Quail Hollow One and Done Strategy: Cashing in at the PGA Championship

Major number two this week.  Big money, but in the land of signature events, it’s not something that only comes around 5-6 times per year anymore.  The purse is technically still “to be determined, but last year we saw $3.3 million to the winner, which was 18 percent of the $18.5 million purse.  Even with a healthy bump, this doesn’t project to be larger than last weeks paycheck, where Sepp Straka nabbed $3.6 million from a $20 million purse.

That said, the problem we have to deal with this week compared to last is again the addition of the LIV boys.  Bryson projects to be uber popular here even with Rory’s course history and Scottie well, being Scottie.  I’m going to post some stats and sift things out a bit, but as Ryan and I discussed on the show earlier today, this just doesn’t feel like a week where you can get too cute, even if you’re trailing and need to make up ground.

Cutmakers

I don’t think we’re going down the board far enough to really take anyone who’s in danger of missing the cut at a decent clip, but I still pulled up the finishing position menu to look at the rate of top-five finishes over the past two years.  Obviously some weird data for the LIV guys, but maybe that makes Bryson’s number here even more impressive; it’s ONLY majors.

 

Long Drivers + Good Irons

If you really get down to what matters are Quail Hollow besides the putting, I think you can boil it down to: long, accurate drives followed by stellar irons.  I built a “mini-model” in the Rabbit hole looking at a nice sized sample of total driving (distance combined with accuracy) and Greens in Regulation on long courses.  A lot of elite golfers and Kevin Yu (who can’t putt and has never made a cut in a major, 0/4).

Par 5 Scoring

Building on that, it’s going to be a week where the game plan is two-fold: score on the half dozen holes that allow it, and don’t give it up on the rest of the course.  A big part of that is going to be taking advantage of the three par 5s.  This is two years of data sorted by par five birdie or better rate. (oh look, Kevin Yu again!)

Part 3 Management

Again, kind of on the back of my previous point, if you’re going to score when you can, you have to manage the rest of the holes, including some very tough par 3s.  I took a look at who grinded difficult scoring par 3s the best of the past couple of years.

Truist Recap

It was a decent week over in Philly.  Henley played poorly, but most of the other suggestions cashed a pretty big check.

Justin Thomas T2
Patrick Cantlay T4
Tommy Fleetwood T4
Russell Henley T46

 

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PGA Championship One and Done Suggestions

Are you Leading and want to just ride the safe picks?

Rory McIlroy
Bryson Dechambeau

Do you need to go a bit off the beaten path but still want to be realistic?

Jon Rahm
Xander Schauffele
Ludvig Aberg

It’s probably a bit of a boring week, but to most I’ve talked to, it looks like a week where the leaderboard is mostly full of big names come Sunday.