2023 Farmers Insurance Open
Torrey Pines North Course
The Basics
Courses: Torrey Pines South | Torrey Pines North
Designers: Bell/Jones | Bell/Weiskopf
Yardages: 7765 | 7528
Pars: 72
Greens: Poa | Bent
Recent Winners: 2022 List (-15 | +6000), 2021 Reed (-14 | +2500), 2020 Leishman (-15 | +5000), 2019 Rose (-21 | +1400), 2018 Day (-10 | +2000), 2017 Rahm (-13 | +5000)
Key Stat: Torrey Pines South is the longest yardage of any PGA Tour stop, and features the 2nd narrowest fairways.
Torrey Pines
Will try and keep things short and sweet this week because frankly we don’t quite have the time we normally do with the Farmers starting on a Wednesday for the second consecutive year. This however will be the last time you see the words short and sweet used in the preview as Torrey Pines serves as the ultimate brute on the PGA Tour calendar.
Always known for its thick rough and narrow fairways, the cliffside layout has seen torrential rains in recent months create even juicier rough awaiting even the slightest of wayward drives. Add in a forecast of cool weather with a Thursday featuring substantial winds and the ball striking examination served up by Torrey Pines will be as stern as ever this week.
As we’ve said many times this isn’t rocket science and when you get a golf course that puts an extreme emphasis on tee to green play you end up with a list of recent winners that happen to be excellent tee to green players.
The last six winners here arrived positive in each of the T2G categories (ARG, APP, OTT) over their last 25 rounds. On average they were gaining 1.5 strokes per round T2G and all were above Tour average in driving distance. This week only seven players arrive above such an extreme T2G and distance standard - Rahm, Finau, Xander, Homa, Zalatoris, Kitayama, and JT.
But for all the difficulty that Torrey serves up en route to the putting surfaces, it also features greens with the toughest conditions inside 25’ anywhere on Tour. Yes, even after avoiding the carnage from T2G it is the poa surfaces that often become the most formidable of Torrey’s many challenges.
The often imperfect, bumpy poa grasses on Torrey’s sloping greens simply aren’t what a PGA Tour pro sees on a consistent basis. Here’s Zalatoris describing the unique difficulty last year:
It's just tricky because there's a lot of poa annua out here. You've got putts that you've got to play outside the hole from distances you're not really used to playing them out there. Really with the exception of Augusta, the greens are glass there, they're perfect. Out here you can get a little wobble here or there. I think really the two that I left out there today I just didn't commit to playing outside the hole. So I think that's something that definitely tomorrow, just commit to it and hey, if it bounces in, it bounces in; if it bounces out, it bounces out.
Yes, you’re betting this week on players hoping that putts either “bounce in or out”.
Intuitively if you read that paragraph and knew the stats of the difficulty on these greens you’d think that putting may be neutralized. Historically that hasn’t really been the case as many recent winners here - Reed, Leishman and Day most notably - are highly proficient with the flat stick. A proven ability to convert on these surfaces provides a significant edge on the field this week. Due to this, the leaderboard will almost certainly feature names that lack the T2G skills largely necessary to compete here simply due to their elite putting and knack for rolling them in on poa.
However, the putting neutralization narrative isn’t without support thanks to Luke List and Will Zalatoris battling down the stretch here last year. List broke a streak of 11 consecutive events losing strokes putting to gain en route to the title here last year. He is the quintessential example of a player who is elite T2G with power, but can’t truly contend most weeks due to major putting woes. Any belief that great putting was required to win at Torrey lost a lot of steam when List stood on the 18th green with the trophy last year.
It is important to note however that List has been an excellent lag putter in recent years despite the poor strokes gained figures, and any poor putter who is going to overcome it this week will likely need to have shown prowess in the approach putting metrics.
In another pretty straightforward insight, the two courses that feature the most overlap winners with Torrey in the last decade are extreme ball striking layouts at Bay Hill and Memorial. It’s no coincidence that Tiger Woods dominated each of the three venues for years as they require elite ball striking and sharp around the green play. But, he of course is not alone as Leishman and Day have won both here and at Bay Hill. While Rahm and Rose have done the double here and Muirfield Village.
