BlogFrys.com Open Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

Hard to believe that just like that 2015 is over, and the 2016 season is starting up.  Yes, because the new wrap around schedule makes playing in October in the 2015 season, it’s a great way of getting a jump on folks.  In the old days of the PGA Tour, when you showed up the first week of January at Kapalua, everyone started out at zero dollars and when FedEx Cup points started in 2007 you had zero points and everyone’s year was off and running.  For some, especially those from Europe, they wouldn’t make their first start until 8 weeks into the season at the WGC-Match Play, which use to be the last event on the West Coast swing. Even with the late start it was no problem because they knew that there were 32 events before the season ended at the Tour Championship.

Things are seriously different these days on the PGA Tour.  When the PGA Tour decided in 2013 to change the last seven events on tour and go to a wrap-around schedule in which those events started out the season instead of ending the year, it brought lot’s of change and created for some a magical way of getting better results on the PGA Tour.  When those events ended the season it was all about saving your tour card for the following season and making a few more dollars.  Now these fall events have become important to keep your season balance because it’s become a big advantage for players to tee it up early.

Two years ago Jimmy Walker won the Frys and then followed it up with wins at the Sony Open in Hawaii and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-am.  After that Walker had top-tens in the Masters, Players Championship, Colonial, U.S. Open, PGA Championship and the Deutsche Bank.  He finished 2014 7th in the FedEx Cup race and 4th on the money list

In the 2015 season, Robert Streb got off to a great start finishing T31st at the Frys.com Open, then the next week finished T-10th at the Shriners Hospitals.  When he won in his third start of the season at the McGladrey, it made his whole year and he stayed #1 in the rankings through Hyundai.  He dropped to 11th after the Masters and dropped to a season low of 15 after the Players but worked his way back to 5th going into the PGA Championship with a runner-up finish at Greenbrier and a 5th at WGC-Bridgestone. He went on to finish 18th in the FedEx Cup race.

The point is you have to play in these fall events or you find yourself too far down.  For Adam Scott he wanted to spend time in Australia with his wife and their new child.  He didn’t start until the Florida swing, which meant the tour was a third of the way over.  Scott went on to have a terrible year.

Going up against the NFL is suicide but the problem for the PGA Tour is if they don’t do the events, someone else will.  Players will play in Europe or Australia or Japan or Asia.  So they have these tournaments, in which folks are sponsoring.  The Tour also got a big break, over the last couple of years the Golf Channel became the place to watch golf.  They don’t mind competing with the NFL even though I have been told that Golf Channel loses a fortune with these fall events.  With this and the advent of events in Asian coming online, this created a way for the PGA Tour to complete against the NFL.  Frankly it’s like background noise, nice to have PGA Tour golf in the fall but it’s still not the same as golf between the Hawaii stops and the Tour Championship.

Still at the end of the day the events in the fall are getting more marquee names and increasing viewership.  Still many “purists” would love to see the tour shut down after the Tour Championship and not start again until January, but that is never going to happen.

About the Frys.com Open:

This event started in Scottsdale, Arizona and after three years at Grayhawk transferred to CordeValle Golf Club, close to it’s sponsors headquarters in San Jose.  The hope was that CordeValle would be a temporary home as it’s been a dream to hold the event at the Institute Golf Course in Morgan Hill, CA.   But construction problems and such have forced the event not to be played on the ultra private course that very few have ever seen.  So CordeValle was to be a short term fix, and for last year and this year the event is being played in Napa Valley at the Silverado resort.  Then the event is supposed to move to the Institute Golf Course (which is suppose to be a great course) next year, but after the success at Silverado I would be a days pay the switch doesn’t happen.

Course information:

Many will not remember, but Silverado was a proud site of the PGA Tour between 1968 to 1980 and then held a senior event, the Transamerica between 1990 and 2002.  So Silverado had a deep relationship with professional golf.  The resort changed direction because it didn’t need to spend the money to host a professional event.  Napa Valley has become a great destination for couples over 40, between the great weather and the vineyards, Silverado didn’t need it.  The resort lost some of its touch and needed some sprucing up. One of the areas that have been improved was the golf courses.  There are two of them, the South and the North, a couple of years ago Johnny Miller put together an investment group that purchased the courses, and Miller reworked the North Course. What Miller did was revamped all of the greens, put in new bunkering and realigned the fairways and trimmed the trees that were too cumbersome.  Of course because of the downturn of the golf marketplace, Miller didn’t go crazy by changing a lot of the holes, adding lakes and streams.  Still Miller is happy at the work, and he is hopeful to be able to do the same to the South Course.

