Tournament Previews - RickRunGood | Fantasy Golf & Betting Data

Hero World Challenge RunDown

by RickRunGood | Dec 3, 2024 | Tournament Previews | 0 comments

📢 Fore, Please:

Hi all — the game of golf is truly global this week with three solid fields/events taking place in every corner of the globe. Of course, the Hero World Challenge will be headlined by Scottie Scheffler in the Bahamas but wait, there’s more!

Max Homa, Will Zalatoris, Mackenzie Hughes and others will battle in South Africa at the Nedbank Golf Challenge.

Finally, Tyrrell Hatton leads 40+ LIV golfers in Saudi Arabia for an Asian Tour event held in Riyadh.

I’m going to do my best to provide information and visuals for all three of these events. If you like me writing about more tours, let me know at the bottom of this email.

Thanks for everything
Rick

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☹️ Weaker Than Most?

The field for the Hero World Challenge feels weak, no? Or weaker than previous years. I’m typing these words on Monday morning so I haven’t seen the final OWGR rating yet. Below I’ll post the last five years of those ratings and fill in 2024 when it’s available.

SOF+ (100 is tour average)
2024:
2023: 114
2022: 91
2021: 210
2020: 136
2019: 174

However, even without those numbers — only three of the Top 10 players in the world are here. Noticeably absent are Viktor Hovland (2x winner), Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa (played each of the last three years), Jordan Spieth (injury).

I’m assuming that most guys just want a rest considering how many events were played in 2024. This is really just a way for me to remind myself that Scottie is going to win.

✂️ No Cut, No Problem

The TOUR schedule has been increasingly adding no-cut events over the past few years and, to absolutely no one’s surprise, it helps the best players in the world.

Since the start of 2020, there are three golfers in this field who have earned at least 1 stroke per round in no-cut events — Thomas, Scheffler and Cantlay.

Note: there are actually 11 players in the world who have accomplished the feat but the other eight are playing somewhere else this week or not playing at all.

As with most things in 2024, all roads lead back to Scottie. He has won (won!) four of his last six no-cut events. Dating back to the 2023 BMW Championship, Scottie has played 11 no-cut events and has finished T6 or better in all but one! He has five victories. Madness.

👋 Pavon’s Coaching Change

Rarely do we get such forthright information from players regarding, well … anything. So when we get it, we should run with it.

Matthieu Pavon@matthieupavon

After six years of collaboration with @jamiegoughgolf , I have decided to take a new direction in my career.
I sincerely want to thank Jamie for everything we achieved together. His support and guidance have helped shape me into the player and person I am today.

7:17 PM • Dec 1, 2024

61 Likes 4 Retweets

3 Replies

Matthieu Pavon took to social media to announce that he has split from swing coach Jamie Gough and will be joining Mark Blackburn. The book of business continues to grow for Blackburn who is currently coaching (or has coached) Max Homa, Justin Rose, Collin Morikawa and a variety of other top end players.

Pavon’s year started out as well as you could have asked for with a T7 at the Sony, win at the Farmers and T3 at Pebble Beach. After that, there wasn’t much to get excited for and probably the reason he ended up making this switch.

I’ve always enjoyed Pavon’s game and think he has real upside across a variety of tours. We will keep a close eye on him in the short-term.

👇 Looking Down On The Board

The favorite (+1000) to win the Nedbank Golf Challenge is none other than Corey Conners (what could possibly go wrong?).

Corey has been hibernating since the Presidents Cup where he played all five sessions earning two points for the Internationals.

I have an extensive database of historical odds and I couldn’t find a time where Conners was this short to win, or really even sniffed the +1000 area. The shortest that I’ve recorded for him was +1500 at the 2022 Valero Texas Open. He’s been +1700 five times and he’s been +2000 or shorter a total of ten times.

In those events, his best finish is a T7 which accounts for his only Top 10. History has not been kind to Conners when he’s on top of the betting board.

3️⃣ Tyrrell’s Take at the Trifecta

I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that Tyrrell Hatton has been a Top 5 player in the world this year. The metrics would confirm that as Hatton ranks 4th behind Scheffler, Xander, and Rory is raw strokes gained for the year. He’s picked up +1.79/rd in 86 rounds.

