St. Jude Championship One and Done Strategy: Surviving the Playoffs

Big money these last two week…. plenty of chances to play catch up, which is bad news for leaders with an empty bullpen.  The St. Jude purse is $20 million. The winner of the tournament will receive a payout of $3.6 million (next week is the same).  

So, let’s finish strong here and find a few names to think about this week.

Consistent Excellence

The “Cutmakers” section is suspended until next year, as there are no more cuts.  But, with even the 10th place finisher taking home over half a million, it’s still worth looking for golfers with very high floors.  This sample below is the past two years sorted by top-10%, but ONLY in signature events and the playoffs, so only against elite players and for the most part, without a cut. I left Harry Hall in despite the small sample (if you really want to use him, it still may be better to think about next week). We’ll assume you’ve used Scottie Scheffler already.

Driving Accuracy

Mentioned many, many times: we have narrow landing areas, very penal rough and the danger of badly missing the green (and maybe even finding water) if you do indeed end up outside of the fairway.  This is again, two years of data sorted by driving accuracy, but filtering out any rounds played where finding the fairway was easier than average.  We don’t just want guys who can do it, we want guys who can do it when others are struggling.

Pinseekers

Approach is always important, but it does make up a bigger slice of the pie this week with the small greens and large rough penalty. I don’t love adding too many filters while rabbit holing, but I did here and still ended up with a decent sized sample.  Two years worth of golf played where the rough penalty was high and the greens were small (it’s still Scottie), sorted by proximity to the hole.

St. Jude Championship One and Done Suggestions

Lord only knows who you have left at this point, but I think leaders are probably thin and likely need to be looking for a guy outside of the top 20 names (because they’ve used them all) who has a steady baseline and won’t blow up.

Some guys you might have left that should be ok here:

Lucas Glover
Brian Harman
Daniel Berger

Trailers may have been saving some big names, and in most contests have just these two weeks left.  They likely need to decide between some decent golfers and should look at next week as well.  Caves Valley is a longish course where I think bombers could play.  So if you have a name that’s long left and a name that’s accurate left, there seems to be a proper order to play them in here.  Some names to think about:

Russell Henley
Tommy Fleetwood
Aaron Rai