Searching for a Specialist: Wyndham Championship

by Josh Culp (futureoffantasy) Last Updated 2015-08-22 18:16:45

Welcome back to the hunt!

We can count week one as a success. Adam Scott was our only missed-cut casualty. Our narrowed down specialist list included the winner, the runner-up, as well as two others inside the top 10.

Before we get into the Wyndham Championship, I want to thank everyone for the warm RotoGrinders welcome, last week. It feels good to be on board!

I also don’t want anyone to confuse the term specialist with overall great plays. This search for a specialist is all about finding golfers that can exceed expectations. There are plenty of golfers each week that can meet value on DFS sites just by doing what they are supposed to do.

Without further ado, let’s have a look at some angles for this week’s Wyndham Championship.

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! Expert Consensus Rankings and a Weekly Course Analysis are also included. Find out more about our incentives offerings here!

Par 70 Courses

Last week we looked at par 72 specialists to kick off the elimination process. This week, Sedgefield Country Club plays to a par of 70, but the importance of this scorecard angle remains the same.

Cutting out golfers that perform the same or worse than expected on par 70s will basically cut the field in half. What we are doing is looking at strokes gained on par 70 courses (sg:par70) and comparing that number to each golfer’s respective strokes gained (sg:total) over the last two years.

These first 10 golfers have the largest differential and then I will list out all other golfers that meet the criteria:

Eric Axley (0.171 sg:par70 vs. -0.898 sg:total)
Brandt Snedeker (1.729 sg:par70 vs. 0.743 sg:total)
Daniel Berger (1.374 sg:par70 vs. 0.457 sg:total)
Derek Ernst (-0.235 sg:par70 vs. -1.136 sg:total)
Kyle Stanley (-0.109 sg:par70 vs. -0.91 sg:total)
Billy Horschel (1.48 sg:par70 vs. 0.699 sg:total)
Tyrone Van Aswegen (0.312 sg:par70 vs. -0.44 sg:total)
Heath Slocum (0.078 sg:par70 vs. -0.559 sg:total)
Camilo Villegas (0.756 sg:par70 vs. 0.145 sg:total)
Tim Wilkinson (0.204 sg:par70 vs. -0.348 sg:total)

Everyone else that performs better on par 70s: Martin Laird, J.J. Henry, Jhonattan Vegas, Michael Putnam, David Toms, Brice Garnett, Adam Scott, Mark Hubbard, George McNeill, Nick Watney, Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano, Ken Duke, Scott Langley, Ben Crane, Brendon de Jonge, Carl Pettersson, Tim Clark, Billy Hurley III, Brian Harman, Boo Weekley, Ernie Els, D.A. Points, Colt Knost, Aaron Baddeley, Charlie Beljan, Will Wilcox, Tom Hoge, Sung Joon Park, Stewart Cink, Chris Stroud, Harris English, Zac Blair, Jeff Overton, Martin Kaymer, Andrew Svoboda, Robert Allenby, Patrick Rodgers, Trevor Immelman, Russell Knox, Davis Love III, Jason Dufner, Chad Campbell, Paul Casey, John Peterson, Luke Donald, Greg Chalmers, Mark Wilson, Michael Thompson, John Huh, Scott Brown, Ben Martin, Brooks Koepka, Jim Renner, Charl Schwartzel, Robert Garrigus, Bill Haas, Josh Teater, William McGirt, Spencer Levin, Hudson Swafford, Jon Curran, Adam Hadwin.

A few big names are already off the big board. That includes Hideki Matsuyama, Justin Thomas, Ryan Moore, Brendon Todd, and even Webb Simpson. This doesn’t mean these golfers can’t succeed this week. In fact, you could argue that Webb deserves a cushion this week due to his local connection. However, we are not here to manipulate the data. We now have a list of 72 golfers.