His success hasn’t been limited to any one circuit either. He made the cut in three out of four majors, highlighted by a T9 at the Masters and T26 at the U.S. Open.

He finished 4th in the LIV season long standings and he didn’t finish worse than T25 in any of his 12 events.

He also played six more events on the DP World Tour, earning (4) Top 10s there.

He has won on the LIV tour, he’s won on the DP World Tour and now he’s looking for the trifecta — winning on a third tour in the same year.

✌️ The Tale of Two Tours

Peter Uihlein’s 2024 LIV Golf season hasn’t been anything to write home about. He peaked early, finishing T2 in Las Vegas at the second event of the season. After that, he failed to crack the Top 10 and had a bunch of mediocre finishes along the way — eventually finishing 27th in the LIV season standings.

Peter’s 2024 Asian Tour Results

His 2024 Asian Tour season has been a completely different story. He’s played seven events while earning (4) Top 6 finishes. That includes two wins (one last week) and a T3 at Riyadh GC in April — which is where this week’s Saudi International will be held.

🤔 New Era For Hunky Tony?

There has been rampant speculation that Tony Finau could be on the verge of signing with LIV. I have genuinely no idea, but some common refrains have been in the following ballparks:

Didn’t play Utah PGA TOUR event.
Withdrew from Hero World Challenge.
Not tied to TGL.
Friends with Jon Rahm.
100 Kids To Feed.
Being sued by previous “investors”.

Take your pick. If Tony’s TOUR days are over, how did he stack up?

He made his debut at the end of 2014, which was the 2015 season. Over that period, he played 267 events earning (69) Top 10s and (6) wins.

The number of Top 10s is impressive and ranks 7th on TOUR during that time frame. As most people know, he hasn’t won nearly as much as he “should have” with six PGA TOUR wins. That’s 16th on TOUR. His resume compares closely to:

Since the 2015 Season.

What a list!

💬 Quote Me On That

Here are some of the more notable quotes to come out of this week’s press conferences.

Tiger Woods: Todd, I don’t, I really don’t. I’m just progressively trying to test it, keep making progress without setting it off. I don’t want to have any setbacks, just want to keep making progress and give myself the best chance going into next year as possible. I feel like I’m getting stronger, I’m getting more pliable, but I’ve got a long way to go to be able to compete against these guys.

on if he has a timetable for returning to competitive golf.

Nick Dunlap: Middle of the year it took me this is where I always dreamed of being, I’m where — I’m 20 years old and I’m living out my dream. Kind of when I realized that, I started to have more fun and live in the moment and play each tournament for what it stands for and just enjoying being out there.

on the difference between the start of his 2024 and the end.

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Bermuda Championship RunDown

by RickRunGood | Nov 14, 2024 | Tournament Previews | 0 comments

Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

That’s All She Eckroat

Austin Eckroat added his name to this short list of multiple time winners on TOUR this year. His year has lacked consistency but he does seem to be on an upward trend.

He only has (3) Top 10 finishes in 2024 over 26 starts. Two of those are wins (obviously) and the other was a 6th place finish at the Wyndham Championship.

Over the course of the entire year he’s gaining +0.37 strokes per round but that jumps to +0.54 per round after the U.S. Open.

If you look at his last 100 rounds, using a running total of his Strokes Gained, you can see how he’s improving at a fairly rapid rate. With his great amateur pedigree, it’ll be interesting to see the leap he could take in 2025.

Four Out Of Six Ain’t Bad

Max Greyserman refuses to be stopped. He was the favorite last week and played like it, finishing 4th. That’s his fourth Top 4 finish in his last six starts. We’ve been monitoring him closely all summer but this is starting to get really crazy.

The best players on TOUR since the U.S. Open:

1) Xander Schauffele
2) Scottie Scheffler
3) Max Greyserman

During that span, he’s 2nd in SG: OTT and 1st in SG: PUTT. Those two skill-sets working in tandem is a very rare combination.

In the Tiger Woods era, Max would be the 20th instance of a golfer gaining at least +0.25 strokes OTT per round and at least +0.60 strokes putting per round for the entire year. This would be the fourth time it’s happened since 2018.

Waring, What Is It Good For?

