Searching for a Specialist: Valspar Championship
Welcome back to another specialist search.
Like always, let’s review last week. We rebounded nicely after a poor Honda Classic as all the specialists finished T35 or better. There were no lineup killers and Charley Hoffman led the way with a basket full of birdies to easily pay off his bargain-bin salary.
Now let’s keep that momentum rolling as we continue in Florida.
Our search this week will look at performance on Less-than-Driver Courses, Bermuda Greens, and finish up by looking at performance in windy conditions.
Let’s get to it.
Less-than-Driver Courses
The first angle this week has quickly become one of my favorites. We are looking at historical performance on courses where the average driving distance is 280 yards or less.
Basically, this takes the bomber’s down a peg as they lose some of their normal edge from strokes gained:driving. It puts an emphasis on iron play and/or short game.
The top 10 less-than-driver specialists in the field are:
Matt Every (0.647 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.491 sg:total)
Bill Haas (1.843 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.829 sg:total)
Cameron Smith (1.05 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.264 sg:total)
Stuart Appleby (0.877 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.102 sg:total)
Blayne Barber (0.696 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.05 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.416 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.277 sg:total)
Mark Hubbard (0.565 sg:less-than-driver vs. -0.055 sg:total)
Cameron Tringale (1.018 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.422 sg:total)
Sean O’Hair (0.696 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.123 sg:total)
John Senden (1.004 sg:less-than-driver vs. 0.457 sg:total)
Talk about greens in regulation! This bunch is great at landing greens and/or putting the lights out. None of them are particularly long off the tee.
Cameron Smith is the first interesting case. He doesn’t have enough rounds to qualify for bermuda or wind specialist status, but he’s 3/4 of a stroke better in the 21 rounds he’s played on less-than-driver courses. It makes perfect sense because he looks like a child still and ranks 147th in driving distance. As he matures, his distance should only increase, but for now this is the perfect venue.
Blayne Barber is case #2. Like Smith, he’s also 3/4 of a stroke better on less-than-driver courses. He’s also from Florida so he knows how to golf on these grass types. He’s still earning his stripes on the PGA TOUR and doesn’t have enough wind rounds, but he should not be ignored this week.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 69
Bermuda Greens
We’ve cut the field in half pretty much with our less-than-driver angle. Now we focus on the green surfaces.
Since last year’s Valspar, Copperhead Course saw a complete overhaul of the greens. They were replaced with new TifEagle bermuda. They were already a form of bermuda, but now they are more pure. There may be some issues with the greens this week and maybe even next year as the TOUR pros notice the tiniest details and will find a way to complain about the greens being too immature.
That being said, here are the top 10 bermuda specialists that remain in our search:
Matt Every (0.514 sg:bermuda vs. -0.491 sg:total)
Blayne Barber (0.576 sg:bermuda vs. -0.05 sg:total)
Jason Gore (0.522 sg:bermuda vs. 0.017 sg:total)
Ryan Palmer (1.466 sg:bermuda vs. 0.994 sg:total)
Luke Donald (0.865 sg:bermuda vs. 0.43 sg:total)
Erik Compton (0.389 sg:bermuda vs. -0.032 sg:total)
Lucas Glover (0.144 sg:bermuda vs. -0.277 sg:total)
Stuart Appleby (0.518 sg:bermuda vs. 0.102 sg:total)
Roberto Castro (0.124 sg:bermuda vs. -0.23 sg:total)
John Huh (0.427 sg:bermuda vs. 0.079 sg:total)
So far we’ve had Glover, Appleby, Every, and Barber make both of our top-10 lists.
All four of these golfers come with extreme risk but the numbers are telling us they could be worth a shot this week in GPPs.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 40
Wind Performance
The final angle of the week is performance when the wind picks up. I was debating between this angle, par 71 performance, and Florida performance.
Par 71 is too random, especially with this week’s course having four par 5s, unlike most par 71s.
Florida performance is great, but most of the field hasn’t accumulated enough rounds since the start of 2013-14 to qualify. Win performance is the next best thing since the wind almost always picks up when we visit Florida in the Spring.
Looking at rounds played in wind speeds of 14 mph or greater, these are the top 10 wind specialists:
Jason Gore (1.024 sg:wind vs. 0.017 sg:total)
John Huh (1.057 sg:wind vs. 0.079 sg:total)
Luke Donald (1.344 sg:wind vs. 0.43 sg:total)
Chesson Hadley (0.603 sg:wind vs. -0.297 sg:total)
Camilo Villegas (0.862 sg:wind vs. 0.174 sg:total)
George McNeill (1.134 sg:wind vs. 0.454 sg:total)
Jeff Overton (0.813 sg:wind vs. 0.215 sg:total)
Robert Allenby (-0.342 sg:wind vs. -0.776 sg:total)
Cameron Tringale (0.795 sg:wind vs. 0.422 sg:total)
David Toms (0.724 sg:wind vs. 0.381 sg:total)
Holy Jason Gore! He’s posted some great rounds in the wind over the past few seasons, but three of his 22 great rounds have been posted in the Puerto Rico Open. This week’s field will be way stronger than what the PRO has to offer. Don’t get too excited about this number for Gore.
John Huh on the other hand, is exciting here. Over his last 30 rounds in the wind, he’s beat the field average by two or more strokes in 10 of those rounds. Looking at the opposite side of the spectrum, none of those 30 rounds were -2 SG or worse. Huh could become a big factor this week if the wind plays it’s part like forecasted.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 22
Baseline Performance
Last week we could skip this step because the field was so stacked, and all of the specialists also had great baseline strokes gained.
Not so much this week. Using our normal criteria of 0.250 strokes gained:total or worse, we can eliminate 13 of our remaining specialist hopefuls:
Scott Brown
Jeff Overton
Camilo Villegas
Seung-Yul Noh
Sean O’Hair
John Huh
Jason Gore
Erik Compton
Roberto Castro
Whee Kim
Chesson Hadley
Padraig Harrington
Robert Allenby
The Specialists
Luke Donald
George McNeill
Cameron Tringale
Bill Haas
Daniel Berger
Matt Kuchar
David Toms
Chris Kirk
Kevin Na
Would ya look at that!? Luke Donald finds his way into the specialist circle again! He is our guy this week.
This list may look familiar if you’ve been reading this article over the past month. Four of these nine specialists were also specialists at the Honda Classic. They kind of let us down big-time at PGA National, so it’s redemption week for many of these specialists (Donald, McNeill, Berger, Kirk).
Check out the full Specialist Table for more detailed data. I included a few extra categories in the spreadsheet to use as tiebreakers. You can sort and filter to your heart’s desire. Best of luck in all your matchups this week.