Golf Rankings for Deutsche Champ

by Chris Garosi FFToolbox.com
 

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This week we enter the second week of FedEx playoffs. This tournament runs starts on Friday and runs through Monday to take advantage of the Labor Day holiday. We are now down to 100 eligible players as we continue to whittle the field down to the final 30 who will compete for the top prize.

The tour heads to TPC Boston in Norton, MA south of Boston for the Deutsche Bank Championship. The course is a par 71, 7,241-yard golf track with 58 bunkers where water comes into play on about half of the holes. The Tour doesn't have a lot of par 71s on the docket, but the TPC Boston is one. It has three par 5s, 11 par 4s and four par 3s. And, the cut is still top 70 and ties so more than 70% of the starters will see the weekend. You can take some risks!

TPC Boston has been the host since 2003, but the major re-design by Gil Hanse (with Brad Faxon consulting) in 2007 means we only care about results since then. Hanse also redesigned the Blue Monster Couse at Trump National Doral (the site of the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship) in 2013. So, perhaps we'll take a gander at the leader board for the last three years.

Hanse has also redesigned many other courses (the East Course at Winged Foot and Monterey Peninsula Country Club at Pebble Beach among them). Starting in 2012, he also worked on the restoration of Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey (site of the Barclays in 2014). Finally, he was the designer for the course used for the Rio Olympics. So, there aren't a ton of Hanse courses out there and many of them are restoration projects so we'll tread lightly looking for "Hanse" experts.

Where should we focus our statistical microscope this week?

Par 5 Scoring Average (P5SA): There are three par 5s and that is where a lot of the scoring will come from this week. We will need to see par 5 scoring on our golfers' resumes.

Par 4 Efficiency 450-500 yards (P4E450-500) – Hello old friend. Six of the 11 par 4s on the course fall between 451 and 495 yards. So, we want golfers who can score (or at least make pars) regularly on par 4s of this distance.

Strokes Gained Approach-the-Green (SG:APP) – SG:APP is a part of SG:T2G so there is a bit of double counting going on here. That said, we're going to see nearly 75% of all shots from between 150 and 200 yards this week.

Scoring Average (SA) – We'll also look at overall scoring average as we'll need players who can score. The winner of the tourney will probably be between 15 and 20-under for the week.

Par 3 Efficiency 200-225 yards (P3E200-225) – Our tiebreaker for the week as we have four par 3s on the course and they range from 187 to 231 yards. So, the range isn't perfect, but it's close enough to use for tiebreaking purposes.

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 the only "concern" is for rain showers on Thursday morning. The wind should be manageable and temperatures likely won't cross 80 degrees for a high until Sunday.