Bermudagrass Greens

Sedgefield CC received a full green surface makeover prior to the 2012 running of the Wyndham. They made the switch from bentgrass to bermuda. These greens are now real speedy! Not the fastest on TOUR, but many players say they are right behind Augusta National and Muirfield Village in terms of quickness.

Of the 72 golfers left on our list, these are the ones that perform better on bermudagrass greens (sg:bermuda).

Andrew Svoboda (0.307 sg:bermuda vs. -0.391 sg:total)
Zac Blair (0.723 sg:bermuda vs. 0.119 sg:total)
Daniel Berger (1.003 sg:bermuda vs. 0.457 sg:total)
Ben Martin (0.877 sg:bermuda vs. 0.387 sg:total)
John Peterson (0.323 sg:bermuda vs. -0.134 sg:total)

Other bermuda specialists include: Mark Hubbard, Luke Donald, Davis Love III, Harris English, Russell Knox, Michael Thompson, Jhonattan Vegas, Robert Allenby, D.A. Points, Ben Crane, George McNeill, Bill Haas, Boo Weekley, Jason Dufner, John Huh, Spencer Levin, Brendon de Jonge, Josh Teater, Stewart Cink, Brice Garnett, Eric Axley, Camilo Villegas, Mark Wilson, Martin Laird, David Toms, Sung Joon Park, Heath Slocum, Scott Brown, Tom Hoge, Greg Chalmers, Will Wilcox.

Just like the section above, we lose some heavy-hitters through this process. Most notable are Brooks Koepka, Adam Scott, and
Brandt Snedeker.

All of them just narrowly miss out on being bermuda-positive, but we’re sticking with the raw numbers here in our search for a specialist. Carl Pettersson also drops off the list, another local that should be given heavy consideration this week, but not a true
specialist.

Weak Fields

Strength of Field can be an important factor when it comes to prognostication. Looking at the OWGR.com website, we can see the Wyndham Championship listed as a 220 strength of field.

Targeting the lower percentiles of tournaments, I have done the math and set 250 or lower as the threshold into weak field territory.

Of the 36 golfers on our list, here are the six golfers that don’t perform as well against weak fields (sg:weak):

Robert Allenby (-0.342 sg:weak vs. -0.326 sg:total)
Russell Knox (0.739 sg:weak vs. 0.758 sg:total)
Michael Thompson (-0.156 sg:weak vs. -0.119 sg:total)
Harris English (0.597 sg:weak vs. 0.686 sg:total)
Daniel Berger (0.328 sg:weak vs. 0.457 sg:total)
Josh Teater (-0.415 sg:weak vs. -0.239 sg:total)

As you can tell from the numbers above, most of these golfers are very close to qualifying, but close is not good enough in our search.

In addition, Jason Dufner and Luke Donald also drop out due to their lack of sample size against this inferior competition over the past two seasons. Duff Daddy finished T7 here in 2012 so we shouldn’t write him completely off, but his attempted return to normalcy post-divorce makes it easy to drop him down our list.

Easy Courses

After stage three, we are left with 28 golfers. Now let’s look at performance on easy courses (sg:easy). To qualify, the field average for a course needs to be three-fourths of a shot under-par or lower.

You may remember last week’s criteria for hard courses was a full shot over-par or tougher. I’m a man of the people and listened to commenters last week. I’ve eased up on this difficulty restriction just a tad. I will now use a field average of 0.75 strokes over/under par (per round) to evaluate course difficulty.

Sedgefield Country Club has played to a field average of 0.858 strokes under-par over the past five runnings, so let’s have a look at who we can eliminate based on easy course performance:

John Peterson (-0.172 sg:easy vs. -0.134 sg:total)
Martin Laird (0.081 sg:easy vs. 0.142 sg:total)
Tom Hoge (0.092 sg:easy vs. 0.264 sg:total)
Heath Slocum (-0.852 sg:easy vs. -0.559 sg:total)
George McNeill (0.079 sg:easy vs. 0.66 sg:total)

We’re now down to 23 remaining golfers. A few of these exclusions are really nitpicking, but like I’ve already said, we are looking for pure specialists.

