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The Buzz:

So it’s the third leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, this is probably the one with the biggest cut off.  Up until now you can see that a lot of players that won in 2016, guys like Charley Hoffman (35), Tony Finau (37), James Hahn (38), Jim Herman (40), Graeme McDowell (44), Justin Rose (49), Brian Stuard (51) and Vaughn Taylor (63) are still in the FedEx Cup playoffs but will get cut on Sunday, unless they have a good week.  This is the overall problem I have with the way the FedEx Cup is done.  It gives way too much credence for that one win and for those that do well in the Barclays and Deutsche Bank.  So for a lot of the winners in 2016, they are just hanging on because of those wins and will be gone by next week.

One person that will be around for the Tour Championship is Paul Casey, who started the playoffs 68th and with his T-31st finish at the Barclays and 2nd at the Deutsche Bank is now 10th.  As for Casey he again got himself in great position to win a tile and again didn’t get the job done.  Now many will say hey Rory McIlroy shot a final round 65 to snatch the win away from Casey who started the day three ahead.  But I counter it with this, Casey shot a final round 73 and in a field of 72 on Monday, 73 or higher was shot by 18 players so Casey didn’t play very well.  Still that’s Casey, in 194 starts on the PGA Tour he has only won once, the 2009 Shell Houston Open.  He has six runner-up finishes and three, 3rd place finishes.  The problem I have with all of this, Casey has one win and winnings of $16.7 million and it seems that you can be a millionaire for just playing well.  You would be shocked to see how much some players have made for very little wins.  Charles Howell is a perfect example, he has won $30.8 million for two wins, the last coming in 2007.  Still for those playing fantasy golf you want to avoid players like Casey or Howell that each week are a lot of money and never seem to connect with that win.

Is the summer getting too long?

The answer is yes, yes and yes again.  Since the middle of June, we have seen three majors,  a WGC event played the Olympics.  Put that together with the FedEx Cup playoffs and then jetting straight off to Minnesota for the Ryder Cup that’s a lot of golf for all the marquee players.  The schedule is a bit better this year giving players a week off inbetween the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship but if you ask most of the top players they would like to see one important event a month instead of having 10 of them in a span of three months.

Tournament information:

The Western Open was originally founded and run by the Western Golf Association. First played in 1899, the event is the third oldest professional golf tournament (U.S. Open and British Open are older). Like the other golf tournaments of the time, the Western Open was dominated by visiting professionals from England and Scotland. In its early decades, it was widely regarded as a major championship

From 1899 until 1961, the Western Open was played at a variety of locations including Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco to name a few. Beginning in 1962, however, the Western Open settled into the Chicago area. It was hosted at different local courses in and around the city.

In 1974, the Butler National Golf Club in Oak Brook, became the annual venue for the Western Open. The Butler National Golf Club remained the host site until shortly after the 1990 tournament, when the PGA Tour adopted a policy of holding events only at clubs that allowed minorities to be members.

This resulted in Butler National being replaced by the Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, Illinois. The Dubsdread Course at Cog Hill played host to the Western Open from 1991 to 2007. With the advent of the new FedEx Cup Series, the PGA Tour decided a change of name was in order. The event name change to the BMW Championship.  Along with the change it was decided to move the tournament around. In 2008 for the first time since 1962 the event was not played in the Chicago area as it moved to St. Louis for the year. In 2012 it went to Indianapolis, Indiana, in 2013 it went for the first time to Conway Farms, site of this year’s BMW Championship.  Last year it was played at Cherry Hills in Denver.  In the future it’s going to be played at Crooked Stick next year and at Aronimink outside of Philadelphia in 2018.  No venue for 2017 but the quiet rumors say that Harding Park in San Francisco could one day host this event.

Back to Crooked Stick

The par 72, 7,516 yard course was designed around the traditions of Scottish links style.  It’s the first real course that Pete Dye ever built and opened and will produce a great week, except if it rains like it did in 2012 the last time the BMW was held at Crooked Stick.

Let’s take a look at key stats that are important for those playing at the Crooked Stick:

This is based on the most vital stats from Crooked Stick, based on data from the 2012 BMW CHampionship when the course was last used on the PGA Tour and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2016.