The full list of multiple cross-over win courses can be found here - expectedly a list of other ball striking tests and courses with poa greens - but I want to highlight one name that isn’t on the list but may be soon.
Narashino CC - host of the Zozo in Japan - is beginning to have the characteristics of a strong guide for success at Torrey. On paper it makes sense as they both feature stern driving conditions and scoring opportunities that largely exist on the Par 5s. Tiger again won the Zozo, but the 2021 leaderboard pointed to forthcoming 2022 Torrey success for List (T7) and Tringale (T3) amongst others. It is one of the only true ball striking tests on the fall schedule, and the timing is likely a useful guide for who may be sharpest when Torrey comes around in January.
With all of that said, history at Torrey itself is as useful of a guide as any you’re going to get from looking at comp courses. Seven of the last eight winners here had a previous Top 10 finish at Torrey, with Rahm being the lone first time starter to convert in that stretch.
Building our Model
When the darkest shades of green highlight the entire range of Strokes Gained categories it’s pretty obvious we’re going to want to avoid watering down the model with too much else. The T2G correlation is extremely strong and makes sense with everything we know about the venue. A model that simply sorts the field by T2G results over the previous 30 rounds would be simple and likely work just fine this week.
But we do want to augment the model with a couple of stats that have proven to be differentiators among the most skilled T2G players in the fields at the Farmers.
Largest ShotLink Weight:
Par 5 Birdie or Better % - (15%)
Each of the last six winners here was Top 35 on Tour in Par 5 BoB %, and it also features among the five most correlated starts for players who end up finishing in the Top 20 at Torrey. Both courses have four Par 5s, and on the South they serve as rare birdie opportunities on a venue filled with challenging Par 4s.
Birdie to Bogey Ratio - (11%)
The average Tour rank of winners here since 2017 is 22nd on Tour in Birdie to Bogey ratio. A great metric for who can plod along without making mistakes and capitalize on the birdie chances that will pop up on the South and arrive often on the North.
Strokes Gained Weights:
PUTT (7%), ARG (9%), APP (16%), OTT (16%)
Nearly 42% of the model comes from the T2G categories, which might even be lower than it should. Great putters have done well here, but we’d rather identify excellence T2G and dig a bit deeper into how those specific players have performed on poa at Torrey and elsewhere.
Model Results
Follow this link to find the Farmers Insurance Open model, download the data to edit your own weights, view historical model results and more.
Didn’t have time for notes due to the short week but feel free to reach out on Twitter with questions about any player.
Rahm
Finau
Schauffele
Zalatoris
Im
Thomas
Morikawa
Homa
Pendrith
Davis
Rodgers
Vegas
Ben Taylor
Day
Gordon
Kitayama
Bramlett
Davis Thompson
Spaun
Montgomery
Smalley
Matsuyama
McNealy
Buckley
Griffin
Yu
Mullinax
Burmester
Grillo
Hoffman
Outright Betting Card & Weather
Before talking about the odds we must take a look at the weather this week.
The first and third rounds will feature light winds with slightly elevated winds in the final round.
The second round however will feature heavy winds which may serve as a crucial day in the championship.
As we can see, gusts up to 35mph are possible during the middle of the round with players teeing off between 9am and 11am on Thursday. A time based wave advantage may not exist but a course based advantage very well could. It’s the ultimate question of… would you rather play the hard course in the wind or the easy course in the wind? Of course at Torrey that means the South (hard) or North (easy).
Smart people can make good arguments for both sides of the coin, and I definitely don’t have a definitive answers. I’ll give my opinion here but I’m not overly confident in it.
Ultimately I think I’d prefer players who play the North in the first round, and South in the second round. Players who can get off and running on the North, can then grind out pars on the South in the wind. While players who play the North on Thursday may struggle to generate any of the easy birdies that will be available all day on Wednesday.
