BlogValspar Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

A very convincing victory at Doral by Dustin Johnson. We all marvel at Rory, Bubba, and Tiger but this could be the best player of them all, if he can get his act straight.  He has the length, finesse, and short game to be great.  We always wonder about his mind because of some of the choices he has made in his life, but seeing him in five events we can see he could be a very powerful player.  The one thing I have to question is his staying power.  Guys like Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, and Tiger always found a way to make golf number one in their books.  We have seen many great players that burn out or can’t find the motivation to continue this pace.  Just look at guys like David Duval or even Justin Leonard, they reached a certain level and just couldn’t maintain it.  Who knows why, one thing is financial stability.  Once you have more money than you know what to do with it, sometimes the family gets in the way as it did with Leonard.  Or some get hurt like Duval.  Even Tiger Woods is experiencing that certain lack of motivation these days.  I am not saying that he isn’t trying, it’s just something is missing and you just can’t function as you did in previous years.

Many people won’t put much credence into a record that Johnson has accomplished, but with his victory at Doral, Johnson has chalked at least a victory a season.  He is playing in his eight year so he has eight seasons with a victory.  Here is the list with the most consecutive season with a victory on the PGA Tour:

Seasons-player                         Years of streak

17  Jack Nicklaus                               1962-1978

17  Arnold Palmer                             1955-1971

16  Billy Casper                                  1956-1971

14  Tiger Woods                                1996-2009

14  Lee Trevino                                 1968-1981

12  Walter Hagen                             1918-1929

11  Sam Snead                                  1948-1958

11  Harry Cooper                              1929-1939

11  Leo Diegel                                   1920-1930

10  Phil Mickelson                           2004-2013

10  Cary Middlecoff                         1947-1956

10  Horton Smith                             1928-1937

9  Ben Hogan                                   1945-1953

9  Gene Sarazen                              1925-1933

9  Lloyd Mangrum                          1946-1954

9  MacDonald Smith                       1928-1936

8  Dustin Johnson                           2008-2015

8  Byron Nelson                               1935-1942

8  Tom Watson                                 1977-1984

8  Tommy Armour                          1925-1932

8  Miller Barber                               1967-1974

Now, Johnson is 17th on the list and has a long way to catch Nicklaus and Palmer.  But, there are two things to remember in looking at the list, one that of those on this list only three players started their streak in their rookie year, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson.  So Johnson has been on the PGA Tour 8 years and won in everyone of them.

The second thing to remember is that Johnson has eight PGA Tour career wins.  On the surface that’s not really that many.  In the history of the PGA Tour, 109 players have more total wins than Johnson.  But of the 109 players with more wins, Johnson has a better streak than 93 of the players who have won more.  An example of this is the players that Johnson is tied with at 8, Byron Nelson, Tom Watson, Tommy Armour, and even Miller Barber is a great list of guys to be along.  He still has a way to go in catching Nicklaus and Palmer but just look at Tiger; he had 14 before the streak ended in 2010 and there is no way that at his age Tiger will ever come close to this again.  So it’s only one shot and you’re through and right now Johnson is in the running at 30 years old.

Just to show how much things can change, a year ago we were celebrating Patrick Reed’s WGC-Cadillac victory.  At just 24 he has accomplished many things including a win two months ago at Kapalua and gaining a certain respect after the Ryder Cup as a player who wants to win every time he tees it up.  But in a book that is coming out in the next couple of weeks, author Shane Ryan has painted a picture of Reed being a cheat and a thieve.  I have been around golf for close to 40 years and never seen these claims on anyone on the PGA Tour.  The game and the tour are so close-knit that I find it close to impossible that a person with this background would exist on the PGA Tour.  I know almost every person that writes about golf, and I really don’t know much about Ryan, other that he has written some for Golf Digest, Grantland and ESPN.

I do know this, over the course of the last seven or eight years I have seen many things that have been written that weren’t properly researched and verified that was passed around social media circles.  It’s sad to see stuff like this printed up, just like some of the wrong stories I saw on Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods to name a few.  Reed, whom we can say is not on the top of anyone’s list as fan favorite strongly has come out denying these stories and I don’t see anyone from his past coming out accusing Reed of any of these things.  I have to also give Patrick some credit for coming out with some unfavorable stories from his past on his drinking and other problems which led to him leaving Georgia.  I sense that many are getting behind Reed to support him, and it will be interesting to see whether Random House publishing Group will allow the book to come out in the form that it is.  It’s not a pretty story and will get addressed by the author who now has to produce hard evidence that these stories really happened.  Stay tune.

Things you need to know about the Valspar Championship:

• This will be the 15th Transitions Championship, with the first one being played in 2000.
• The tournament was formally called the Tampa Bay Classic and then changed in 2003 to the Chrysler Championship.  Chrysler dropped out in 2006 and PODS took over sponsorship and got an added boast with the advent of the FedEx Cup series and the transfer of the Players Championship to May.  So in 2007, just six months after the close of the 2006 event the tournament moved into it’s new March date. But that didn’t last long as with a change of management at PODS, they were gone after the 2008 event.   The power of the PGA Tour shined through as Transitions Lens, an optical lens manufacturing company, who’s headquarters are in the Tampa Bay area, came to the rescue with a four year deal but unfortunely that deal came to an end after the 2012 event.  They got EverBank to write off some of the expenses in 2013 but for 2014 got their sixth and present sponsor Valspar, a company that manufacturers of paint and coatings.  The 2001 event wasn’t played because of the 9/11 tragedy.
• When the tournament first started in 2000, it was the first time that a full PGA Tour event was held in the area since the St. Petersburg Open, which was held between 1930 and 1964.  The course was the home of the mix-event JCPenney Classic, which ended in 1999.