Paul Waring edged out Tyrrell Hatton, Rory McIlroy and others to win in Abu Dhabi last week. That win very likely locks up his PGA TOUR card for next season, so he’s a name that we are going to need to get more familiar with.

The scouting report is impressive as Waring has picked up strokes on approach in eight of his last ten. Not only have they been gains, but some massive gains along the way. He’s notched at least five strokes on approach on five different occasions during that stretch.

He’s only played four non-major PGA TOUR events in his career with a mixed bag of results — T21, WD, WD, T8 — but those date back to 2019. Expect to see Waring get comfortable rather quickly on the big circuit.

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 and models from the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour, LIV Golf, Korn Ferry Tour & more.

Mack Daddy

Outside of the Presidents Cup, Mackenzie Hughes has only teed it up twice this fall — earning a T4 finish in Napa and T8 in Jackson.

His putting numbers are hard to beat, as he’s picked up 29+ strokes putting over his last nine starts. He struggles in many of the ball-striking categories but he’s decent with a wedge in hand — ranking 48th on TOUR in approaches from 75-100 yards.

On paper, this should be one of the better courses for him.

How Much Lower Can He Go?

The man with the best course history (T20, T8, T17) also finished T2 last week in Cabo. That, of course, is Justin Lower.

He’s hitting over 70% of his Greens in Regulation this year which ranks 25th on the PGA TOUR and he won’t run into any distance problems this week.

Dating back to 2021 across both the PGA TOUR and KFT, Lower has played 12 tournaments on courses that are 7,000 yards or shorter. In those events he has (7) Top 26 finishes which includes (4) Top 10s and a win.

The Big 2

The regression model for this week shows that two stats (Driving Accuracy and SG Putting) are both highly correlated to success at the Bermuda Championship. Accuracy ranks 17th (out of 52) TOUR courses in terms of correlation and SG: Putting is 8th.

It’s rather rare for both of those stats to each be Top 20 stats. It would generally require a short course that surrenders a lot of birdies but also has big greens. Enter Port Royal.

via RickRunGood.com

The image above shows the results of a model that I ran which goes heavy on those two metrics. The distribution is as follows:

20% wSGTOT
40% Driving Accuracy
20% SG PUTT L24
20% SG PUTT Bermudagrass

The Best of the Bottom

The bottom of this field is … interesting. If you need to fill out fantasy lineups or find some relief at the tail end of the board, there aren’t a lot of options to be comfortable with.

In fact, there is only one golfer who has a positive SG number over the last 36 rounds. That is Richy Werenski (+0.698). Now, 13 of his last 14 events have come on the Korn Ferry Tour where he finished with back-to-back Top 25s in their playoffs. He’s played this event each of the last two years and made the cut in both (T23, T69).

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All Eyes On Rory

Rory McIlroy is on the verge of winning the season-long Race To Dubai, the DP World Tour’s overall championship. Only Thriston Lawrence is within mathematical striking distance to take that honor away from Rory, even though it’s quite unlikely for him to do so. That sixth Championship would tie Rory with Seve Ballesteros for the second most championships all-time behind Colin Montgomerie (8).

There are plenty of other accolades up for grabs in Dubai this week, like the (10) PGA TOUR cards that will be awarded and the prize money for the individual event.

The image above shows all golfers in this field who have played at least 20 rounds at the Earth Course along with their finishing positions and SG numbers.

The Other Fitzpatrick

There’s only one Fitzpatrick playing in Dubai this week and it’s not Matt — who has won this event twice in his career. No, it’s his brother Alex who has been playing some stellar golf as of late.

After three straight missed cuts this summer, Alex has found his groove — piling up (5) Top 20 finishes in his last nine starts. He knocked the cover off the ball last week in Abu Dhabi, earning +5.299 strokes combined between the two ball-striking categories.

Barring something crazy happening, Alex is going to handily finish 2024 as “The Best Fitzpatrick”.

WWT Championship Rundown

by RickRunGood | Nov 4, 2024 | Tournament Previews | 0 comments

📢 Fore, Please:

This marks the end of a 21-day trip to Australia. As you’re reading this, we are probably in the midst of a 15 hour flight where I am doom-refreshing Twitter to see election updates.