I envision a world where certain players could shoot -7 on the North on Wednesday, and grind out +2 on the South in the wind. While the other side of the draw may see players perform very well for -1 on the South on Wednesday, before only being able to shoot a couple under on the North in the wind.
Overall, I didn’t hugely factor this into my outright selection as the scenario I just outlined is a couple of shots that could easily be made up over the final two rounds. Historically wave splits are crucial in DFS, but not often decisive in who wins the event.
And speaking of who is going to win this event, we move to the odds board where it’s a true pros and joes situation.
At the top of the board is of course Jon Rahm who is looking for a third consecutive PGA Tour win, and just behind him are the remainder of the marquee names. But what is most noticeable about the board is the steep drop off around 25/1. Farmer’s lack of elevation in the new Tour schedule combined with an exodus of great ball strikers to LIV leaves the middle of the board void of much value.
It seems like a week to target one or two marquee names and then compliment them with some long-shots. Torrey hasn’t seen many long-shot winners but it also hasn’t seen an odds board where there is almost no difference in the players at 50/1 and 200/1. The winner is highly likely to be one of the favorites - no shit - but surprise contenders are just as likely deep down the board as they are just outside the favorites.
We’re targeting T2G proficiency as we’ve described up to this point, and here is where we ended up:
Will Zalatoris 18/1
T7, T2 in the last two renditions of the Farmers tells the story here as Zalatoris uses his world class ball striking to continually perform well on difficult golf courses. He came ever so close to lifting the title here last year, and now has the experience of a win under his belt in Memphis. Has returned from injury sharper than ever from the tee, and a bit of rust with his iron play looked to be almost completely shaken off over the weekend in Palm Springs.
Max Homa 26/1
An ever growing list of wins on Homa’s CVs is made up of either difficult golf courses and/or those featuring poa greens. He gets both of those things at Torrey and it just seems like a golf course he will raise a trophy on at some point in his career. T9 here in 2020, T18 in 2021 and unquestionably in the best form of his career at this stage. Much improved play around the greens in the last nine months may be the difference maker.
Alex Smalley 80/1
6th in strokes gained T2G over the last 20 rounds, and coming in hot with the iron play after gaining over two shots on approach in each of his last three rounds. The 26 year old has yet to make fifty starts on Tour but already has five Top 10 finishes including in November at challenging Memorial Park and was in the mix in difficult scoring conditions at the Canadian Open.
Shot 10 under on the North Course here last year before faltering over the weekend. More experienced in the big moments now.
Kurt Kitayama 100/1
If we’re looking to replicate Luke List you don’t have to look much further than Kitayama. He bombs it from the tee, is a rock solid long iron player, and few in the field are as skilled around the green. A very similar story to the one told by List arriving here last year, and of course they also share a penchant for truly miserable putting. If Kitayama can gain anything with the flatstick on familiar surfaces for the California native he’ll be in the mix as he was multiple times on difficult courses last year.
Brendan Steele 140/1
Only Zal, Finau, and Xander rank ahead of Steele in ball striking over the previous 50 rounds. That resulted in quality finishes at difficult T2G tests in 2022 - T9 PGA, T10 Memorial, T13 Sawgrass, T18 CJ Cup - and he’s another Californian who may be able to find the difference maker with the putter on these greens. Twice a winner in California at the Fortinet, and has gained putting at Torrey in eight of 11 starts. Trending after shooting -14 over the weekend at AmEx even while losing strokes with the putter.
Ben Taylor 200/1
We said last week that we don’t believe Taylor is a 200/1 golfer, and one bad round at the AmEx birdie fest doesn’t change that for us. He’s 9th in the field in T2G play over the previous 20 rounds with Top 4 finishes at the Houston Open and Sony. Those were both events where scoring didn’t reach 20 under and we’re highly likely to see the same this week. Drives it long and straight, solid with the long irons, and is a great putter who handled the poa well at Silverado. Happy to roll the dice again this week at a course that better matches the scoring conditions he’s found success in so far this season.
As always, best of luck!
