Greetings, and welcome to a brand new weekly feature on RickRunGood.com. My name is Andy Lack, I host the Inside Golf Podcast, a twice weekly golf betting and DraftKings show, as well as the Scramble with Rick, every Tuesdays and Fridays on the RickRunGood YouTube page and 300 Yards to Unknown Podcast Feed.
I am incredibly excited to provide an in-depth course breakdown for each weekly PGA Tour stop. I’ve been able to find my lane by looking at golf courses from a deeper lens, via architecture, agronomy, and so much more. Every single Monday, I will break down absolutely everything you need to know about the weekly PGA Tour venue before you make your bets and DraftKings lineups. So without further ago, let’s dive in!
The Basics
- Course: Harbour Town Golf Links
- Location: Hilton Head, South Carolina
- Designer: Pete Dye
- Length: Par 71; 7,121 yards
- Hazards: 18 individual water hazards
- Fairways: Celebration Bermuda-grass over-seeded with Perennial Ryegrass, measuring 29 yards wide on average
- Rough: Celebration Bermuda-grass over-seeded with Perennial Ryegrass (0’75” inches)
- Greens: 3,700 square feet Bermuda-grass over-seeded with Poa Trivialis, running 11-11.5 on the stimp
“You Don’t Need Length to Make a Golf Course Difficult”
The quote I am referring to is from Jason Day describing Harbour Town, and I find it to be the perfect description of this golf course. Outside of 2020, when this tournament was played in June after a COVID layoff, the winning score at Harbour Town has been between nine and 19 under par, despite this being fourth shortest course on Tour. Harbour Town is one of the few courses on the PGA Tour schedule that can truly stand up against the distance battle. With narrow tree-lined fairways and doglegs on every hole, this classic Pete Dye design often takes driver out of your hands.
Matt Kuchar aptly said, “You have to play chess around this golf course and position yourself off the tee.” Ultimately, Harbour Town rewards a different style of golf that we are used to seeing players deploy at the majority of driver heavy courses. Harbour Town is all about positioning and angles. There will be certain holes where players can hit the fairway and still be blocked out by trees on their approach shot. For this reason, I am weighting my model a little bit differently than usual. I place Harbour Town in the same category as Waialae, Sea Island, Sedgefield, Colonial, and even TPC Sawgrass. These are all short, positional, often Bermuda-grass golf courses that cannot be over-powered by brute force, and it is no coincidence that the same players seem to pop up every time we travel to one of these tracks. These golf courses naturally mitigate the advantage of some players, and allow shorter hitters that would not stand a chance of competing at Torrey Pines, to succeed. It’s a style of golf that not all love, but certain players thrive in. Let’s dive a little deeper and dig into the key stats.
Key Stats
- Off the Tee
- 14.1% of strokes gained at Harbour Town have come off the tee, checking in at slightly below Tour average
- Harbour Town has yielded a historical average driving distance mark of 267.8, which is a whopping 15 yards below Tour average. Harbour Town had the 4th lowest driving distance last year, and ranks inside the Top-five in lowest average driving distance every season. This is the dictionary definition of a “less than driver course.”
- Here’s a quote from Jason Day that further illustrates this point, “This course shows that you don’t really need length to make a golf course difficult. For me, personally, there’s a lot of irons, long irons off the tee and a lot of 3 and 5 woods. There’s only maybe four or five drivers out there.”
- Winners of this tournament have ranked on average only 50th in driving distance, but 25th in driving accuracy.
- Since players will be hitting less than driver often, driving accuracy percentage is still slightly higher than Tour average, despite the narrowness of the fairways.
- Every single year, Harbour Town still ranks Top-five in strokes gained off the tee difficulty because it’s all about angles on this golf course. Harbour Town is impossible to overpower, so there is little to no advantage for being a long and accurate driver of the golf ball here.
- At Harbour Town, it’s more important to be on the right side of the hole than in the fairway. In 2021, this course ranked dead last in average difference of score between fairway drives and non-fairway drives. The rough is not a problem at Harbour Town, it’s all about giving yourself the best angle in approaching the green. It’s often better to be in the rough on the “right” side of the hole, than in the fairway on the “wrong” side of the hole. Harbour Town ranked 38th in average difference of score from drives in the rough vs. drives in the fairway.
- For all of these reasons, I find it useless to look at standard off the tee metrics that measure how strong players are with a driver this week. Instead, I will be looking at how players perform off the tee on “less than driver courses.” The best players off the tee on these shorter, positional golf courses have been Sungjae Im, Corey Conners, Abraham Ancer, Joel Dahmen, Cameron Davis, Joaquin Niemann, Dustin Johnson, Luke List, Patrick Cantlay, and Si Woo Kim.