This was truly a remarkable experience that taught me so much about myself and how others perceive life and sport. I’m excited to get back home and get back to work but I’ll hopefully bring some of those learned principles back to the states with me.

Thanks for everything
Rick

📅 On The Tee…

There’s three events this week from “RickRunGood-covered tours”. They are:

1) PGA – World Wide Technology Championship
2) EURO – Abu Dhabi Championship
3) Senior – Charles Schwab Cup Championship

🏇 Hold Your Course Horses

This event has been played yearly since 2007 but this will mark only the second trip to El Cardonal — a Tiger Woods design in Cabo. Despite different courses, the winning score has been 261 for three years in a row and the 27-under carded by Erik van Rooyen shattered the tournament scoring record.

I’m sure I said it last year but I’ll say it again. This course was not designed for TOUR players. The fairways are wide — up to 60 yards in many spots. There is literally no rough — a miss will find a sandy native area. And these are some of the biggest greens on the schedule — at 8,300 square feet.

To put this into perspective a bit, EVR missed only four fairways last year which was a tie for 25th! He missed only ten greens in regulation for the week and there were twelve golfers who did better than that!

🎼 Platinum Records

The word of the week — Paspalum. The strain of grass that covers El Cardonal is technically Platinum Paspalum which is common in the region. It’s very good at withstanding salt and is very durable to spike traffic. The blade structure is different from most weeks on the PGA TOUR and it’s only used at a handful of courses making it a real factor in the competition. To add even more intrigue, many of the courses that have paspalum greens do not have ShotLink data so it can be even more challenging to try and find the beneficiaries for this week.

Paspalum “Specialists” Since 2021, min 10 Paspalum Rds

In my opinion, the best way to find the “paspalum specialists” is to simply compare a golfer’s results on paspalum versus his results on all other courses. It’s not perfect, obviously. It doesn’t necessarily mean they putted better on the surface and we will have a sample size issue for most golfers.

However, with paspalum being laid throughout El Cardonal, it’s not just putting that I’m worried about. And, we can reasonably assume that if a player had a big week, they probably putted well in the process.

You can view all 78 qualifying golfers here.

📛 New Sheriff In Town

Max Greyserman has announced his presence with authority, capturing a $10,400 price tag on DraftKings this week. That’s nearly $2,000 more expensive than he’s ever been in a PGA TOUR event and exactly $1,000 more expensive than his most expensive Korn Ferry Tour start. Is it warranted?

Since the U.S. Open, Max (+1.58) has been the 9th best player in the world. Not in this field. Not on TOUR. In the world!

His superpower has been his putting which has earned him +1.10 strokes per round — the most of anyone globally. That would normally be a concern with expected regression, but he’s not wholly dependent on the flat-stick.

During that same period, he’s picking up +0.51 strokes ball-striking which puts him in the same ballpark as Tom Hoge and Justin Thomas.

🫰Ready To Snap

It appears that we are on the verge of a breakthrough for Joe Highsmith who is 4/4 in cuts made this fall with (3) Top 16 finishes along the way.

He’s proven to be a talented tee-to-green player gaining 18+ strokes over his last 16 rounds in that category. The putter has been an issue until recently, when Highsmith did something that I haven’t seen before.

He changed his putting grip to:

1) Right-hand low (he’s left handed)
2) Claw Grip
3) Reversed the Claw

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone do the Holy Trinity of quick fixes but it seems to be paying dividends. He gained 5.9 strokes on the greens in Utah (T6) and another 2.5 strokes in Vegas (T16). If those improvements are here to stay, Highsmith is severely mispriced.

🌴 Let’s Get Tropical

There’s something about that sea salt in the air that makes me love tournaments played in tropical conditions — and I’m not the only one. Here are the best players in “Tropical Locations” since 2020.

SG: Tropical Since 2020

I chose places like Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Hawaii, etc — across both the PGA TOUR and the Korn Ferry Tour. While it’s a fun stat to look at, could it be predictive?

There are definitely similarities between these locations which often have paspalum grasses and are protected by winds. Oftentimes, they could be resort style golf courses which cater to C-Suite Professionals instead of Golf Professionals. Due to the nature of these events, the fields skew weaker and they have often been opposite field events over the years — with exceptions for The Sentry and a few others.