80/20 Rule of Recent Form

There are many applications to the 80/20 rule in life, and they are always fun to see. In this case, we are looking at recent form statistics.

More specifically, let’s look at the five starts leading up to a win. Historically, we can see that more than 80% of PGA TOUR winners had at least one top 20 finish in their five starts leading up to the win. See where the 80/20 comes into play, now?

Any trend that cuts out non-winners with this kind of success is fine by me. Of the 23 potential specialists remaining, only six meet this requirement.

We are left with this list of specialists:

David Toms
Bill Haas
Boo Weekley
Scott Brown
Stewart Cink
Will Wilcox

The Specialist

After narrowing our list down to six specialists, it’s now time to crown the top specialist of the week. That man is Bill Haas this week. The Wake Forest product passes all five stages of the specialty test and also has the local-knowledge factor on his side. A deadly combination!

Please use the table below to filter and sort to your heart’s desire.

Golfer	Par 70	Bermuda	Weak Fields	Easy Courses	Top 20 in Last 5	Specialist Rating
Kyle Stanley	0.801	-0.117	1.1	0.94	Y	0.68
Webb Simpson	-0.023	0.16	1.11	1.08	N	0.58
Eric Axley	1.069	0.12	0.654	0.31	N	0.54
Bill Haas	0.086	0.187	1.031	0.8	Y	0.53
David Toms	0.499	0.042	0.73	0.8	Y	0.52
Brandt Snedeker	0.986	-0.1	0.22	0.96	Y	0.52
Justin Leonard	-0.014	0.36	0.48	1.1	N	0.48
Daniel Berger	0.917	0.546	-0.13	0.58	N	0.48
Ben Martin	0.149	0.49	0.156	0.92	N	0.43
Andrew Svoboda	0.248	0.698	0.283	0.48	N	0.43
Mark Hubbard	0.439	0.447	0.478	0.26	N	0.41
Steve Wheatcroft	0	0.56	0.28	0.76	Y	0.40
Derek Ernst	0.9	-0.186	0.43	0.43	N	0.39
Alex Cejka	-0.268	0.3	0.69	0.85	N	0.39
Ben Crane	0.417	0.214	0.701	0.22	N	0.39
Davis Love III	0.216	0.414	0.431	0.49	N	0.39
Matt Every	-0.226	0.9	0.86	0	N	0.38
Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano	0.432	-0.279	0.76	0.58	N	0.37
J.J. Henry	0.532	-0.095	0.51	0.54	Y	0.37
Jeff Overton	0.259	-0.009	0.47	0.76	N	0.37
Blayne Barber	0	0.5	0.71	0.25	Y	0.37
Carl Pettersson	0.353	-0.004	0.52	0.56	Y	0.36
Boo Weekley	0.339	0.185	0.731	0.16	Y	0.35
Bill Lunde	0	0.31	0.45	0.65	N	0.35
Jonas Blixt	-0.164	-0.07	0.96	0.66	Y	0.35
Zac Blair	0.268	0.604	0.311	0.14	N	0.33
D.A. Points	0.323	0.228	0.295	0.46	N	0.33