Course information:

Innisbrook Resort (Copperhead Course)

• Palm Harbor, Fl.
• 7,340 yards     Par 36-35–71
• Course has a 76.8 rating and slope rating of 144 from the championship tees. The course is part of a resort and is open to those that stay at the course.  It also sells local memberships.
• The course has 63 bunkers and eight water hazards in which six holes have water in play for the professionals.
• In 2014 the Copperhead course was the 6th hardest course on the PGA Tour with a 72.433 average, playing almost a shot and a half over par.
• In 2013 the Copperhead course was the 7th hardest course on the PGA Tour playing to a 72.222 average playing 1.222 strokes over par.
• The Copperhead course was designed by Larry Packard and opened in 1974.  It was restored in 1999, two years after it was purchased by Westin Inc, The goal of the restoration project was to regain the shot values and still challenge today’s longer-hitting PGA Tour players when Innisbrook hosts PGA Tour events. The plan involved refurbishing all 18 greens, restructuring many of the bunkers, removing some trees around the greens to improve air movement and sunlight, and clearing out undergrowth between fairways. The length of the golf course is the most visible change from 7,087 to 7,230 yards by the addition of tournament tees on five holes.  Since then minor renovations has added another 53 yards to the course.

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

Key stat for the winner:

In looking at the 14 champions of this event, ten of them have this in common.  They were in the top-eleven in greens hit.  Matter of fact four of them was in the top-five while Gary Woodland in 2011 ranked T29th and Luke Donald was T43rd in 2012.  In 201 Kevin Streelman was T11th in that stat, while last year John Senden was T3rd in greens hit.  So it is important to hit lots of greens and for those that do they usually have a bit of an advantage.

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

• This event is one of the hidden gems on the PGA Tour.  Played on a great course, unfortunely it’s  in a bad time between Doral and the Palmer to really get a great field.  This year it has one of it’s best fields of 18 top-50 players showing the respect it deserves.  One thing for certain there is many players that respect the course and show up, of it’s past champions only one isn’t playing and that is because he no longer plays on the PGA Tour. This event was played in October until 2007 and the change hasn’t made much of a difference other than the rough is a bit healthier now.
• Accuracy is more of a premium  at Copperhead than length.  This course can’t be overpowered like many other courses like last week at Doral.  Stats that prove this is first driving distance averages, in 2014 the average of all the drives in the field was 266.4 yards, the 3rd lowest on the PGA Tour.  Since 2005 it’s been in the bottom six every year of shortest driving average course.  So it only makes sense that if you look at the champions the only real long drivers were Gary Woodland in 2011 and Vijay Singh in 2004.  All the others were in the middle to back of the pack in average driving distance; so this is the one course that short hitters can do well on.

This chart shows how short the champions have been since 2005:

Year-winner          Driving distance/rank for week      Driving distance all drives/rank for year

2014-John Senden                        279.1 (20th)                                                    282.0 (T87th)

2013-Kevin Streelman                  270.8 (48th)                                                    279.6 (T99th)

2012-Luke Donald                         264.1 (75th)                                                    269.2 (198th)

2011-Gary Woodland                     295.5 (7th)                                                     297.4 (5th)

2010-Jim Furyk                             261.0 (73rd)                                                    273.0 (172nd)

2009-Retief Goosen                      283.8 (25th)                                                   286.2 (43rd)

2008-Sean O’Hair                         282.6 (8th)                                                     287.3 (T30th)

2007-Mark Calcavecchia             276.9 (T34th)                                                 284.4 (T66th)

2006-K.J. Choi                              274.5 (T42nd)                                                 280.5 (T103rd)

2005-Carl Pettersson                   283.9 (40th)                                                    283.1 (T74th)

• Maybe it’s no coincidence that of the top-22 in the driving distance stats for the year, only eight are in the field this week.
• Another important stat is putting, and the greens at Innisbrook are some of the easiest on the PGA Tour to make putts on.  In 2014 it was the 3rd easiest course to make putts from 4 to 8 feet while in 2013 it ranked 6th.  In putts inside 10 feet, it ranked 4th on the PGA Tour in 2014 and 7th in 2013.
• Florida is always windy, look for that to play havoc on the players who haven’t had to play Innisbrook under windy conditions
• All the par 5s is within reach of the average player and though the course is over 7,300 yards. this won’t present much of a problem, look for lots of par 5 greens to be hit in 2. The average of all the champions on the par 5s is just a notch under 8 under   In 2012 & ’12 both Luke Donald and Kevin Streelman were 9 under on the four par5s, while in 2014 John Senden was 7 under.
• Look at all these facts and you can conclude that good ballstrikers rule the roost at Innsbrook.  This is not your typical Florida type of course because the fairways are tight, the rough will be tall.
• One oddity that you don’t see in most events is the fact that you don’t have many players that shot four rounds in the 60s.  Of the 13 champions only four have accomplished that, in 2002 with K.J. Choi, in 2004 with Vijay Singh, in 2010 with Jim Furyk and in 2011 with Gary Woodland.
• Another oddity along this line, in the history of this event only 33 times has someone broke par four times during the week.  Making this stat odd is the fact that only 11 times has this happen when the event was played in the spring; the last time it happened was five times in 2012.  Last year and in 2013 nobody shot four rounds in the 60s.
• The last five winners have been gone on to have great seasons as they have finished the year of their win inside the top-30 in FedEx Cup standings, with 2010 champion Jim Furyk winning the FedEx Cup title.

Year-Winner                Final rank FedEx Cup year won

2014-John Senden                      23rd

2013-Kevin Streelman               25th

2012-Luke Donald                       9th

2011-Gary Woodland                 17th

2010-Jim Furyk                           1st

• Weather is always of interest, especially the forecast of wind that makes the course play really hard.  This week the weather looks great with mild winds.