- Approach
- 36.8% of strokes gained at Harbour Town have come on approach, which is 2% above Tour average.
- Greens in regulation percentage here is always below Tour average. Harbour Town had the 12th hardest greens to hit on Tour last year, and it had the hardest greens to hit in both 2016 and 2019. Despite the fact that players will often have a wedge in their hands, Harbour Town still has a low greens in regulation percentage because the targets are so small.
- Harbour Town ranked 8th out of 40 courses in strokes gained approach difficulty last season. In 2019, it ranked 1st. Because these greens are so tiny and domed, players must be extremely precise with their iron play.
- 16.6% of approach shots at Harbour Town come from between 125-150 yards, which is above Tour average.
- 20% of approach shots at Harbour Town come from between 150-175 yards, which is above Tour average.
- 26.9% of approach shots at Harbour Town come from between 175-200 yards, which is well above Tour average.
- Add this all together and almost two thirds of all approach shots at Harbour Town come with middle to short irons. The best long-term middle to short iron players in this field have been Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas, Adam Svensson, Lucas Glover, Erik Van Rooyen, Daniel Berger, Russell Henley, Emiliano Grillo, Kevin Na, and Cameron Smith.
- Around the Green
- 14.5% of strokes gained at Harbour Town have come around the green, which is right around Tour average.
- Scrambling is important on any course with a low greens in regulation percentage, and this is a statistic that has been highly correlated with success at Harbour Town. The best long-term scramblers in this field have been Patrick Cantlay, Kevin Streelman, Daniel Berger, Matt Kuchar, Beau Hossler, Kevin Na, Tom Hoge, Shane Lowry, Stephan Jaeger, and Mackenzie Hughes.
- With that being said, the actual degree of difficulty of the shots players will face around the green at Harbour Town is actually quite low. Last year, Harbour Town ranked 39th out of 40 courses in strokes gained difficulty around the green.
- Harbour Town ranked 38th out of 40 Tour courses last year in around the green difficulty from the fairway, 39th in around the green difficulty from the rough, and 27th in around the green difficulty from the bunkers.
- Yes, players will have to rely on their short game here, but Harbour Town is the polar opposite of Augusta National when considering around the green degree of difficulty.
- Putting
- 34.6% of strokes gained at Harbour Town have come putting, which is a touch below Tour average.
- Harbour Town ranks right around Tour average in terms of strokes gained putting difficulty, both inside 15 feet and outside of 15 feet. Nothing really crazy jumps out to me in terms of putting here. These greens are very small and do not feature much undulation. If playrs are on the green, chances are they will have a makable putt, so we don’t have to worry a whole lot about lag putting here.
- I will simply be focusing on players whom have performed the best on these over-seeded Bermuda surfaces. TPC Scottsdale, Innisbrook, Austin Country Club, TPC Sawgrass, TPC San Antonio, and PGA West all feature similar agronomy. The best putters on over-seed Bermuda have been J.T. Poston, Denny McCarthy, Matt Kuchar, Brian Harman, Kevin Kisner, Alex Noren, Dustin Johnson, Zach Johnson, Patton Kizzire, and Harry Higgs.
- Scoring Stats
- I am not really looking at any scoring stats here. Harbour Town was not a course where Par-five scoring, birdies or better gained, or bogey avoidance really jumped out at me. Harbour Town is neither a birdie-fest nor a grind-fest. The par-fives are easy here, but not overly correlated with success.
- Course History/Comp Courses
- Outside of Augusta National, Bay Hill, TPC Scottsdale, and Waialae, Harbour Town has the fifth most predictive course history on the PGA Tour. The best players at Harbour Town have been Webb Simpson, Matt Kuchar, Patrick Cantlay, Ian Poulter, Luke Donald, Branden Grace, Emiliano Grillo, Matt Fitzpatrick, J.T. Poston, and Russell Knox.
- I’ve already alluded to how focused I am this week on identifying players who have thrived on shorter positional golf courses. Here’s a list of the courses that fit this bill:
- Austin Country Club, host of the Dell Technologies Match Play Championship, certainly comes to mind as another short, positional, Pete Dye course with similar agronomy.
