BlogHP Byron Nelson Championship Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

The Byron Nelson is a very complicated event.  Of all the tournaments on the PGA Tour it’s always the top in giving money away, the Salesmanship Club which runs it does a first class job.  Every year it raises more money than any other tournament, in 2012 it raised $5.37 million and since the Salesmanship Club’s inception more than $127 million has gone to charities.  Another plus, the tournament has been embraced by the local Dallas community and is always well attended.

But the dirty little secret on the tournament, despite the perfect location of TPC Four Seasons Resort and the ability to give a lot of folks good vantage points to all of the action the players don’t like the course.  Each year it’s voted one of the most unpopular courses.  When Byron Nelson was still alive out of respect to him they would show up, but since his death in 2005 marquee attendance has been low and the event doesn’t get the stellar fields it use to get.

All of that is about to change as the Byron Nelson will move to a new course in 2019.  The course called Trinity Forest will be in Dallas so it will move away from Irving, Texas.  The course is being built by the Coore & Crenshaw design firm and is being built on an old landfill along Loop 12, east of Interstate 45.  The course right now is Northwest of town and near Dallas Ft.Worth airport.  The new course is on the opposition end of Dallas, south of the city.

Despite all of the changes that have been made to TPC Four Season it has never done the job in appeasing players.  So with a new course, that will be taylor made with this event in mind, it will become the sweetheart of the PGA Tour.  It’s funny, that was the thinking ten years ago at the Shell Houston Open and things didn’t work out that way.  The reason the event gets marquee names is the date, a week before the Masters is a big draw.  But the course never became the sweetheart of the tour.  So will this change things?  Good question, guess we will have to wait until 2019 but one thing is for sure, the design team of Crenshaw and Coore are the best and if anyone can build a course that players will like, this is the team to do it.

Things you need to know about this week at the HP Byron Nelson

The course was renovated with new greens and new bunkering a couple of years ago.  Other than a couple of holes like 11, which now is a short par 4 that is driveable, the course will be a lot different and will take a while for many to understand all of the rolls and angles.  Still, the layout is the same so those that have done well in the past will do well again.  One aspect that has been taken away: since 1995 one round has been played across the street at the Cottonwood Valley course but that has been dropped as all four rounds will be played at the TPC Four Seasons.

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the  HP Byron Nelson:

Key stat for the winner:

TPC at Four Season is a strategic, thinking man’s type of course. You look at some of the winners, players like Adam Scott, Vijay Singh, Jesper Parnevik, Loren Roberts, John Cook, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Scott Simpson, Nick Price and Fred Couples, and you can see what they have in common.

• Experience has always been a key to winning, since the tournament has been played at the TPC at Four Seasons. Ted Purdy, Neal Lancaster, Robert Damron, Brett Wetterich, Jason Day and Keegan Bradley are the only players that won for the first time.  We can call the Lancaster win a fluke since the tournament was curtailed to 36 holes due to rain, but can’t explain the Purdy, Damron and Wetterich wins other than to say they were playing great at the right time.  Still, experience on a renovated course isn’t much help as we saw in 2011 with first year attendee Keegan Bradley winning so the chances are even greater that a first-timer or someone not experienced at winning could prevail this week.
• Now I don’t want to jinx the tournament, but weather in Texas can sometimes be iffy in May.  But not this week as right now forecasters are calling for a perfect week of weather with every day in the low 90s with low humidity.  There is a 30% chance of thunderstorms on Sunday, but   Considering how things have been this year with almost a dozen events having to deal with anything from rain, win and at the Match Play snow, anything could happen.
• Except for John Cook, Loren Roberts and Shigeki Maruyama, all the winners since the tournament added one round at Cottonwood Valley in 1995 have been long hitters. That is because both courses tend to favor length and a player can get away with errant shots, especially at Cottonwood Valley. The question was with Cottonwood Valley dropping out, will length still be important? In looking at the stats, only two of the top 12 players were inside the top 15 of driving distance in 2008,  while in 2009 4 of the top-15.  In 2010 only two of the top-10 came through, 2 of the 12 in 2011 and 4 of the 14 last year so hitting it long really doesn’t matter.  Now looking at accuracy, of the same top 12 only three were inside the top-15 in 2008 while six of the top-15 were in the top-ten in 2009 with three of the top-10 in 2010, five in 2011 and four last year so accuracy has become more important.
• So what is important to play well at the Byron Nelson?  Hitting lots of greens, since 1998 only four players (Jesper Parnevik in 2000, Shigeki Maruyama in 2002, Rory Sabbatini in 2009 and Jason Day in 2010) have been out of the top nine in greens hit. So it’s very key to been very keen on hitting greens.  In 2011 Keegan Bradley hit 47 of the 72 greens which ranked T6th while last year Jason Dufner hit 58 of 72 greens which racked first.
• Very important to note that to play well at the EDS Byron Nelson you have to go low.  Since 1995 there have been 3,381 rounds in the 60s out of 8,344 rounds played, a 40.5%.  That is the third best of any tournament holding a four-round event (behind John Derre, 44.85 & defunct Milwaukee, 44.2%), which means that you have to go low to play well.  So in looking for that special winner this week look at this list of players that have shot the most rounds in the 60s in 2013:
• Rds in 60s-Player
• 26 – Brendon de Jonge
• 26 – Billy Horschel
• 25 – Jimmy Walker***
• 22 – Charles Howell III***
• 22 – Chris Kirk
• 21 – Kevin Streelman
• 20 – Harris English***
• 20 – Kevin Stadler
• 20 – Brian Stuard***

*** In the Nelson field this week