Bank of Utah Preview

It’s a new name with the Bank of Utah picking up the title sponsorship, but it’s back to the Black Desert Resort for year two. It’s always interesting to see how a course plays statistically versus what we expected in year one and this place is pretty unique.

Black Desert is a cavernous property with massive fairways, and all signs pointed to the fact that a lot of players were going to be playing from the short grass. With a year of data under our belt, it was potentially even more extreme than expected. Let’s take a look at the headline numbers:

• 86% of Fairways Hit (the highest on Tour last year by 15% over the next closest, Augusta)

• 77% of Greens Hit (the highest on Tour last year by 1% over the next closest, Kapalua)

Without context there are a couple thoughts that come to mind when seeing results like that:

1. Is this a pure bomber paradise?

2. Is this a pure putting contest?

The driving aspect is an interesting one because no, despite the incredibly generous driving conditions, it wasn’t really a bomber paradise at all.

If we look at the Top 10 finishers the average Distance rank was 35th and the average Accuracy rank was 27th. McCarty is certainly more of a positional player and it’s interesting to see Lucas Glover of all people ranking 13th on the week in Distance. That’s likely due to firm fairways and forced to choose I’d actually lean towards incoming Accuracy over Distance, but the reality is this isn’t a place where the OTT story matters much at all. You basically just need to keep it on the planet, and the rest of the work separating from the field takes place after that.

The best way to think of this venue is as a ton of Par 3s.

You just need to drive it well enough to partake in all of the Par 3s and as long as you aren’t driving it into the abyss you are going to be in the Par 3 contest. It’s probably not a coincidence that McCarty ranks 2nd on the entire Tour in Par 3 Scoring Average this season.

If we play this out even further it leads us to the second question around the putting contest. If it’s purely Par 3s here is it approach + putting, just approach, or just putting that determines the winner?

The bias leans towards the putting side of the equation when we consider that of the Top 10 finishers, 40% of their strokes gained on the week came with the flatstick. Further, six spiked with the putter while only three spiked on approach. Glover famously gained +13.6 on Approach and lost by four shots. If that’s not evidence that you’re going to have to make putts then I don’t know what is.

However, I think this is a bit more even between approach and putting than we’d initially think. It really is a bunch of Par 3s and obviously your ability to make putts goes up with every foot of proximity advantage you gain. The Top 10 finishers on the leaderboard on average ranked 20th in Putting and 21st on Approach. On average they gained +4.1 with the putter and +3.8 on approach. The ability to separate more often comes with spike putting upside but you aren’t going to win here unless you are hitting quality iron shots and making a lot of putts. It’s once again, a bunch of Par 3s - on average you’re going to need to hit it within a make-able range and make a lot of those. No need overthink it.

All in all, it’s a pretty rare course for a Tour stop and it really is a place where almost everyone in the field is going to be taking aim from the fairway on every hole. From there it’s a Par 3 contest with a healthy number of those approaches coming between 175-200 Yards. Once again, it’s probably not a coincidence that McCarty ranks 23rd in BoB % from that distance and a few other high finishers (Glover, Schmid) are Top 5 on Tour in that scoring bucket.

The TLDR here isn’t rocket science - keep it on the planet, good approach, great putting.

It’s too soon to have a clear picture on how sticky course history is going to be here and there are probably two angles. I actually don’t know which one is more compelling. You could argue that because putting is crucial then knowing these greens is helpful, but you could also argue that putting is more volatile so anyone with a hot putting/approach week can play well. Interestingly though, a lot of putter heavy TPC courses have pretty sticky course history so forced to choose I’d actually lean towards Black Desert having higher than average Course History correlation over time.

It’s also too soon to have a clear COMP statistical profile, but the unique course characteristics do provide some guidance on places that make sense. The obvious one is Kapalua, but that’s only going to be somewhat helpful with a field that has limited experience in that event. There are also elements of Detroit GC here but the distance bias isn’t anywhere near as strong. Overall, the most effective COMPs factoring in the field are the bent TPC venues that provide similar scoring conditions - Summerlin, Deere Run, Craig Ranch and Twin Cities.

In general though there are clear enough statistical profiles here focused on putting and approach that COMPs aren’t really a big part of the story.