By RickRunGood

We’ve Entered Course Rotation Season

Each of the next three PGA TOUR event will feature multiple courses – for a total of eight courses in those three weeks. There will be unfair rotations, courses without ShotLink data and some general overall frustrations. But guess what? Someone will win. Sportsbooks and fantasy sites will pay out.

We’ll get to the course(s) in a second, but can we start with this field?! The American Express is boasting four of the top ten players in the world and 12 of the top 30. That includes Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffele, Tom Kim, Justin Thomas, Tony Finau, Rickie Fowler, Will Zalatoris, etc etc etc. This is a fairly stout field that has routinely struggled to get the bigger names to show up in Palm Springs.

Back to the courses. There are three in play this week, hosted by the Pete Dye Stadium Course (Formally known as PGA West or PGA West Stadium Course in most instances). Each golfer will play one round at the Stadium Course, one round at La Quinta Country Club, and one round at the Nicklaus Tournament Course – before the cut and will return to the Stadium Course for the final round.

Stadium Course: Par 72 | 7,187 Yards – 69.260 Scoring Avg Last Year
La Quinta Country Club: Par 72 | 7,060 Yards – 69.584
Nicklaus Tournament Course: Par 72 | 7,147 Yards – 68.724

All three courses feature a poa annua overseed this time of year while LQCC and PDSC feature greens that are well smaller than TOUR Average.

If you like pain and suffering, be sure to check out the 6th hole on the Stadium Course. It’s a 230 yard par-3, surrounded by water, that played as the most difficult hole last year.

Eyes On The Stadium Course

For statistical purposes, I’m going to focus on the Stadium Course. It’s where half of the rounds will be played and also the only course with ShotLink data.

The stat profile for the Stadium Course is similar to many PGA TOUR courses … with a wrinkle. It has a very low Missed Fairway Penalty (+0.07) which ranks as the 5th smallest penalty on the schedule. The rough is dormant this year and might be 2”. You can often miss fairways without losing much to the field – with one wrinkle. You’ll need to avoid the water that lurks on seven different holes. That’s the way to start piling up strokes in a hurry. There are five holes with water in play off-the-tee and water is the main feature on three of the four par-3s.

After they get off-the-tee, you’ll see plenty of shots from 100 yards and in – 41% of all approach shots last year came from that range.

That’s a similar metric to what we saw at Kapalua but this is a completely different field. Here are the best players from 100 yards and in, split between two proximities: 50-75 yards and 75-100 yards.

Putting Contest?

If you ask Jon Rahm about this event, he will certainly tell you that this is a “piece of shit, fucking set-up … putting contest”. And he’s not wrong! The average winning score at this event over the last five years is 25-under par. However, the Correlation Model doesn’t specifically show SG Putting as a big separator for the Stadium Course.

Success at the Stadium Course is actually more aligned with those who putt well on greens with a poa overseed – yes, these stats exist, crazy world. Below is the list of golfers who have played the most rounds on such greens in the last two years. It’s a small sample size for everyone, but plenty of crossover between these guys and ones you’d expect to have success this week.

Speaking of shootouts, there’s very little defense lurking in Palm Springs this week. The most resistance might be 6.5 hour rounds with amateurs in tow. Below is a list of all 16 players in this field who have gained at least 1 stroke per round in Easy Scoring Conditions since the last few years – minimum 40 rounds.

This week is admittedly a crapshoot to try and predict. There’s a reason that some of the longest longshots have won at this event. In fact, there’s only four events on the PGA TOUR schedule where the winner’s average odds have been 100-1 or greater. The American Express is the fourth longest, with an average winner coming at 129-1.

1. Course Rotation
2. Big Field
3. Early in the Year
4. Lots of Newcomers

There’s just so many reasons why chaos reigns supreme at The AMEX – so embrace the chaos this week.

Good luck!