Truist Championship One and Done Strategy

Recapping TPC Craig Ranch

Scottie finally wins, but it’s a smaller purse.  Such is life.  Maybe it was a good thing that we had a smallish purse, because I had an all-time stinker of a performance with the guys I went with.  But, sometimes you take it on the chin, and I suppose I can’t just recap the good weeks.

Taylor Pendrith CUT

Benny An T60

Tom Kim CUT

Mackenzie Hughes CUT

Jacob Bridgeman CUT

….

This week is a big step up in field strength and has the $20 million purse ($3.6 million to the winner) that comes with a signature event.  It is one of the five siggys that has no cut, so I should be able to find some golfers that see the weekend this time around.

Since it’s a new course, and we don’t have a ton to work with, a lot of this week’s handicapping is based on theories and ideas on how things should go, so it’s not the worst idea to come up with some names that fit multiple “course theses”.

A few of the key stats I’ll be looking at for both betting and one and done this week:

Driving Accuracy

We spoke at length on yesterday’s live stream about it, but for the most part, since this is a shorter course and does have some holes that require you to find the correct side of the fairway, I think valueing accuracy over distance is the right call this week.  There are several ways to do this, and none are going to come out and tell you exactly who’s the best shot shaper and course manager, but they will lead you in the right direction.  It stands to reason that someone who hits a lot of fairways and has smaller misses should be able to find the right spots to set up clean second shots more often than not.

I filtered out long courses and then sorted by distance from the edge of the fairway as my metric to start with.

Wedge Play

While I downplayed distance, most of the long and even the average hitters are going to have some serious opportunities to really throw some darts on the shorter holes and find some easy scoring chances.  With a bunch of approaches appearing that they’ll be in the 75-150 yard range, I think it’s fair to look at short iron play here to see who will end up with the most opportunities.

No filters on here, just looking at overall (from fairway OR rough) approach proximity over the past two years.

Putting on Bentgrass

I don’t love using putting as a differentiator, but there are golfers who just clean up on the northeastern courses and the pure bentgrass greens; it’s a skill.

Ron highlights putting 5′-15′ as a key stat, and I agree.  While making some longer putts is always nice, the winners here are going to need a combination of the two stats listed previously and will have a ton of short birdie opportunities.  Since these are two different ranges in the Rabbit Hole, I combined them into a mini-model to see who had the best combined 5-10 and 10-15.  Last 12 months on Bentgrass only:

Truist Championship One and Done Suggestions

The thesis here is to find someone who’s gonna throw darts and is putting well enough.  Three months ago I would have laughed at mentioning JT in that conversation, but he’s been looking great with the flat stick after some help and can absolutely win again this year.  Cantlay has shown that he will always be in contention on courses like this, and despite never, ever, ever winning… Tommy Fleetwood is a pretty decent fit here.  Henley gets the nod for simply being that good of a ball striker.

Justin Thomas
Patrick Cantlay
Tommy Fleetwood
Russell Henley