Players Preview

There are some weeks where the in-tournament winner profiles tell the story. There are some weeks where a narrative is required to tell the story. There are some weeks where comp courses tell the story. There are some weeks where the incoming performance stats tell the story. And, one of the hardest parts about previewing courses is that those different elements don’t always come together to present a clear path for success at a given golf course.

Here at TPC Sawgrass we don’t really face that issue. No matter how you slice it up we get the same clear picture of a place that rewards T2G excellence and a balanced risk/reward style of play. To demonstrate this we can just look at each of the areas mentioned above.

In-Tournament Winner Profiles

Four of the five winners since the move to March (which is really the only data that matters due to greatly different course conditions) have led the field on the week T2G. None of those four gained more than +1.6 strokes putting on the week. On average those four winners gained +4.9 OTT, +6.7 APP, and +3.3 ARG. They all also ranked 14th or better in Distance.

The outlier here is Cam Smith, but it is truly an outlier. The conditions in 2022 were absolute insanity and it became a scrambling fest. Four of the top five that week in Scrambling finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th on the leaderboard. The wind was banana land and we don’t expect to see anything like those conditions this week.

We should lean into the other four years of results which repeatedly point to excellence T2G being the only path to the top. Not just good T2G, excellent T2G.

Narrative

We have the double benefit of having Boots’d this course last year and we will be doing the same again this year. The winner profiles make a ton of sense when you have seen this place in person. It is seriously claustrophobic. There are numerous drives and approaches where disaster lurks on both sides and the only option is to step up and generationally stripe. You just have no bail out.

The best way to think about Sawgrass is that the penalty for small misses can be catastrophic but the reward for being in the right position is excellent. There is a reason we invented the Positional Bomber methodology here - if you can just stripe drives down the middle you have pretty welcoming short iron shots where you can make lots of birdies. However, if you are out of position there is not much you can do. These differences over 72 holes greatly reward the T2G players who start things off with solid driving. That’s another reason why you see large approach spikes for winners here is they simply have much easier approach looks than other players in the field and they take advantage over 72 holes.

Scottie has been the quintessential Positional Bomber here the last couple of years ranking Top 20 in both Distance and Accuracy on the week.

Incoming Performance Stats

If the story is going to be true across each of these areas we’d expect to see stats that point to T2G excellence and the ability to score shining through in player’s performance data coming into the event. We don’t even have to do much more than look at the strongest correlations across winners to see that is the case:

1. Par 4 Scoring

2. Bogey Avoidance

3. Putting Average

4. Par 5 Scoring

5. Fairway Proximity

These could honestly just be summed up as “be really good at golf”.

Be good on Par 4s.

Be good on Par 5s.

Avoid big mistakes.

Positional Bomb and stripe your irons.

These are all things that show up in the in-tournament winner profiles and are confirmed by the eye test as well. Another box checked.

Comp Courses

Again, if we were going to have all of the strings tie together nicely we’d expect to see Comp Courses that reward many of the keys we have outlined above. And, once again, we do. It is another spot where not much additional explanation is needed when we see the Top 8 results from our man Vincent:

1. PGA National

2. Muirfield Village

3. Bay Hill

4. Riviera

5. Augusta National

6. Quail Hollow

7. Pebble Beach

8. Torrey Pines

Strike your golf ball. Avoid disaster. Attack when the opportunities present themselves. Have you shown an ability to do that on other golf courses that reward that style of play? If so, you can be trusted to do similar here.

Summary

The path to winning this event is through clear T2G excellence and that will be seen through player’s incoming form in obvious categories like Par 4 Scoring, Par 5 Scoring, Bogey Avoidance, and Birdie or Better %. It will also be seen through generational Boots striping like we saw from Scottie and Xander last year. It should all be nice and clear.

Now, as we have talked about before there are sometimes differences between what shows up from an outright perspective and what might matter in other markets - aka finishing highly on the leaderboard, but not winning.

Outside of the winners we do see a bit more uncertainty in how important the flatstick is here.

In the easier scoring conditions last year we saw Top 10 finishers finish with an average rank of 19th SG P. In 2023, in a stroke per round more difficult conditions we saw Top 10 finishers with an average SG P rank of 31st. This makes sense; the easier the course plays the more work can be done with the putter.

With that being said, last year the average T2G rank for the Top 10 finishers was 8th, which made it still considerably more valuable than the putter even in easier conditions. The T2G advantage we talked about for winners here definitely shows up across the rest of the leaderboard, however depending on course difficulty - something we will cover in Boots - we may want to adjust our weight on the putter in non-outright markets.