BlogPGA Championship Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

Tiger:

What a weird year for Tiger Woods.  Since his last major victory at the 2008 U.S. Open he has won 14 times on the PGA Tour but is zero for 17 tries in majors.  Last week at the Bridgestone he had an impressive seven shot win.  Woods has been nothing but spectacular in regular tour events chalking up five victories in 2013 but in the majors he has been close but can’t seem to close one out.  A couple of stats really show the reason, first look at a comparison of Tiger round by round in the majors:

Between the 1997 Masters & 2008 U.S. Open                                                Since the 2009 Masters

-1                                              Totals for the 1st round                -10

-62                                              Totals for the 2nd round                  -3

-41                                              Totals for the 3rd round                  +4

-18                                               Totals for the final round                    +1

Tiger just hasn’t been able to get the job done over the weekend.  All you have to do is look at this chart of Tiger in the majors.

You can see that Tiger hasn’t been in the 60s on the final day of a major since the 2011 Masters.  At Muirfield last month he shot 74 on the final day, at Merion two months ago he also shot 74.  These are not Tiger numbers in the majors and it shows that he is having issues in the final round.  Of course we can think of a dozen different reasons for this, but I don’t want to bore you to death, you get the point plus have enough of an imagination to figure his problem.

So will things be different for Woods at Oak Hill?  Probably not, in 2003 he was in the mist of changing his swing so it’s a bad example but he finished T39th at the PGA at Oak Hill that year.  It was his worst finish in a major between the time he turned pro in 1997 and the 2006 U.S. Open in which he missed the cut.  The fact is, Oak Hill may not be Tiger’s cup of tea.  Taking it a step further, in looking at Tiger’s wins he has never won on a Donald Ross course.  Woods has very few wins on old style courses like Oak Hill, frankly you can count on one hand the number of old style, Northeastern type of courses he has won on, which is one of the black marks in Woods great career.

So which way to go on this?  I don’t think Tiger is a good fit for this week, his game is not set up to play a Oak Hill type of course.  But if you look at the fact that Tiger is one of the greatest players in the world and could change his game to fit any course, when Tiger first came out on tour he didn’t play well at Muirfield Village, site of the Memorial tournament.  But Tiger learned to adapt to that course and has five victories there so maybe he can adapt this week.

One other thing about Tiger, this is the 10th time Tiger Woods has come to the PGA Championship looking for his first major of the year. He only avoided a shutout in 1999 and 2007. A failure to win this week would mean his fifth straight season without a major and his advantage over Jack Nicklaus would be gone and he would be at the same pace as Nicklaus in winning majors at next year’s Masters.

Phil:

The hottest player right now is Phil Mickelson and he too doesn’t have a stellar record on Oak Hill type of courses.  He also hasn’t won on a Donald Ross course (did win the Travelers on a course design by Donald’s cousin Robert but he also has issues on courses that are tight with think rough).  Mickelson did better than Tiger in the 2003 PGA at Oak Hill finishing T23rd.  One piece of good news, in that PGA he shot an opening round of 66 and led after the first day, so he does know how to play tough courses.  Look for him to be great this week and remember this stat, three of the last 13 British Open winners also added the PGA Championship for multiple wins in that year (Tiger Woods in 2000, ’06, Padraig Harrington in 2008) so anything is possible for Phil.

Rory:

Last but not least we have to talk about the basket case of the year for Rory McIlroy.  He is the defending champion and you could probably get very good odds against him winning this week.  I don’t think he will win, but I can see his game coming around.  After missing the cut at the Irish Open and the British Open he did finish T27th at Firestone so maybe his game is getting better.  Still don’t look for him to defend.

A little bit about the history of Oak Hill:

In the middle 1920s, Donald Ross was hired to build two golf courses on 350 barren, treeless acres.  While building the course, Ross inspired a local lad, Robert Trent Jones, to become an architect.  At 18 years old, Jones was the leading golfer in the Rochester area.  His dream was to be the best golfer in the world and it was shattered when a doctor told him he had developed an ulcer and had to give up competitive golf.  Not knowing what to do with his life he thought it would be nice to design golf courses.  At about this time he heard of the two course under construction at Oak Hill and decided to see what was happening.  Jones meet Ross and after convincing him that Jones was serious showed him the course.  Ross took the time to explain what he was doing and with this meeting Jones decided to make it his life’s work.

He returned to Rochester in the 1950s and made extensive changes on every hole except the 14th hole.  Jones also extended the length of the course by amost 400 hundred yards and reduced the par from 72 to 70.

