Searching for a Specialist: WGC-Cadillac
Welcome back to another edition of Searching for a Specialist.
Like always, let’s review last week. On scale of 1-to-5 turds, five being the worst, I give last week four turds, easily. Five of the top six specialists made it through the cut, but only one finished inside the top 30. Then you get to the bottom eight specialists, and seven of them missed the cut! I knew I should have narrowed that list down a little more, but hindsight is 20/20.
We can’t let one bad week get us down. It’s time to rebound!
Our search this week will look at performance on Difficult Greens, Difficult-to-Hit Fairways, and finish up by looking at Long Course performance.
The final results will be a little surprising, but first let’s go through the steps to see how we get to that final list…
Difficult-to-Hit Greens
The first angle we look at is greens in regulation. This course, Trump National Doral, has some of the hardest greens to hit on TOUR.
There are typically two types of golfers who excel at these courses: GIR Machines and/or great scramblers. The GIR Machines are generally great with their approach game, which is key around here. If you’re not great with your irons, you better be able to get up-and-down to save par (Patrick Reed/Kuchar approach).
The top 10 Hard GIR specialists in the field are:
Henrik Stenson (2.065 sg:hard GIR vs. 1.474 sg:total)
Bubba Watson (2.165 sg:hard GIR vs. 1.604 sg:total)
Charley Hoffman (1.154 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.608 sg:total)
Adam Scott (1.918 sg:hard GIR vs. 1.452 sg:total)
Charl Schwartzel (1.23 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.768 sg:total)
Patrick Reed (1.194 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.787 sg:total)
Paul Casey (1.324 sg:hard GIR vs. 0.979 sg:total)
Brooks Koepka (1.384 sg:hard GIR vs. 1.096 sg:total)
Steven Bowditch (0.106 sg:hard GIR vs. -0.151 sg:total)
Phil Mickelson (1.293 sg:hard GIR vs. 1.038 sg:total)
Right off the bat you’ll notice this list correlates highly with past success here at the WGC-Cadillac. Scott has top 25s in his last five here. Bubba sports top 20s in his last four. Charl has top 25s in five of his last six here. Then you have Reed and Phil who are both past winners at this event.
On the flip side, Oosthuizen is an interesting case. He finished sixth here last year, but has finished below field average in four of his last seven starts on Hard GIR courses. Last year was his first top 10 here in nine tries and he has potential jet lag to deal with entering the week off a win in Australia. Could be a good place to pivot off the South African.
At this stage we also lose Spieth, Rory, Matsuyama, DJ, J.B. Holmes, Sergio, and Justin Rose. A lot of firepower, but they aren’t the specialist we want this week.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 21
Difficult-to-Hit Fairways
We just talked about how hard the greens are to hit, and some of that has to do with how hard the fairways are to hit at this venue.
Since 2010 the field average just under 53 percent of fairways hit, the 4th-hardest non-major on TOUR. Those numbers did not fluctuate following the renovation before 2014.
Hard-to-hit fairways are usually good for bombers because if everyone is missing fairways, you might as well be 40 yards farther in rough, making your approach shot that much easier.
Of the 21 golfers left in our search, these are the top 10 Hard Fairways specialists:
Bubba Watson (2.433 sg:hard fairways vs. 1.604 sg:total)
Shane Lowry (1.764 sg:hard fairways vs. 0.946 sg:total)
Billy Horschel (1.017 sg:hard fairways vs. 0.599 sg:total)
Charl Schwartzel (1.083 sg:hard fairways vs. 0.768 sg:total)
Harris English (1.119 sg:hard fairways vs. 0.808 sg:total)
Henrik Stenson (1.719 sg:hard fairways vs. 1.474 sg:total)
Charley Hoffman (0.813 sg:hard fairways vs. 0.608 sg:total)
Paul Casey (1.04 sg:hard fairways vs. 0.979 sg:total)
Phil Mickelson (1.077 sg:hard fairways vs. 1.038 sg:total)
Matt Kuchar (1.325 sg:hard fairways vs. 1.325 sg:total)
So far the following golfers have made the top-10 lists for both angles: Bubba, Charl, Stenson, Charley Hoffman, Paul Casey, and Phil Mickelson.
We talked about bombers doing well on difficult fairways but Fowler is surprisingly poor on these type of tracks. In his last 15 events on difficult fairways he’s finished below field average (strokes gained) in 6-of-15. That’s not fade-worthy, but it’s worth noting especially with so many elite options at the top.
Matt Kuchar is a massive 0.0005 strokes better on these course! Fractions of a fraction, but at least he’s on the positive side!
GOLFERS REMAINING: 10
Long Courses
The final angle of the week is long courses. We are considering any course over 7,400 yards to be lengthy.
These courses generally favor the bombers, but it also showcases great (and consistent) iron play. It’s a big advantage to bomb it out there off the tee, but you still have to hit the approach shots from there.
Of our remaining 10 golfers, we lose out on the following three:
Billy Horschel (0.554 sg:long vs. 0.599 sg:total)
Paul Casey (0.767 sg:long vs. 0.979 sg:total)
Bubba Watson (1.227 sg:long vs. 1.604 sg:total)
Bubba is worse on long courses!? Pretty crazy, but like we mentioned, you have to be tight with your approach game on lengthy tracks, and Bubba doesn’t always have that part of the game working. Obviously his track record here is on-point, so don’t get any big ideas with a full fade. Just consider looking elsewhere if you need a tiebreaker on elite plays this week.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 7
The Specialists
Charley Hoffman
Henrik Stenson
Shane Lowry
Charl Schwartzel
Phil Mickelson
Harris English
Matt Kuchar
I said at the beginning this was going to be a little strange and it is… Charley Hoffman is our specialist this week!
Most weeks, the specialist passes the eye test with ease. Not so much this week as Hoffman enters with just one top 40 on the season in six starts. What about his course history? A pair of top 25s in four tries, a T13 in 2009 as his best. I guess that would make him a GPP-Specialist this week.
Everyone else on this list does pass the eye test, so that’s promising. If you don’t trust Charley at the top then consider the rest of the guys as they should make for great plays this week.
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.