Camilo Villegas	0.611	0.115	0.392	0.18	N	0.32
Jhonattan Vegas	0.525	0.242	0.12	0.41	N	0.32
Tim Clark	0.352	-0.129	0.51	0.56	N	0.32
Whee Kim	0	0.54	0.05	0.61	Y	0.30
Brendon de Jonge	0.408	0.133	0.479	0.18	N	0.30
Chad Collins	-0.073	0.36	0.22	0.69	Y	0.30
Brice Garnett	0.453	0.121	0.514	0.03	N	0.28
Bryce Molder	-0.203	0.16	0.53	0.6	Y	0.27
Michael Putnam	0.525	-0.255	0.38	0.43	Y	0.27
Sung Joon Park	0.296	0.042	0.372	0.37	N	0.27
Nick Watney	0.437	-0.179	0.04	0.76	N	0.26
Brian Davis	-0.025	0.19	0.25	0.6	Y	0.25
Ryan Armour	0	0	0.29	0.71	N	0.25
Spencer Levin	0.056	0.136	0.515	0.29	N	0.25
Oscar Fraustro	0	-0.14	0.96	0.17	N	0.25
Colt Knost	0.321	-0.016	0.12	0.55	Y	0.24
Brendon Todd	-0.003	-0.1	0.73	0.34	Y	0.24
Scott Brown	0.16	0.021	0.603	0.18	Y	0.24
Roger Sloan	0	-0.11	0.43	0.62	Y	0.24
William McGirt	0.072	-0.06	0.75	0.14	N	0.23
John Peterson	0.204	0.457	0.265	-0.04	N	0.22
Jerry Kelly	-0.233	0.25	0.3	0.56	Y	0.22
Tyrone Van Aswegen	0.753	-0.258	0.29	0.09	Y	0.22
Andres Gonzales	0	-0.11	0.68	0.3	Y	0.22
Johnson Wagner	-0.403	-0.34	0.47	1.13	Y	0.21
Brian Stuard	-0.352	0.27	0.24	0.69	Y	0.21
Brian Harman	0.348	-0.103	0.45	0.15	Y	0.21
Roberto Castro	-0.195	0.35	0.45	0.23	N	0.21
Greg Chalmers	0.187	0.007	0.308	0.33	N	0.21
Erik Compton	-0.625	0.69	-0.07	0.83	Y	0.21
Charlie Beljan	0.302	-0.083	0.13	0.44	N	0.20
Max Homa	0	0.3	0.22	0.24	N	0.19
Ken Duke	0.421	-0.117	0.41	0.03	Y	0.19
Jonathan Randolph	0	0.3	0.22	0.22	N	0.19
Will Wilcox	0.301	0.003	0.218	0.2	Y	0.18
Stewart Cink	0.291	0.123	0.173	0.12	Y	0.18
John Huh	0.166	0.15	0.123	0.25	N	0.17
Scott Langley	0.418	-0.199	0.24	0.23	Y	0.17
Jason Gore	0	0.43	0.29	-0.07	Y	0.16
Luke Donald	0.189	0.433	0	0	Y	0.16
Martin Laird	0.539	0.058	0.084	-0.06	Y	0.16
Paul Casey	0.205	-0.14	0.26	0.29	Y	0.15
Russell Knox	0.223	0.276	-0.019	0.13	Y	0.15
Nicholas Thompson	-0.04	0.43	-0.11	0.32	N	0.15
Jonathan Byrd	-0.362	0.21	0.31	0.44	Y	0.15
John Merrick	-0.097	0.5	0.19	0	N	0.15
Sam Saunders	0	-0.11	0.47	0.23	N	0.15
Hudson Swafford	0.042	-0.046	0.31	0.28	N	0.15
Heath Slocum	0.637	0.039	0.167	-0.29	N	0.14
Billy Horschel	0.781	-0.055	0.09	-0.28	N	0.13
Scott Pinckney	-0.572	0.47	0.45	0.18	Y	0.13
Tom Hoge	0.297	0.019	0.378	-0.17	Y	0.13
Harris English	0.272	0.282	-0.089	0.05	N	0.13
Charles Howell III	-0.04	-0.04	0.17	0.41	Y	0.13