In 1975 the club brought in George and Tom Fazio for further alterations. They revised several of the holes, most notably the fifth and six holes.

One thing that Oak Hill is famous for is its trees.  When Ross built the course, the land was treeless.  Member Dr. John Williams was a botanist and made it his personal project to cover the property with trees.  In his backyard, Williams planted seeds and raised them to saplings.  He then transplanted them to the course.  As the project became better known, people began sending him seeds and acorns from all over the world.  Williams even got one from a tree planted by George Washington at Mount Vernon.  With his hard work Williams transplanted the barren landscape into a forest with over 80,000 trees on the Oak Hill property.  Today more than 34,000 of those trees are on the East Course of Oak Hill.

Championships held at Oak Hill:

• 1949 U.S. Amateur won by Charles Coe
• 1956 U.S. Open won by Cary Middlecoff
• 1968 U.S. Open won by Lee Trevino
• 1980 PGA Championship won by Jack Nicklaus
• 1984 Senior Open won by Miller Barber
• 1989 U.S. Open won by Curtis Strange
• 1995 Ryder Cup won by Europe
• 1998 U.S. Amateur won by Hank Kuehne
• 2003 PGA Championship won by Shaun Micheel

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the PGA Championship:

Key stat for the winner:

Important to see who is the best total driver of the ball going into the week and then checking to see who hits the most greens on the PGA Tour.

Scrambling will be at a premium , look for good chippers like Phil Mickelson or a Steve Stricker to have a great advantage here. On this year’s scrambling list, Matt Kuchar is 8th with Lee Westwood 13th and Justin Rose 15th, these are folks to watch this week.

Funny that the number one player in both stats is Graham Delaet so the thought is that he should be the favorite.  Now that theory could work, Shaun Micheel was in the same boat in 2003 and won, but these are different times.  As good as Delaet hits the ball he is a very average putter, but still if you are looking for a dark horse it could be him.

Here are some more key stats to look to for this week:

• The condition of the greens.  Yes they had a wet summer and several of the greens got flooded.  One green even had a tree fallen on it.  Tiger played Oak Hill on Tuesday and talked about the greens and how there was a lot of work to get them not only up to speed but also with some grass.  I doubt that they will be an issue, there are a lot of ways to address those problems and there was enough time to get the greens the way the PGA of America think they should be.
• Since the greens are small it will also be tough hitting greens.  So with tight fairways, we may have a PGA in which shotmakers are on top.  We have seen in the last decade of PGAs winners as diverse as Rory McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, Y.E. Yang, Rich Beem, Shaun Micheel, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington and Tiger Woods so anything can happen. The key is to be peaking about Wedneday right before the start of the championship. That’s what happened to Beem, Micheel, Singh, Mickelson, Harrington and Woods so look for someone that is playing well.  It also happen to McIlroy last year, who found some magic on the weeks leading into the PGA
• Need for patience.  This is one of those courses that par is your friend, so don’t look for low scoring.
• There is also the unknown factor in which the course could yield low scores to an unknown player. In 15 of the last 24 PGAs, the winner has claimed his first major in the PGA Championship like Keegan Bradley in 2011, Martin Kaymer in 2010 and Y.E. Yang the year before.  So this could be a good omen for a Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Steve Stricker or Sergio Garcia. Rich Beem and Shaun Micheel weren’t household names when they won, so you never know if that will get repeated.
• The last three PGA winner were all in their 20s; Rory McIlroy (23), Keegan Bradley (25) and Martin Kaymer (27). That hasn’t happened at any major in nearly 50 years since Gary Player (25), Jack Nicklaus (23) and Bobby Nichols (28) won the PGA from 1962-64.
• Also another little nuggett, 11 players from the top 20 in the world ranking have yet to win a tournament this year, a list that includes Rory McIlroy, Luke Donald, Keegan Bradley, Henrik Stenson, Steve Stricker, Charl Schwartzel, Ian Poulter, Serigo Garcia, Bubba Watson, Jason Day and Lee Westwood.
• So at the end of the day, who is the favorite this week?  Of course everyone likes Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.  But we tend to forget Brandt Snedeker, Steve Stricker, Matt Kucahr, Hunter Mahan or even Zach Johnson.  Now I have heard that Phil Mickelson says he is playing well, same with Tiger but the fact is the PGA Championship has seen it’s fair share of unexpected winners.