- Innisbrook, host of the Valspar Championship, is another good one in terms of it’s narrow, tree-lined fairways, similar agronomy, and simplicity around the greens. The biggest difference between Harbour Town and Innisbrook is that there is more of an emphasis on long-iron play at Innisbrook, but it’s worth noting that eight of the last 12 winners at Harbour Town also have a Top-10 at Innisbrook to their name. The best players at Innisbrook have been Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Jim Furyk, Matthew NeSmith, Kevin Na, Davis Riley, Bill Haas, Patrick Cantlay, Charles Howell III, and Gary Woodland.
- Waialae, host of the Sony Open, is another less than driver, Bermuda-grass course with a great deal of leaderboard crossover as well. The best players at Waialae have been Matt Kuchar, Justin Thomas, Webb Simpson, Corey Conners, Charles Howell III, Kevin Kisner, Daniel Berger, Patton Kizzire, Chez Reavie, and Zach Johnson.
- Sea Island, host of the RSM Classic, is a Bermuda-grass Carolina golf course, susceptible to the wind, with a great deal of leaderboard crossover. The best players at Sea Island have been Kevin Kisner, Webb Simpson, Charles Howell III, Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson, Russell Henley, Corey Conners, Brian Gay, Matthew NeSmith, and Robert Streb.
- Sedgefield Country Club, host of the Wyndham Championship, is another Bermuda-grass Carolina golf course that places an emphasis on positioning off the tee and wedge play. The best players at Sedgefield have been Webb Simpson, Kevin Na, Kevin Kisner, Billy Horschel, Henrik Stenson, Jim Herman, Sungjae Im, Si Woo Kim, Denny McCarthy, and Russell Henley.
- Colonial, host of the Charles Schwab Classic, features many of the same elements, despite not featuring Bermuda-grass greens. The best players at Colonial have been
- Jordan Spieth, Kevin Na, Brian Harman, Kevin Kisner, Matt Kuchar, Collin Morikawa, Webb Simpson, Emiliano Grillo, Corey Conners, and Danny Lee.
- TPC Sawgrass, which definitely features far more variance than Harbour Town, is still a Pete Dye course with narrow landing areas, small greens, and similar agronomy. The best players at TPC Sawgrass have been Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Tommy Fleetwood, Si Woo Kim, Davis Love III, Jim Furyk, Abraham Ancer, Chris Kirk, Corey Conners, and Daniel Berger.
- The best players overall across these comp courses have been Webb Simpson, Kevin Kisner, Corey Conners, Justin Thomas, Kevin Na, and Charles Howell III
- There are certainly others that fit the bill (TPC River Highlands, for example), but those were the courses I chose to look most closely at. With that being said, just to get more over-weight on less than driver courses, I also just looked at strokes gained total on short courses in general. The best players on courses under 7,200 yards have been Daniel Berger, Patrick Cantlay, Webb Simpson, Justin Thomas, Russell Henley, Dustin Johnson, Tom Hoge, Abraham Ancer, Kevin Na, and Billy Horschel.
The Model
- Off the Tee (15%)
- SG: OTT on courses under 7,200 yards (8%)
- Good Drives Gained (7%)
- Approach (33%)
- SG: APP (18%)
- Weighted long-term proximity from 125-200 yards (15%)
- Around the Green (8%)
- SG: ARG (4%)
- Scrambling (4%)
- Putting (14%)
- Weighted putting on over-seeded Bermuda-grass greens (Harbour Town, TPC Sawgrass, Innisbrook, TPC Scottsdale, TPC San Antonio, PGA West
- Comp Courses/Course History (30%)
- Harbour Town (8%)
- Long-term SG: TOT on courses under 7,200 yards (8%)
- Innisbrook (4%)
- Waialae (2%)
- Sedgefield (2%)
- TPC Sawgrass (2%)
- Sea Island (2%)
- Colonial (2%)
Model
- Daniel Berger
- Webb Simpson
- Russell Henley
- Shane Lowry
- Justin Thomas
- Joaquin Niemann
- Cameron Smith
- Kevin Na
- Abraham Ancer
- Tom Hoge
- Patrick Cantlay
- Russell Knox
- Corey Conners
- Joel Dahmen
- Sungjae Im
- Dustin Johnson
- Collin Morikawa
- Adam Hadwin
- Jim Furyk
- Chris Kirk
Most over-valued based on expected price: Jordan Spieth (46th overall), Billy Horschel (36th overall), Tyrrell Hatton (26th overall), Matt Fitzpatrick (21st overall), Dustin Johnson (16th overall).
Most under-valued based on expected price: Russell Henley (3rd), Kevin Na (8th), Tom Hoge (10th), Russell Knox (12th), Joel Dahmen (14th), Jim Furyk (19th), Brian Stuard (23rd), and Matthew NeSmith (24th).
