Searching for a Specialist: Travelers

by Josh Culp (futureoffantasy) Last Updated 2016-08-04 12:18:51

Welcome back to another week of specialist searching.

Last week we saw Kevin Chappell disappoint as the top specialist while Stenson exceeded his lofty baseline expectations as a secondary specialist. There is nothing I hate more than the top specialist missing the cut, so let’s bounce back this week!

This week we will look at Par 70 Courses, Bentgrass Greens, Short Courses, and finish up with performance on Pete Dye Designs.

Here we go…

Par 70 Courses

This week’s course is TPC River Highlands, which is a par 70 layout.

That means just two par 5s and plenty of par 4s to keep golfers busy. We want to find golfers that can grind out par 4s and not rely on par-5 scoring to save their rounds.

The Top 10 Par 70 Specialists are:

Greg Owen (0.471 sg:par70 vs. -0.467 sg:total)
Branden Grace (1.436 sg:par70 vs. 0.71 sg:total)
Chez Reavie (0.997 sg:par70 vs. 0.276 sg:total)
Derek Ernst (-0.307 sg:par70 vs. -1.013 sg:total)
Brian Gay (0.101 sg:par70 vs. -0.503 sg:total)
Camilo Villegas (0.658 sg:par70 vs. 0.071 sg:total)
Heath Slocum (-0.083 sg:par70 vs. -0.604 sg:total)
Rory Sabbatini (0.351 sg:par70 vs. -0.163 sg:total)
Robert Allenby (-0.36 sg:par70 vs. -0.849 sg:total)
Tyrone Van Aswegen (0.231 sg:par70 vs. -0.226 sg:total)

This list is pretty ugly which reminds us of the strength of field we are returning to after we just had the strongest field in the history of the OWGR last week at Baltusrol.

Branden Grace is obviously the star of this list. He’s grabbed top 25s in six of his last nine starts on par 70s.

I really wouldn’t want to touch anyone else on this top-10 list due to their low baseline strokes gained. Maybe Chez Reavie, but that’s about it.

A few golfers on the negative side of this angle include Hunter Mahan, Lucas Glover, Johnson Wagner, and Jonas Blixt. They have combined to collect four top 25s over their last 70 starts on par 70 layouts. Ouch!

GOLFERS REMAINING: 63

Bentgrass Greens

Like we often see in the Northeast, this week’s course features bentgrass greens.

Any golfers that grew up in the area may be at an advantage here, but it also helps level the playing field in general, on the greens. With bermuda we often see great bermuda putters shine, but bentgrass kind of brings them back to pack, putting an emphasis on tee-to-green play over putting.

The Top 10 Bentgrass Specialists remaining:

Steve Marino (0.261 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.318 sg:total)
Chad Campbell (0.95 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.422 sg:total)
Bud Cauley (0.721 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.193 sg:total)
Robert Garrigus (0.243 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.077 sg:total)
Billy Hurley III (0.451 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.135 sg:total)
Russell Henley (0.511 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.212 sg:total)
Kyle Stanley (0.067 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.214 sg:total)
Tyrone Van Aswegen (0.021 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.226 sg:total)
Tony Finau (0.911 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.665 sg:total)
Angel Cabrera (-0.111 sg:bentgrass vs. -0.334 sg:total)
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After an ugly top-10 list for par 70 specialists, this is starting too look much better. Golfers like Campbell, Cauley, Henley, and Finau all ping my radar this week and a few of these other bentgrass specialists may be worth a look as well.

Finau is the most interesting for me. In 22 starts on bentgrass he’s collected a top 25 in 12 of them. That’s 55 percent! As long as you round up. His baseline top-25 rate is around 42% so we see quite a boost when he hits the bentgrass greens.

Someone who can’t figure out bentgrass is Lucas Glover. He’s already been eliminated due to par 70 performance but it’s worth mentioning that he hasn’t found a top 25 over his last 21 starts on bentgrass. No bueno.

Jason Kokrak is another interesting name. He sees an increase in his top-25 rate when it comes to short courses and Pete Dye Designs but a big decline when it comes to bentgrass and par 70s. This is one of those weeks where we just have to wait-and-see which angle wins out, but I would not take too many chances on Kokrak this week since his top-25 rate on bentgrass is just 10 percent, way lower than his baseline of 34%.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 29

Short Courses

We have 29 golfers left is our search for a specialists, but there are more angles to digest. Since TPC River Highlands is under 7,100 yards I classify it as a short course.

