Farmers Insurance Open One and Done: Bombs Away in La Jolla
Andy Molitor
4 months ago
Unlikely that you used Scheffler last week, and probably a good thing if you didn’t (I’d wager that he wins another tournament this year and that it’ll come with a bigger paycheck). There weren’t a ton of big names on the first page of the leaderboard (Si Woo and Day), so hopefully you found someone who was able to grab some top 20 money moving into the third straight week of “smaller” paydays. Not the finest week for me with picks, Pendy and Sepp played poorly, and while Griffin was in the mix, he didn’t have a strong showing on Sunday to consolidate the whole thing.
We’re on to the Farmers and Torrey Pines, where, similarly to last week, we will use multiple courses. Just two this week, and just one round on the “alt course” with each player playing the North Course on either Thursday or Friday before the cut and a full weekend on the South Course.
Field/Cut: 147 players (a couple added to facilitate Brooks), 36-hole cut where only the top 65 players and ties advance
Purse This Week: $9.6 million, with the winner receiving $1.728 million
I’ll start digging into some stats from the Rabbit Hole that I’ll be using this week, and as always, don’t forget to read Ron’s Course Preview article if you haven’t already!
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Cutmakers
As usual, I like to start by looking at the Finishing Position screen on the Rabbit Hole. I opted to sort by the past 18 months (min 10 PGA starts), and sort by top 10%. Once again, Justin Rose pops in despite missing half the cuts, and Cam Young joins him with a bit of a similar vibe. No surprise to see Xander up top, with his perfect cut make rate and stellar T20% (Cantlay is the only golfer higher, at 58.3%).
Bombers
With the winds looking very forgiving, it seems that the distance vs accuracy debate is giving yet another win to the former, and that a very driver-heavy tournament will continue to see most of the field just pounding it and hoping for the best, rather than trying to hit incredibly long iron shots into these small greens. As mentioned by Noonan on the live stream yesterday, perhaps it’s better to look at Carry Distance over simple Driving Distance, considering that a bunch of drives will have very little roll out as they land waywardly. Plenty of the usual suspects here, including the prodigal son, Brooks Koepka.
Scrambling!
With the length of the South Course and the small greens, GIR% here is low compared to an average stop, and getting up and down from around the green is always key. There are a few ways to look at this (SG: SG, SG: ARG, Scrambling, Bogey Avoidance), but this is a newish feature on the Rabbit Hole I wanted to toy with, so I went to Scrambling Shot Types to get a look at all shots from the rough when scrambling.
West Coast Poa
Finally, a littttle bit of putting just to tie things up. I went further back (3 years) and sorted by only the West Coast events to try and capture similar courses. The issue with going that far back is that players ebb and flow a bit (Homa isn’t the 2nd best ANYTHING right now). Still, it was good to sort through it for a bit and get an idea of who excelled and struggled.
Farmers Insurance Open One and Done Suggestions
Another smaller purse means avoiding using Xander, most likely. He’s a top-5 player who should be deployed in a spot where the purse is bigger. I know the Players and all four majors are out for this sort of qualifier, but I’d love to use Schauffele in a spot where one of Scottie and Rory is possibly skipping one of the signature events. Might not be a thing, just something that’s in the back of my mind. Ludvig, Cantlay, and Young are also likely saves, but you can’t take ’em with you and I can’t blame you for using a big name if you’ve got a good feeling.
The Shortlist: