Sony Open Fantasy Course Keys

Sony Open in Hawaii

January 14th – 17th, 2016

Waialae C.C.

Honolulu, Ha.

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,044

Purse: $5.8 million

with $1,044,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Jimmy Walker

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This is based on the most important stats for Waialae, based on data from last years Sony Open in Hawaii, and using data from all the players in the field for with stats from 2015 and 2016. What we do is take there rank for each stat and average that number between players rank in ’15 & ’16
The scoring average of the field at Waialae in 2015 was 69.01, so with par being 70 that means the average score was just over 1 under per round, making Waialae the 37th hardest course to score on in 2015. It’s also important to see how the weather played a factor, it was perfect each day with winds coming out of the south, southwest at 5 to 12 mph.

In looking at the stats for Waialae last year driving accuracy hits you, it’s important to hit greens. Last year it Waialae had the 7th hardest fairways to hit on the PGA Tour, but if you look at Jimmy Walker he was T-13th in his win last year and T-22nd in his 2014 win. Now Walker was 8th in driving distance and 4th in Strokes Gained tee-to-green, as he led greens hit last year. In 2014 Walker was T-22nd in driving accuracy, but 1st in driving distance and 6th in Strokes Gained tee-to-green. Still for the rest of the field driving accuracy is very important to scoring low at Waialae, along with Strokes Gained tee-to-green. As for putting, you can’t go low without making putts and Waialae has the best greens on tour for good putting. That’s because they are flat and don’t have much undulation so look for the winner to make lots of putts inside 10 feet, On the other end of the spectrum, making putts over 25 feet are really hard, probably because they are hard to judge. For the PGA Tour last year, Waialae ranked 12th on putts inside 10 feet, while it ranked 5th in putts from 4 to 8 feet. Players also made lot’s of putts over 25 feet, it ranked 5th last year. As for winner Jimmy Walker, last year he was 26th in putts inside 10 feet, T-2nd on putts between 4 and 8 feet and 5th in putts over 25 feet.

A couple of other things to look for scrambling is important for those that miss greens, only 12 courses had better scrambling stats than Waialae. There are two par 5s at Waialae and both of them are the easiest on the PGA Tour so a player has to go low on them.

*Driving Accuracy: Important because the fairways are close to U.S. Open length and if you drive it into the rough, it’s tough. On the tour in 2015 Waialae was 7th hardest, if you hit it into the rough you will have problems.

*Strokes Gained tee-to-green: Course may have only been 25th hardest on tour, but you need to hit it long and straight along with hitting lot’s of greens. So this is important to find a player that will do this

*Putting inside 10 feet: In 2015 Waialae was 12th hardest in putts made inside ten feet. For the week, players made 87.06% of them or to be exact 7,174 out of 8,240. So making putts will be important.

*Putting over 25 feet: This is a stat that we don’t use much but only 4 courses on the PGA Tour saw players make less putts over 25 feet. Of the 1,800 putts over 25 feet, only 79 were made so if a player is good in this stat it will help him.

The field course keys for ranks in stats in 2015 & ’16:

Click any column title in the table header to sort columns.