Black Desert Championship RunDown

By RickRunGood

October 9, 2024

Fore, Please:

I’ve been hunkered down at my desk a lot lately. The fall is the time of year where I get to work on a lot of projects that have been building up. It’s data cleansing and fixing bugs and making improvements. You may have noticed some of those things already while many others are being done behind the scenes. I try to practice “kaizen” which is a Japanese philosophy of “always improving” or “small incremental improvements lead to big changes”. I hope you see that with everything that I do.

Content & Contests

Finally! The Wednesday Live Chat is back to its regular time — 3:00 PM ET. I will see you there or I’ll see you another time.
We didn’t fill the Listener League last week so they shrunk it on us! Still a decent chance there will be an overlay but make sure you get your spot now. There’s only 150 entries available but the full purse is guaranteed.

Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Rounds of the Week

1) +10.58: Tyrrell Hatton | R3 of the Alfred Dunhill
2) +9.17: David Skinns | R1 of the Sanderson
3) +8.58: Shubhankar Sharman | R3 of the Alfred Dunhill
4) +8.12: Tommy Gainey | R3 of KFT Championship
5) +7.71: Daniel Hiller | R1 of Alfred Dunhill

Hatton’s round was the 4th best round of 2024 across any tour in my database. The 10 SG mark has only been broken eight times this year.

Forks Up!

Kevin Yu is not a good putter. That shouldn’t be a surprise to you. He’s one of the up-and-coming stars of #TeamNoPutt. During his short career, he’s only gained strokes putting 14 times. He’s only gained 4+ strokes putting twice in his career. So when he picked up 8.679 (!!) strokes on the greens in Jackson last week — that was easily the best putting performance of his career.

Kevin basically had his best tournament putting performance each day at the Sanderson Farms Championship. He averaged 2.17 strokes gained per round. He’s only had seven events where he’s gained that much over four days. Even more impressive, he looked confident with the flatstick late in his Sunday round. He poured in a 15-footer on the 72nd hole to join the playoff that never left the middle of the cup. Same result from 5’11” in the playoff with a victory on the line. Stones!

Unidentified Flying Objects

For the first time since 1963, the PGA TOUR is returning to Utah. This is a gorgeous area and I’ve been lucky enough to play some golf here. With the red rocks and lava fields, it feels like you’re playing golf on Mars. (Bonus Pic)

Hole 7 at Black Desert Resort

For handicapping purposes, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

1) Elevation
2) Keeping The Ball In Play

Heat + Elevation =

The resort sits at roughly 3,100 feet above sea level which is significant and one of the highest marks on the PGA TOUR. For reference, Las Vegas is at roughly 2,000 feet and Jackson, Mississippi is just 280 feet above sea level.

That means golfers will play a 3.5% difference in yardage for elevation alone, before factoring in temperature, wind, or any other factor. So while the scorecard says 7,371 yards, it’ll play closer to 7,100 yards in “actual distance”. I’m certainly not worried about this course being too long for anyone in the field.

Temperatures are expected in the 90s for the week which means the ball is going to be flyingggg around Black Desert Resort.

Strokes Gained: High Altitude

Above are the best players in this week’s field when playing at elevation. I defined this as rounds played at 2,000’ and higher. I also only included players with at least 20 career rounds in those conditions.

If you find any of this valuable, I suggest checking out RickRunGood.com which is my golf data website designed for fantasy golf & golf betting. It contains nearly endless data from the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour, LIV Golf, Korn Ferry Tour and much more.

Keeping The Ball In Play

First and foremost, this is a resort. This course opened just 18 months ago and it was not designed to be a stiff test for the world’s best players. It was designed for me, to get a vacation round in before hitting the spa and laying by the pool.

The fairways average around 30 yards but there’s usually another 10 yards of “rough” on both sides that will hardly be a deterrent. That’s ~50 yards of safe landing zones.

The caveat, of course, is that you don’t want to be 51 yards wide because you’ll be hard pressed to find your ball. It’s similar to desert golf where there’s a hard line of demarcation between completely fine and completely dead. The lava rocks are unforgiving and a significant penalty for those who find them.

Light & Dark Modes

You’ll notice that the Cheat Sheet, Custom Model and Golfer Profiles look a little bit different. They are all on a “new platform” that should play better on a variety of screen sizes. They are also on a much better foundation to be able to expand and make more updates for the future.

Different Between Light/Dark Mode on The Cheat Sheet

One of the most requested updates was a light/dark mode so you’ll see that available on almost every tool.

There’s a variety of other updates in the data and within the tools. If you see anything that looks off, please let me know! Having a second set of eyes is always helpful.

The British Are Coming

I am a sucker for Harry Hall. Yes, he’s a Vegas guy. Yes, he has a great accent. Yes, he’s a friend of a friend (I’ve never met him). But let’s put all that aside.

Harry is one of the best putters on the planet. He’s gained at least one stroke putting in nine straight starts. Even better news, his tee-to-green play has made some serious improvements in 2024. He’s gained strokes from tee-to-green in six of his last eight with five of those starts earning him at least 3.8 strokes in the category.

He’s been playing all fall, teeing it up on the DP World Tour where he finished T12 at the British Masters, missed the cut at the Irish Open, and earned a T18 at the BMW PGA Championship. Now he goes to a course that will feel a lot like Las Vegas and will play to his strengths.

Double Dinger Action

I’ve been putting together Home Run parlays during the MLB playoffs and let me tell you — it’s a blast. Maybe not the most profitable thing ever, but definitely a fun sweat and a good reason to watch the games. Here’s what I’m going with tonight if you want to tail.