🐪 Yas Queen!

A mere 9,000 miles from Cabo is Abu Dhabi where Yas Links will play host to the Abu Dhabi Championship for the third time. The field has some firepower with Tyrrell Hatton, Adam Scott, Min Woo Lee and Rory McIlroy all inside the Top 7 of SG: Yas Links.

The man atop that list is Shubhankar Sharma who has finished T2 and T7 at this event, notching a +2.47 strokes/rd mark in his eight rounds.

Sharma has stalled out since the Italian Open, earning only (1) Top 15 finish over his last 11 events. He will try to rekindle the good vibes when he steps onto Yas Island this week.

🥸🥸 Seeing Double

If you are in doubt this week, start clicking names with double letters and you’ll be just fine. I was perusing the Top 10 players over the last 36 rounds and six of the golfers sport double letters somewhere in their name and account for 13 different sets of doubles.

Obviously that fun grammatical tidbit doesn’t mean anything but some of these names might surprise you. Matteo Manassero has been better than Fleetwood, Rory and Niemann in raw strokes gained during that time period.

Niklas Norgaard has been flying up this list in recent months. After a slow start to his year, he’s been scorching hot since the end of May. His last 16 starts have yielded (7) Top 20s including a win at the British Masters.

😭 The One(s) That Got Away

Rory McIlroy enters this week with an incredible record in Abu Dhabi, but one that certainly leaves him unsatisfied. In eight trips to Abu Dhabi, McIlroy has (6) 3rd place finishes or better … without a win.

In fact, this is the event in which he has the most career Top 5 finishes without actually earning the trophy. His last win was the Wells Fargo Championship in May, 176 days ago at the time of this writing. If he doesn’t win this week, he will enter his longest winless drought since winning the CJ Cup in October of 2021 and the winning the Canadian Open in June of 2022.

ZOZO Championship RunDown

by RickRunGood | Oct 23, 2024 | Tournament Previews | 0 comments

? Fore, Please:

The TOUR heads to Japan this week and for the first time in my life, I am closer to Japan than I am to home. I’m writing this from Sydney, Australia — a mere 4,863 miles from Tokyo.

When Mina and I decided to travel a bit more, we did it with one caveat. That the commitment to RickRunGood wouldn’t change. The luxury of this “job” is being able to do it from anywhere but that’s only a luxury if we can produce the same high level work as if we are doing it from home. So that’s the goal. Be as great as possible from anywhere at any time. I hope you find us successful.

Rick

? Content & Contests

Despite being in Australia, the Wednesday Live Chat will remain at 3:00 PM ET. I will see you there or I’ll see you another time.
There’s only 150 entries available in our Listener League for this week and you guys keep letting me make all this free money! Let me see another name at the top of the board!

? Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

? Rounds of the Week

1) +8.86: Julien Guerrier | R1 of the Andalucia Masters
2) +7.86: Daniel Brown | R1 of the Andalucia Masters
3) +7.81: Taylor Pendrit | R1 of the Shriners
3) +7.13: Julien Guerrier | R3 of the Andalucia Masters
5) +6.94: Michael Kim | R4 of the Shriners

? Note: Guerrier had rounds of 62-72-63-70 to get into a playoff where he would go on to beat Jorge Campillo.

? Much Needed Break

JT Poston ended his 2024 season by missing three of his final five cuts and he didn’t have a Top 20 in any of his final nine starts. His advanced metrics were slipping before he got a much needed break.

It was nearly two months from the BMW Championship to Poston’s next start — last week in Las Vegas. His metrics looked much more in-line with his 100-round baseline and he earned his third PGA TOUR victory.

?‍? What You See Is Not What You Get

I’ve been doing golf analysis for a long time and — for the most part — the numbers that get produced from models pass the “sniff test”. You can look at those numbers and then use your brain or your eyes and say “yeah, okay, I get it”.

Except for this week.

The aerial imagery of Accordia Golf Narashino shows a tree-lined golf course with little room for error. This course should be perfect for shorter, accurate drivers who can keep their ball in the short-grass. However, the numbers don’t really back that up.

Driving Accuracy has one of the weakest correlations to success for any course on the TOUR schedule. It’s Driving Distance that reigns supreme, with a 0.312 correlation value — the 2nd strongest correlation for any course on the schedule.