So what will the pros find this week?  The greens are one of the things that Miller points out that makes it a better course.  “These greens are as tough as Augusta at high speeds,” Miller said to Golf.com. “I would probably have five three putts a round.”  The course was also increased from 6,900 to 7,203.  Now on the surface this may be too short for the best pros in the world.  So I can see both the long distance players having a field day while the shorter hitters also enjoying shorter approaches to the greens.  One thing that was brought out in the 13 years it was played in the 70s,  the caliber of champions which included players like Billy Casper, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson and Ben Crenshaw among it’s champions.

Another important aspect of the Miller redo, in an effort to improve playability and aesthetics, turf renovation got rid of Kikuyu grass and return the course to its original mix of rye and Kentucky bluegrass condition.

The course was a big hit with the players, sponsors and fans and provided some great theater.

New things for 2016:

We are always looking for new things to put in and we have an idea that we are working on for the new year.  Each course has historical stats for different stats catagories and ranks them with the other courses on the PGA Tour for that year.  So we are going to take the four stat catagories that are tough for the week and then take the players in the field, look for their ranking for those sta compared to all the other players.  We will add up their rankings for the four different catagories and figure out which players are top for the week.  We are still working on the format but here is a taste of what we are working on, giving out the top-20 in this year’s field off of our list:

We haven’t come up with a name for it yet, but for now we are calling it  COURSE KEYS

(P.S. sorry it’s ugly right now)

This is based on the most important stats for Silverdo, based on data from last years Frys.co, and using data from all the players for stats from 2015.

Strokes gained Tee-to-Green   Can’t rank this stat for course data

Putting from 10 feet and in: Silverado ranked 2nd of the 39 courses in the 2015 ranking

Par 3 scoring average: Silverado ranked T-9th of the 52 courses in the 2015 ranking

Driving accuracy: Silverado ranked 14th of the 51 courses in the 2015 ranking

                           Rank Strokes Gained            Rank Putting                  Rank for             Rank for                          Total rank

NAME                      Tee-to-green                from 10 feet & in          Par 3 average    Driving accuracy              four catgories

Jason Bohn                    40                                      31                                   18                              5                                     94

Brendon Todd               70                                        1                                    28                            10                                   109

Will Wilcox                    20                                      76                                    2                              18                                    116

Jim Herman                  52                                       27                                   18                             33                                   130

Graham DeLaet            67                                       18                                    8                              47                                   140

Jerry Kelly                     69                                       65                                    2                               9                                    145

Russell Knox                 23                                       63                                   35                             28                                  149

Ryan Moore                  43                                       62                                    49                             11                                  165

Robert Streb                  27                                      25                                     2                             123                                 177

Brendon de Jonge        57                                      60                                    18                             44                                  179

Kevin Na                         28                                     52                                    18                              84                                 182

Chad Campbell              44                                    94                                     13                              41                                  192

Webb Simpson               7                                     164                                     8                               26                                 205

Jon Curran                    111                                     17                                     49                              32                                 209

Justin Rose                     6                                     111                                     28                             64                                   209

Daniel Berger                 33                                    27                                     49                            104                                  213

Johnson Wagner           121                                    6                                       2                               86                                  215

Colt Knost                       129                                  46                                     35                                7                                   217

George McNeill              50                                     73                                    35                               60                                 218

Zac Blair                         142                                   20                                    35                              23                                 220

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the Frys.com Open:

Key stat for the winner:

Last year hitting fairways and putting became the keys to playing well.  Silverado had the 14th hardest fairways to hit last year so hitting it straight is important.  Also putting was important, on putts from 4 to 8 feet it ranked the 4th hardest to making those putts and from inside 10 feet the 2nd hardest on tour.

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

• Since course is still new for a good share of the players, experience will play a very limited role.  Traditionally tournaments on the PGA Tour that hold events for the first and second year, are won by journeymen and players with very little experience winning.  Last year’s winnner Sangmoon Bae fit that bill so expect the unexpected for this week.
• Johnny Miller says the greens are perfect and fast, so good putter should have a field day.
• Scrambling is also very important because it’s not that demanding around the greens at Silverado.  Last year it ranked 25th hardest, still to win you have to get up and down on those greens you miss.
• Lastly a lot of journeyman are in the field.  Yes there are 15 winners from last year’s PGA Tour season.  Yes Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose are in the field.  Yes 8 players from the 2015 Tour Championship are in the field along with four players (Steven Boditch, Chris Kirk, Hideki Matsuyama and Charl Schwartzel are in the field.  But also in the field will be a lot of pro’s that just got their tour cards off the Web.Com Tour playoffs.  Off the list of 50 qualifiers there was room for the top-35 this week and only three (Patton Kizzire, Kyle Stanley and Anirban Lahiri aren’t in the field)  So look for the winner being a Jamie Lovemark or a Chez Reavie, fresh from getting their Tour cards over a Rory McIlroy or Justin Rose.
• Weather should be like it always is in the Napa area, picture perfect.