Mark Wilson	0.183	0.11	0.025	0.17	N	0.12
Chris Stroud	0.283	-0.435	0.36	0.27	Y	0.12
Andrew Loupe	-0.308	0.12	0.09	0.54	Y	0.11
Adam Scott	0.453	-0.041	0	0	Y	0.10
Nick Taylor	0	0.1	0.37	-0.06	N	0.10
Jason Dufner	0.215	0.168	0	0	Y	0.10
Bo Van Pelt	-0.103	0.31	0.01	0.15	N	0.09
Jim Herman	-0.452	0.09	0.31	0.39	N	0.08
Daniel Summerhays	-0.166	0.02	0.2	0.28	Y	0.08
Robert Garrigus	0.099	-0.446	0.31	0.37	Y	0.08
Jim Renner	0.133	-0.298	0.44	0.04	N	0.08
Sean O’Hair	-0.266	0.16	0.13	0.28	Y	0.08
Ryan Moore	-0.347	-0.1	0.79	-0.05	N	0.07
Tim Wilkinson	0.552	-0.358	0.36	-0.31	N	0.06
Martin Flores	-0.126	0.46	-0.09	0	Y	0.06
Luke Guthrie	-0.064	-0.12	0.21	0.17	Y	0.05
Cameron Percy	0	-0.02	0.44	-0.24	Y	0.05
Ricky Barnes	-0.027	0.09	0.14	-0.04	Y	0.04
Aaron Baddeley	0.312	-0.153	0.04	-0.04	Y	0.04
George McNeill	0.437	0.201	0.053	-0.58	N	0.03
Byron Smith	0	0	0.15	-0.04	N	0.03
Brooks Koepka	0.146	-0.037	0.16	-0.18	Y	0.02
Jason Kokrak	-0.159	0.38	0.07	-0.21	Y	0.02
Morgan Hoffmann	-0.101	0.25	-0.26	0.18	Y	0.02
Josh Teater	0.086	0.13	-0.176	0.02	N	0.02
Zack Sucher	0	0	0.07	-0.02	Y	0.01
Carlos Sainz Jr.	0	0.3	0.14	-0.41	N	0.01
Martin Kaymer	0.252	-0.237	0	0	Y	0.00
Jon Curran	0.017	-0.408	0.32	0.07	Y	0.00
Chad Campbell	0.208	-0.349	0.2	-0.07	Y	0.00
Ryo Ishikawa	-0.804	0.04	0.36	0.34	Y	-0.02
Michael Thompson	0.176	0.273	-0.037	-0.5	N	-0.02
Andrew Putnam	0	-0.36	0.31	-0.05	N	-0.03
Chesson Hadley	-0.318	0.09	0.08	0.02	N	-0.03
Tom Gillis	0	0	0.42	-0.56	Y	-0.04
Carlos Ortiz	0	0.04	-0.03	-0.2	Y	-0.05
Chez Reavie	0	0	-0.06	-0.19	Y	-0.06
Trevor Immelman	0.224	-0.062	0.2	-0.65	N	-0.07
Lucas Glover	-0.329	0.49	-0.15	-0.31	N	-0.07
Robert Allenby	0.239	0.229	-0.017	-0.75	N	-0.07
Ernie Els	0.323	-0.408	0	-0.22	N	-0.08
Adam Hadwin	0.003	-0.976	0.16	0.49	Y	-0.08
Vijay Singh	-0.333	-0.62	0.34	0.18	Y	-0.11
Billy Hurley III	0.35	-0.224	0.05	-0.61	N	-0.11
Derek Fathauer	-0.362	-0.19	0.01	-0.11	Y	-0.16
K.J. Choi	-0.239	0.28	-0.71	0	N	-0.17
Charl Schwartzel	0.131	-0.955	0	0	Y	-0.21
Branden Grace	0	-0.85	0	0	Y	-0.21
Hideki Matsuyama	-0.619	-0.34	0	0	Y	-0.24
Patrick Rodgers	0.229	0	-0.45	-0.79	N	-0.25
Vaughn Taylor	0	0	-0.57	-0.51	Y	-0.27
Alex Prugh	-0.863	-0.28	-0.11	0.13	N	-0.28
Justin Thomas	-1.279	0.12	-0.32	0.22	Y	-0.31
Kyle Reifers	-1.252	-0.31	-0.07	0	Y	-0.41
Ben Curtis	-0.601	-0.86	-0.06	-0.83	N	-0.59