Now — there’s a lot of reasons why this data might not be as strong for this course. There’s only been four previous editions of this event played at this course and they’ve all been small field, no cut events with the bottom 10-12 being players who normally reside on the Japan Golf Tour. So the amount of data is simply less than a more regular course on the schedule.

For me, it’s not an exact science this week. I’m going to use the data less and lean more on my lying eyes.

? The Tiers of a Clown

We haven’t seen a field composition like this for the ZOZO Championship before. Remember, this used to be a “WGC-like” event with the top 60-ish players in the world making up most of the field and the rest being filled by Japanese players. Similar to what we’ve seen at the CJ Cup or a handful of other events over the years.

But with the ZOZO being part of the FedEx Cup Fall, the majority of the field is comprised of those 51st to 125th in the standings. Then we add in a handful of superstars at the top and a handful of Japan Golf Tour players at the bottom. It makes for a very unique composition. I view it something like this:

Superstars: Xander, Collin, Hideki
Stars (or close): Justin Thomas, Will Zalatoris, Sungjae Im, Sahith, Min Woo Lee
Fall Boys: Hossler, Ghim, McNealy, etc
Stars With Questions: Nick Taylor, Rickie Fowler, Max Homa
On The Bubble: Echavarria, Dahmen
Japanese Players: Iwata, Kodaira, Ishikawa
Having Fun Doing This: Me

? Time To Buy A Homa?

What do we think about John Maxwell Homa? His last 50 rounds (-0.10/rd) have been closer to Luke List than he is to Adam Svensson. He’s been mired in the longest slump of his career but was the Presidents Cup enough to restore some confidence?

He was splendid at the Presidents Cup, gaining strokes in all three of his matches. His tee-to-green play was top-notch and he looked much more like vintage Homa than we’ve seen in a long time.

? Rising Sons To Keep An Eye On

Satoshi Kodaira: a familiar name who has struggled on the KFT this season. He turned to the Japan Golf Tour where he’s played his last eight events. He’s made six cuts including a T2 and T14 in the process.
Yuta Sugiura: ranked 199th in the world and won five starts ago at the Japan PGA Championship. Has now earned three JGT wins since mid-2023.
Takahiro Hataji: maybe the most impressive winning resume amongst this bunch. He has three wins in 2024 which include the New Zealand Open (Asian Tour event) and two more Japan Golf Tour events. His most recent victory was three starts ago, so he should be budding with confidence.

Shriners Children’s Open RunDown

by RickRunGood | Oct 15, 2024 | Tournament Previews | 0 comments

? Fore, Please:

This week is near and dear to my heart. Obviously it’s in my backyard and it’s the event/course that I’m most familiar with. I get my lessons out of TPC Summerlin and there’s a buzz that builds this time of year at the club.

The staff, course and area all deserve the spotlight that they get this week — they are all so awesome!

I hope you enjoy this week as much as I will. ?
Rick

? 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.
There’s only 150 entries available in our Listener League for this week and you guys keep letting me make all this free money! Let me see another name at the top of the board!

? Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

? Rounds of the Week

1) +9.32: Rattanon Wannasrichan | R1 of the Macao Open
2) +8.94: Adam Svensson | R1 of the Black Desert Championship
3) +7.33: Lucas Glover | R4 of the Black Desert Championship
3) +7.33: Matti Schmid | R4 of the Black Desert Championship
5) +7.32: Sam Brazel | R1 of the Macao Open

? Note: Wannasrichan’s round was the 3rd best round of 2024 on the Asian Tour.

? Comfortable In The Winners Circle

This is becoming a habit for Matt McCarty who has raised the trophy in four of his last ten starts across the PGA TOUR and KFT. What I loveeeee about his win in Utah is that it was true to his DNA.

There’s a lack of advanced stats for MM who played on the KFT last season. But he was clearly one of the best putters on the circuit and leaned on his stout short-game. Then he’s able to hit enough fairways and greens to give himself birdie looks — which he converts at a rate much higher than his peers.

In Utah, he gained 60% of his strokes in the two short-game categories. He actually lost strokes on approach in each of the final three rounds but he was able to make up for those small losses in a variety of ways.

