sg:par70 vs. 0.054 sg:total)
Rory Sabbatini (0.629 sg:par70 vs. 0.15 sg:total)
Luke Donald (0.815 sg:par70 vs. 0.399 sg:total)
If you’ve been paying close enough attention at this point, you’ll notice two names have made all three lists, Pat Perez and Stuart Appleby. Both look like decent options this week.
On the flip side, the biggest loser here is Alex Cejka. Over his last 11 starts on par 70 courses, 10 of them have gone for 60th place or worse, with just one top 25 (2015 St. Jude Classic).
GOLFERS REMAINING: 23
Difficult Fairways
The fairways at Waialae CC are some of the hardest to hit on TOUR. The firmness and narrowness lead to fairway-hit percentage that generally hover around 50 percent. Yikes! You better pick golfers that are good out of the rough or golfers that can really stripe it down every fairway.
Of the 23 remaining golfers, three of them really stand out in terms of outperforming expectations on difficult fairways. They are Ben Crane, Rory Sabbatini, and Camilo Villegas. All three play at least half-a-stroke better per round when faced with difficult-to-hit fairways.
Check out the full specialist table at the bottom of this article to see what golfers got thrown off the specialists search at this point.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 13
Baseline Performance
On full-field weeks like this one, we have the luxury of excluding golfers based on their overall skill level. The criteria to look at is Expected Srokes Gained:Total. This is how well a golfer performs versus the field, since the start of the 2013-14 season. Looking at the current list of 13 potential specialists, we can remove Ben Crane, Mark Wilson, Fabian Gomez, and Mark Hubbard since they are all below field average historically.
These golfers still provide value since they are still expected to outperform their week-to-week output. However, it’s sometimes better to take a great golfer that doesn’t fit the course well rather than taking a scrub sleeper that will outperform their normal scores but still won’t finish that high.
The Specialists
Pat Perez
Rory Sabbatini
Zac Blair
Ryan Palmer
Camilo Villegas
Chris Kirk
Harris English
Seung-Yul Noh
Boo Weekley
The list above is also the final ranking for our specialists. That means we can crown Pat Perez as our specialist of the week!
The shaggy-haired (ex?) hot-head is 12-for-14 at this venue, including eight top 25s. He recently said on his instagram account that he “Will never take playing #Waialae in January for granted.” The stats check out and his attitude entering the week checks out. Lock and load!
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.