BlogCIMB Classic Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

Very interesting first two events of the new year.  Emiliano Grillo was on every bodies radar screen so there was no surprise when he won the Fry’s.com Open.  But when Smylie Kaufman won the Shriners, many people wondered what is up.  Two events and both of them won by players that just got their tour cards last month, through the Web.Com Tour qualifying.  Not much experience for the two, Kaufman only had 4 PGA Tour starts under his wing while Grillo had 7.  But Grillo was very misleading since he played in 90 European Tour events between 2012 and ’15.  Grillo came close to winning both the 2014 Dubai Desert Classic and the 2015 Volvo China Open.  Grillo has played all over the world, experience that can’t be found by a going to college like Smylie Kaufman did.  He graduated in 2014 from LSU and at the end of 2014 qualified for the Web.Com Tour.  He spent the whole year playing on that tour, winning the United Leasing Championship in May and then finishing runner-up at the Price Cutter Charity in August.  He was 6th on the Web.Com tour money list, so he wasn’t a bad player.  With the wins both Grillo and Kaufman secure trips to the 2016 Hyundai, Arnold Palmer, Masters, Players Championship, Memorial and PGA Championship.

The big question will be what the future of these players are.  We are seeing a switch to the younger player.  The last six winners on the PGA Tour going back to Jason Day at the Barclays are 27 and younger.  Going back the last 51 events on the PGA Tour back to Billy Horschel winning last year’s BMW Championship, 28 of the winners have been 27 years old or younger.  On the other end of the Spectrum, only five players (Padraig Harrington, Alex Cejka, Jim Furyk, J.J. Henry and Davis Love III) were over 40 so things are shifting.

This week we will not see any Web.Com Tour graduate win.  Only 78 players are in the field and a dozen or so are off the Asian Tour.  Of the 65 others they were off the FedEx Cup point list for 2015 so in reality this is a pretty good event for players who don’t mind a bit of hassle.  First it’s 9,200 miles from Las Vegas to Malaysia and will take almost 24 hours to get there.  Making things even tougher, for those that played on Sunday in Vegas he would have to get to either L.A. or San Francisco on Sunday night and then endure a close to 24 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur.  With the 9 hour time change and going over the international dateline that means you would get in about midnight Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.  Between that and a major dose of jet-lag, I would say that it will be tough for those that play on Sunday in Las Vegas.  Still for the winner it’s a cool $1.2 million, if you finish inside the top-20 you get just over $100,000.  Even for those that finish at the bottom, last place pays $13,160 not a bad check for a week spent in Malaysia.

With this being the first week of the European Tour playoffs, the CIMB did get a great field, including European stand-outs Henrik Stenson and Sergio Garcia.  Still it could be a challenge for this event to be recognized by people in the states watching it in the middle of the morning. In the fall it’s hard to get the interest of fans to events like the Fry’s and Shriners, now with a 12 hour time change and lack of media reporting, a lot of people may not care about this week and next.  Guess time will show, but for now they have good sponsors and for this week’s event in Malaysia it will showcase that country and help expand golf in Asia.

Course information:

This will be the third year that this event is being played at Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club.  The first three years of this event was played at The Mines Resort.  So for many in the field they won’t have much of an advantage or even seen the course before this week, but for those that played on the European Tour Kuala Lumpur Golf & C.C. has been used the last four years in the Maybank Malaysian Open which ended it’s 15 year run in 2013 with Kiradech Aphibarnrat winning. (it was brought back in 2015 and won by Anirban Lahiri)  Kuala Lumpur is very popular, a work horse on professional tours, just three weeks ago it held the Sime Darby LPGA Malaysia which was won by Jessica Korda.  So the course has the background for holding professional events.

The course lies just seven miles from downtown Kuala Lumpur and is part of a 36 hole complex that was opened in 1991.  Both the West and East course opened in 1991 and after the 2006 Malaysian was played on the west course, it underwent a total redesign.  Ted and Geoff Parslow of design firm E&G Parslow and Associates extensively reconstructed the layout over a period of eighteen months. The revamped West course reopened in October 2008 and a couple of months later held the Malaysian Open.

Because of the hot and humid weather, a special type of grass that many pros haven’t seen is used on the course, Seashore Paspalum.   The grass gives the course the reputation as the best groomed course in Asia.  The course is very fair, what you see is what you get.  Built on the site of a former rubber estate the course has greens that  don’t have much undulation and average 6,500 square feet.  It’s got over 90 bunkers and seven lakes come into play on 10 holes but from past events held on it scores will be low, probably in the 15 to 18 under range for this week.  So look for a lot of birdies to be made and lot’s of good putting.

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the CIMB Classic:

Key thing for the winner:

The biggest key is being able to survive what will be tough conditions weather wise.  Each day it’s going to be 90 degrees with over 95% humidity.  In looking at a weather report for the next week each day has 100% chance of thunderstorms, mostly in the afternoon so it will take a special breed of player to win.  So look for a player that has lot’s of experience in playing in what could be considered Florida weather in July.  Patience will be important, the last couple of years has been tough and in the 2014 event heavy rain came down every day and they had to finish the tournament on Monday morning.

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

• Past winners on this course seem to putt very well.  In looking at the last seven winners at Kuala Lumpur, Ryan Moore, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Louis Oosthuizen, Matteo Manassero, Seung-Yul Noh and Charlie Wi do have one thing in commend, they don’t overpower the ball and rely on good putting.
• Since the event is wide open with not many folks playing on this course, look at our who’s hot chart to see which player in the field has been playing the best of late.  On paper it would seem that those that come from Las Vegas will have problems, but Ryan Moore has won the last two years playing in Las Vegas.  Still I would prefer a player like Henrik Stenson, Sergio Garcia and Branden Grace who didn’t have to rush getting to Malaysia and got use to the time change.