Crooked Stick is Pete Dye’s first big golf course. In 1964 Dye found 60 crazy golfers that bought into his idea of having a first class cross in the Indianapolis area and put up the money so that Dye could but some flat cornfields and transform the property into a unique links style course. He was the first modern architect to build a touch of Scotland in the heartland of America using familiar challenges in Scotland: railroad ties, strip bunkers, sand and grass pot bunkers, mounds and blind spots. Some of the things that sent Crooked Stick and Dye apart from anything else built in America was building a course in which no consecutive holes are laid out in the same direction so a player can’t adjust to wind because it comes from different directions on each hole. He also built holes that are very inconsistent. One hole will be long followed by a short hole. Each hole will be different in which one hole will call for right-to-left shots and then the next hole will require left-to-right shots. So Crooked Stick was a course that you had to think your way through it, you just couldn’t find a stretch of holes in which play the same, that doesn’t exist.

So Crooked Stick is meant to be a challenge for players, but in 2012 when the BMW Championship was held on the course mother nature played havoc to the course. Pre-tournament rains made the course soft and play easy, but on Friday night close to 4 inches of rain fell and made the course almost unplayable. To make the course playable the course was set up easier than it was meant to be and along with lift, clean and place rules the players tore the course apart over the weekend. The course played to a 70.54 average, almost a shot and a half under par. It ranked 43rd of the 49 courses ranked so it was really easy.
Very heavy rain has hit the indianapolis area in the weeks leading up to the tournament, but officials still feel that they can dry it out and get it to play like it’s suppose to play, a links style course. The trick to playing well at Crooked Stick is the shots into the greens. In a way it’s a lot like Augusta National, very generous fairways but you have to place drives in the right place to have a better shot into the greens.

The stats from 2012 are off the charts in making it seem like the course is easier than it really is, so it would be miss-leading in telling you the rankings. But we can still use the categories with player rankings from 2016 to help look which player is best suited to do well this week.

So will every phase of the game be examined at Crooked Stick? Probably if the weather cooperates and right now that is in danger. In looking at the forecast it’s going to be great until game-time on Thursday as it’s a 60% chance of rain. Friday is the worst with 90% chance of thunderstorms with it going down to 60% for Saturday. After that Sunday and Monday are good, so this event may go to Monday.

So in looking at our four categories, our first is Strokes Gained off-the-tee. This is going to be important in poor weather because the fairways are pretty wide and with the rain those that hit it long and straight have the advantage. Our second stat is Greens in Regulation, this is probably the most important stat for the week, because a player that does well in this will score low. In order to score low you will need to putt well so our third stat is Strokes Gained putting. This uses all the combinations of how far each put is and how many you make. Last is Par-Breakers because a player will have to make lot’s of birdies and eagles to win.

This is the third leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, so we will see how things shape up for the Tour Championship. In a way this event has the biggest cut back as the 70 players are shaved to 30 for East Lake.

*Strokes Gained off-the-tee: A way of seeing how many shots are saved with drives off the tee.

*Greens in Regulation: A way to judge who hits the most greens in regulation. The closure a player gets to hitting 18 greens, the better his score can be.

*Strokes Gained putting: This is a way of judging who makes the most putts gauging them from length of putts.

*Par-Breakers: Showing who makes the most eagles and birdies.

Players from this year’s field with stats from 2016:

Click any column title in the table header to sort columns.

For the rest of the players, hit this link:

Key stat for the winner:

• Just like in majors, the player that comes in and can adapt his game to the course will have the advantage.  Now this doesn’t mean that a Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth or a Jason Day has the edge, we could see someone we least expect winning.  Still have to think that another long hitter will rule this week.
• In 2012 280 rounds were played with 178, 63% of them being underpart.  In 1991 at the PGA Championship out of 454 rounds played, 119 of them were under par for a more reasonable 26%.  With the possibility of bad weather look for scores to again be low and those that go under par the most will win.
• In 2012 of the 1,165 birdies made almost half of them, 498 were made on the par 5s so look for the player that destroys par 5s to do well this week.
• Even if Jason Day, Jordan Spieth, Patrick Reed or Rory McIlroy wins it doesn’t mean they will be the FedEx Cup champions, but they will have a big advantage and they will control their destiny at the Tour Championship.  As for Player of the year, this is the longest in memory that a season has gone on this long without a clear cut favorite to win that award.