Golf Rankings for Barclays

by Chris Garosi FFToolbox.com
 

 0 Reader Comments | Add Yours

We are in the home stretch for the PGA season and the Yahoo! game. So, in Group A, don't save starts (if you have been). Play the elite players you have left. Group B looks a lot like Group A with a number of studs available and no reason to ignore them. Group C is where I might try to differentiate a bit this week and that's where my rankings come in!

It's the first week of the playoffs and we head to Farmingdale, New York on Long Island to Bethpage State Park and the Bethpage Black course. Bethpage Black is a 7,468 yard par 71 course built by A.W. Tillinghast and opened in 1936. It's a public course that you can play any time if you like to sleep in your car waiting for a tee time. Bethpage Black has hosted the Barclays previously in 2012 as well as the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Opens. We have bentgrass greens this week.

Tillinghast also designed other courses used by the PGA including Winged Foot Golf Club (hosted 2006 U.S. Open and 2004 U.S. Open), Baltrusrol Golf Club (hosted 2005 and 2016 PGA Championships), and Ridgewood Country Club (hosted 2008, 2010 and 2014 Barclays).

There is also some data that shows correlation with the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines so we'll also look at recent results from that event. Since the tournament has been played on different courses over the years, recent tournament history isn't as useful this week

Where should we focus our statistical microscope this week?

Par 4 Efficiency 450-500 yards (P4E450-500) – Four of the par 4s are between 450 and 500 yards and two more are listed at 501 and 502 yards respectively so we want golfers who can handle longer par 4s.

Par 3 Efficiency 200-225 yards (P3E200-225) – We have two par 3s between 200 and 225 yards and another at 230 so we'll lump those three together and look at solid scorers on the longer par 3s.

Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green (SG:AGG) – Length off the tee isn't necessarily important for me this week, but the ability to hit that second shot into the green is where it's at. We'll use SG:AGG to help find those second shot artists.

Driving Accuracy (DA): Finally, we'll use accuracy off the tee as our tiebreaker.

I'm focused on 2016 stats of course, but will certainly refer back to 2015 if needed.

And of course, we examine Strokes Gained: Putting (SG:P) and Strokes Gained: Tee to Green (SG:T2G) with more weight on SG:T2G again this week.

As always, check back on the weather Wednesday to see the final forecast. This week it looks like the weather won't be an issue at all as temperatures will be seasonally cool (lower 80s for highs all week) and rain shouldn't be around. We may see a bit of wind, but it shouldn't affect the players. Can we have a PGA tourney without weather intruding? Cross your fingers.