Golf Rankings for BMW Champ

by Chris Garosi FFToolbox.com
 

 0 Reader Comments | Add Yours

It's the third week of the playoffs and we are all out of cuts. All 70 golfers will get to play four rounds this week so you can take a few more risks than normal with your lineup and be wary of players who are candidates for withdrawal (either with injuries or those safely into the Tour Championship field).

The BMW Championship likes to course hop from year to year generally staying in Illinois and Indian. The BWM returns to the 2012 location Crooked Stick Golf Club just outside Carmel, IN where Rory McIlroy won by two strokes over Phil Mickelson and Lee Westwood.

The course plays as a par 72 at 7,516 yards up from 7,497 yards in 2012. The biggest changes are to the par 4 10th which increases 60 yards from 397 to 457 yards and the par 5 11th shrinking 39 yards from 595 to 556 yards. We have bentgrass on the greens yet again this week.

Crooked Stick was built by Pete and Alice Dye in 1964. Dye has a number of courses on regular rotation on Tour. Here is a list of some the Dye courses which have been used on Tour and some recent events held there.

Crooked Stick Golf Club –BMW Championship (2012 and 2016) - Par 72, 7,516 yards

Harbour Town Golf Links – RBC Heritage (1969 to present) - Par 71, 7,101 yards

Kiawah Island Ocean Course – PGA Championship (2012) – Par 72, 7,873 yards

TPC of Louisiana - Zurich Classic of New Orleans (2005, 2007 to present) – Par 72, 7,399 yards

TPC River Highlands – Travelers Championship (1984 to present) - Par 70, 6,841 yards

TPC Sawgrass – Stadium Course - THE PLAYERS Championship (1982 to present) – Par 72, 7,215 yards

PGA West - CareerBuilder Challenge (2016) – Par 72, 7,300 yards

Whistling Straits - Straits Course – PGA Championship (2010 and 2015) – Par 72, 7,790 yards

As you can see, this week's venue is on the longer side of Dye courses so we'll focus a bit more on those who succeed on the longer layouts. That said, Dye uses the same type of visual chicanery on all of his courses so the ability to play a Dye course is valuable this week no matter the length.

Where should we focus our statistical microscope this week?

Par 5 Scoring Average (P5SA): With four par 5s, scoring will come from here as well. Three of the four are between 523 and 556 yards so we could focus on the range between 500 and 550 if we wanted to as well.

Par 4 Efficiency 450-500 yards (P4E450-500) – Seven of the ten par 4s are now between 454 and 497 yards with an eighth at 442 yards. We'll need golfers who can score on these holes as well as stay out of trouble.

Strokes Gained Approach-the-Green (SG:APP) – This is will be a second shot course again this week so we'll go with SG:APP again. Recall that SG:APP is a part of SG:T2G so there is a bit of double counting going on here.

Finally, we'll take a look at some other second shot stats as we focus on Efficiency from the Fairway > 200 yards (Eff>200:Fairway) and Efficiency from the Fairway between 175 and 200 yards (Eff175-200:Fairway). Thanks to one of our Twitter friends we see the importance those efficiency scores from 2012.

Our tiebreaker for the week is Performance on Pete Dye courses as provided by our friend Josh Culp. Not all Pete Dye courses are created equally, but there is something to be said for success on a Dye track.

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 will play a factor as thunderstorms are expected Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The wind will be up a little bit this week, but should still be manageable with the winds hovering between 10 to 15 mph each day except Sunday when conditions look calm. It's a small field so the tourney could play around with tee times to avoid any weather issues.