We’ve had a lot of medium-to-long courses lately so this will be quite a bit different in terms of looking at recent form.

Of the 29 remaining possible specialists, these are the top 10 Short Course Specialists:

Shawn Stefani (0.85 sg:short vs. 0.246 sg:total)
Kyle Stanley (0.3 sg:short vs. -0.214 sg:total)
Brendon de Jonge (0.682 sg:short vs. 0.188 sg:total)
Kevin Chappell (1.119 sg:short vs. 0.666 sg:total)
Brian Harman (0.829 sg:short vs. 0.381 sg:total)
Brendon Todd (0.677 sg:short vs. 0.244 sg:total)
Steven Bowditch (-0.228 sg:short vs. -0.659 sg:total)
Matt Kuchar (1.747 sg:short vs. 1.357 sg:total)
Hudson Swafford (0.401 sg:short vs. 0.138 sg:total)
Tony Finau (0.925 sg:short vs. 0.665 sg:total)

Shawn Stefani is a bit of a surprise here. Looking at the entire field, his top-25 rate on short courses is 16th best (10 start minimum) so he might be worth a punt play.

Steven Bowditch also sees a nice boost on short courses (and he told gamers to send it on Twitter!). At the same time, even his boost over his baseline performance is in the negative. It will be pretty surprising if he finds a way to crack the top 30 this week.

Who do we want to avoid based on short-course performance? Well, Andrew Loupe, Derek Ernst, Vijay Singh, Nick Taylor, Camilo Villegas, Sam Saunders, and Adam Hadwin have played 86 events on short layouts since 2014, and combined they have ZERO top 25s in those starts.

GOLFERS REMAINING: 16

Pete Dye Designs

The last filter we want our specialists to sift through is performance on Pete Dye courses.

Dye is known for leveling the playing field off the tee and forcing golfers to excel with their irons and /or wedges. This varies quite a bit from the week-to-week PGA TOUR stops which generally favors the bomb-and-gouge approach.

This is an important angle to look at this week, and we are finally getting a sample size which allows us to view it since 2014. Of the remaining 16 golfers, we can eliminate the following due to small sample size or poor performance on Pete Dye tracks:

Shawn Stefani
Kyle Stanley
Brendon Todd
Steven Bowditch
Hudson Swafford
Tony Finau
Heath Slocum
Billy Hurley III
Chez Reavie
Padraig Harrington
J.J. Henry
Brendon de Jonge

GOLFERS REMAINING: 4

Baseline Performance

If we pull out our handy Form Filter, we can eliminate any golfers that are losing strokes to the field over the last 10 weeks of stroke-play.

The only golfer we lose here in Tim Wilkinson as he hasn’t found a top 40 over his last seven starts, missing the cut in four of them. I’d consider Silky Wilky to be a limited GPP-option exclusively.

The Specialists

Matt Kuchar
Kevin Chappell
Brian Harman

Our specialist this week is Matt Kuchar!

It’s always fun to see a golfer with this kind of cachet grab the specialist honors. He sports the fourth-best baseline strokes gained in the field. You could view it to be the second-best baseline if you consider Rahm (sample size) and Furyk (playing back from injury).

The angle that sealed the deal for Kuchar was Pete Dye Designs. Over his last eight starts on Dye Designs, he’s playing nearly a stroke per round better than his baseline, grabbing top 25s in six of those starts.

This second specialist, Kevin Chappell, wasted no time getting back into the specialist circle after disappointing last week. However, it makes sense considering the core of being a par 70, bentgrass course is the same as last week. While Baltusrol was rather lengthy, Chappell will benefit this week from a much shorter layout which suits his game.

Lastly we have Brian Harman. The Georgia Bulldog has three career podium finishes. One of them came here last year. The other was at the Wyndham (a par 70 at just 7,128 yards) and lastly is the John Deere Classic which is another TPC course with bentgrass greens. Should be a great play as he can make birdies in a hurry!

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.

Nick Taylor
Sean O’Hair
Ricky Barnes

Barnes is the only golfer on this list that I’ve seen mentioned a lot this week. He does sport some decent form but he’s finished outside the top 40 in five of his seven starts here at TPC River Highlands, which is where he’s likely going to finish again this week.

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 25 rounds to qualify for each angle.

The SG:Total column is a baseline performance measure (since 2013-14),

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.