COURSE: TPC River Highlands
This is a very short 6,841 yard par 70 course that Pete Dye redesigned in the early 1980’s. This will be an easy course with a lot of scoring. Past winners and their score include:
Chez Reavie -17 in 2019
Bubba Watson -17 in 2018
Jordan Speith / Daniel Berger -12 in 2017
Russell Knox -14 in 2016
Bubba Watson -16 in 2015
Kevin Streelman -15 in 2014
Green Type: Bentgrass
Sand Bunkers: 119
Difficulty Ranking: 41st out of 51.
STROKES GAIN STATS:
When breaking down a course I want to see which one of the strokes gained stats are the most effective. I go back and look at the “Historical Event Data” and then sort by the SG: Putting, ATG, APP, OTT and then T2G and see how the rankings did vs. the cut and vs. the final finish positions.
When looking at the data from 2019 the SG: ATG and SG: OTT were the least two correlated stats. SG: ATG had 7 of the top 13 players miss the cut. We move on and look at SG: OTT and 5 of the top 7 missed the cut and 14 of the top 23 also missed. SG: Approach continues to be a consistent marker for finding solid golfers no matter what course you are playing on. 11 of the top 13 made the cut and 18 of the top 23 if you want to dive deeper. This just means when I’m looking at golfers I’m going to put more weight on the SG: App over SG: ATG or SG: OTT. You can even dive into specific proximities but we will get to that later.
Now 13 of the top 14 in SG: Putting made the cut and putting is always going to be a key factor but there is a bit more variance. For example, last week when you saw Sergio Garcia at the bottom of the leaderboard he was -4.2 SG: Putting, that just means he was really unlucky. With all of his other stats crushing the field he was an easy one to pick in round 2 to have a solid day. Someone can get hot with the putter one day or for a couple days but it always comes back to their norm. You can also dive deeper and look at the greens if they are POA, Bent or Bermuda and then see how a specific golfer does on that type of green.
19 of the top 21 golfers in SG: T2G made the cut and this is a stat that I really like this week and one that I will focus on when picking golfers. The one guy who missed the cut in 2019 was Straka who led SG: T2G at +2.93 but his SG: Putting is -2.95 and he finished at -1. The winner from 2019 was Chez Reavie at -17 and he was #2 in SG: T2G at +2.86.
Recap: SG: Approach & SG: T2G are the top two focuses for this week!
APPROACH STATS 150-175 YARDS – 25% of approach shots
200+ YARDS – 23% of approach shots
125-150 YARDS – 20% of approach shots
The above 3 categories make up for just shy of 70% of all approach shots on the course. If you want to dive into specific proximity ranges these are the ones I would focus on.
HOLE BREAKDOWN & BIRDIE %:
12 of the 18 holes fall into the Par 4 category with a breakdown of:
(7) Par 4: 400-450, (3) Par 4: 450-500, (2) Par 4: < 350 yards
Only 2 of the holes are Par 5s with one in the 500-500 and one 550-600 range.
The last 4 holes are all Par 3s and each one is a different range.
The two Par 5 holes have a 36% and 39% birdie rate which are the highest two holes on the course. The 3rd highest birdie hole on the course is a short Par 4 of only 289ish yards and has a 34% birdie rate. After this you only have two holes that are in the 20-25% birdie range and they are another short Par 4 of 351 yards and a really shot 165 yard Par 3.
KEY FOCUS STATS:
Par 4 Scoring, Par 5 Scoring, Proximity 150-175, Proximity 200+, SG: Approach, SG: T2G.
IN DEPTH FOCUS STATS:
SG: Putting on Bentgreens, Avg strokes gained by difficulty: EASY
Make sure to check back on Tuesday for our PGA CheatSheet and our breakdown article of our favorite golfers for the week!
Haze