He’s not the modern ball-striking stud that we see more frequently now on the TOUR. He’s doing it a different way and I love it.

? Compare & Contrast

Since our brains are still fresh on Black Desert Resort, I’ll use that as a baseline to help compare and contrast the challenges seen at TPC Summerlin this week.

They are both desert courses.
They both have sizable penalties for missing the landing areas.
They both play over 2,000’ of altitude.
They both have large greens over 7,000 sq. feet on average.
They are both very easy courses where pars are for losers.

Landing Zone Comparison at 300 Yards

One of the biggest differences for me will be the generosity of those landing areas. At Black Desert Resort, golfers often had 60, 70 or even 80 yards of grass width before finding the rocks. That will be much less forgiving at TPC Summerlin. Many of the “grassy areas” are 50 yards wide or less. Also, BDR had “bumper fairways” which curled up on the edges to keep the ball in the fairway. That doesn’t exist at TPC Summerlin.

The short-game areas at TPC Summerlin can certainly be more tricky than at Black Desert Resort. Summerlin has twice the number of bunkers (92 vs 44) and you really need to pay attention on short-game shots. They aren’t overly challenging but we’ve seen plenty of guys cough up strokes in this part of the game.

It’s also worth noting that the new grass at TPC Summerlin is absolutely mint. It’s been two years since they re-did all the fairways and greens and the course is in as good of shape as I’ve ever seen. I was out there last week and I was highly impressed.

? I Got You Covered (With Shade)

If you’re going to the @ShrinersOpen next week, these are definitely the best places to watch the tournament. pic.twitter.com/6SQl4t9gxh

— Rick Gehman (@RickRunGood) October 9, 2024

Enjoy the week!

? Call The Fire Department

The second nine at TPC Summerlin is electric. If you think your golfer is too far back while standing on the 13th tee — you. are. wrong!

13: Par-5 that plays like a 4.5.
14: shortest par-3 on the course, usually a wedge.
15: Drivable par-4.
16: Par-5 that plays like a 4.5.
17: okay, this is a tough par-3.
18: two strong shots can generate a birdie.

If you include number nine, there are four (!!!) holes in the final ten that will play a half stroke under par. That’s nuts! You’re going to see a 29 (or two) on this side.

? Dominating Putters

The most correlated stat to success at TPC Summerlin has been SG: Putting — dating back ~12 years. There are only 10 other courses on the TOUR schedule where SG: PUTT is more correlated to success.

There is also a strong correlation towards 4’-8’ putting, putts from 6’ and putts inside 10’.

Best Putters Model

I put together a model that looks at only putting but in a variety of ways. Those putting ranges plus bonus putting and also bentgrass specialists.

It’s not lost on me that Suh, Hall, Montgomery and McNealy all have Vegas ties. These stats date back to January 1st, 2023.

⌨️ The Magic Website Keys

I’ll do my best to continually showcase the new updates to RickRunGood.com and for today, let’s talk Keyboard Shortcuts.

You’ll notice there are little “key icons” throughout the site — like “R” next to the results header. That is the keystroke that will take you to the results section and expand it for the full view. On the golfer profiles, these shortcuts exist for each section. The “CTRL + K” combination will open up the player search function.

I’ve found these to be really helpful once I got used to them, especially the search aspect to quickly change between pages.

? Defying The Odds: Brendon Todd

Over the last three starts, Brendon Todd has lost a total of 7.324 strokes to the field on approach. That is usually a recipe for disaster on TOUR but Todd has turned in respectable results in the process — T12, T22, T44.

Todd’s Last Six Starts

He’s been able to off-set those losses (and then some) with his short-game. He’s picked up 25.47 strokes putting in his last 24 rounds and has only lost strokes around-the-green once in his last 10 starts.

On paper, TPC Summerlin should suit Todd who plays an accuracy game off-the-tee and then relies on the rest of his skills to get the ball in the cup.

Black Desert Championship RunDown

by RickRunGood | Oct 9, 2024 | Tournament Previews | 0 comments

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.

This is a 33x return for Ohtani and Bogaerts to both homer tonight.

Underdog is currently offering up to $1,000 in bonus cash which you’ll receive when using the code “RICK” or following the link above.

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