Searching for a Specialist: WGC-HSBC
Welcome back to another edition of Searching for a Specialist. Last week’s specialist list yielded three top-10 finishes, but I think we can do even better this week.
There is a saying that I originally learned from my sixth grade basketball coach trying to teach the fundamentals of free throws, K.I.S.S. and that stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. It applies to most things in life, not just free throws.
This week we will keep things simple and look at three angles. First will be output against strong fields, then head over to see who outperforms on bentgrass greens and finish up with par 72 specialists.
Strong Field Performance
The process here is to look at overall performance since the start of the 2013-14 season and compare that to performance in tournaments that feature a strong strength of field.
We look at OWGR strength of field rating and consider anything over 400 to be a strong field.
Here are all 14 strong field specialists in this week’s field:
Thorbjorn Olesen (0.677 sg:strong vs. -0.131 sg:total)
David Lingmerth (0.649 sg:strong vs. 0.04 sg:total)
Rickie Fowler (1.429 sg:strong vs. 1.075 sg:total)
Daniel Berger (0.766 sg:strong vs. 0.478 sg:total)
Louis Oosthuizen (0.876 sg:strong vs. 0.725 sg:total)
Marc Warren (0.985 sg:strong vs. 0.845 sg:total)
Danny Willett (0.694 sg:strong vs. 0.587 sg:total)
Henrik Stenson (1.528 sg:strong vs. 1.453 sg:total)
Adam Scott (1.547 sg:strong vs. 1.482 sg:total)
Martin Kaymer (0.607 sg:strong vs. 0.551 sg:total)
Thongchai Jaidee (-0.776 sg:strong vs. -0.827 sg:total)
Branden Grace (0.404 sg:strong vs. 0.374 sg:total)
Lee Westwood (0.731 sg:strong vs. 0.705 sg:total)
Russell Knox (0.801 sg:strong vs. 0.788 sg:total)
This brings on our initial wave of cuts. We immediately lose last week’s winner, Justin Thomas as he’s nearly half a shot worse per round when teeing it up against fierce competition.
Spieth also drops off. It’s funny to see him on this list, considering his stellar record in major championships. A) It goes to show how dominate he is on a week-to-week basis and B) It shows how poor he’s performed in strong field events other than majors.
Quite a few other starts get lost in this initial cut. This is the weekly disclaimer that says they aren’t bad plays just because they aren’t a specialist. It just means they aren’t an ideal fit for the course and or tournaments.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 14
Bentgrass Greens
Performance based on green type is one of my favorites on a weekly basis. Bentgrass specialists in particular are not usually the greatest of putters, in a traditional sense.
For that reason, we usually see a lot of great ball-strikers appear on this list because the great putters are brought back to the field when rolling on bentgrass greens.
Looking at bentgrass specialists for the week, only two of our remaining 14 candidates don’t make the cut. Here they are:
Russell Knox ( 0.66 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.788 sg:total )
Daniel Berger ( 0.298 sg:bentgrass vs. 0.478 sg:total )
As you can see, both golfers still have a strokes gained higher than the field average when it comes to bentgrass greens. They are just better when putting on other surfaces. You can definitely consider these two, but say goodbye to Fort Knox and Berger Time for now.
GOLFERS REMAINING: 12
Par 72 Courses
Anytime a scorecard features a par 72 my ears perk up because it’s an easy way to narrow down the field.
Performance on par 72 tracks is very corollary. If you can tame one beast you can generally tame another. Feasting on par 5s is a necessity, but that doesn’t always mean we should target bombers.
Having a look at our 12 remaining golfers, here are the six that don’t quite get it done on par 72 venues:
Martin Kaymer (0.521 sg:par72 vs. 0.551 sg:total)
Danny Willett (0.522 sg:par72 vs. 0.587 sg:total)
Rickie Fowler (0.835 sg:par72 vs. 1.075 sg:total)
Henrik Stenson (1.15 sg:par72 vs. 1.453 sg:total)
Marc Warren (0.504 sg:par72 vs. 0.845 sg:total)
Branden Grace (0.02 sg:par72 vs. 0.374 sg:total)
Having a look at these eliminated golfers, we can see they can really play, regardless of the course layout. Don’t ignore this list of golfers. They’ve made it this far, they just couldn’t finish the specialist gauntlet.
The Specialist
We’ve narrowed down the field to just six specialists. They include the following names:
Thorbjorn Olesen
David Lingmerth
Adam Scott
Thongchai Jaidee
Louis Oosthuizen
Lee Westwood
Take about an interesting list of specialists!
We have two golfers that don’t play the majority of their golf on the PGA TOUR (Olesen, Jaidee). Then there is the golfer that backs out of his fair share of events due to a bad back (Louis). We also have two golfers that have reached #1 in the Official World Golf Ranking (Westwood, Scott).
After we average up all the angles, it’s clear that our specialist for the week is Thorbjorn Olesen.
The Great Dane won overseas as recently as five weeks ago, taking home the hardware at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. That’s some nice form fuel to add to the fire. Fire him up in some GPPs!
The full Specialist Table is available for you to sort and filter to your heart’s desire. Best of luck in all your matchups this week.