BlogSafeway Open Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

Hard to believe that just like that 2016 is over, and the 2017 season is starting up.  Yes, because the new wrap around schedule, the 2017 season will get started with seven events before January making it 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 FedEx Cup Points and everyone’s year was off and running.  For those that don’t make their first start until 8 weeks into the season at the Honda Classic, they will find themselves way down the point list with an insurmountable disadvantage in ranking up FedEx Cup Points.  Think of it this way, by the Honda Classic the season will be a quarter of the way finish so you can see how important this six week fall stretch is.

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 (pre-2014) 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.

Three 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.

Last year thanks to playing well in the six week fall stretch, it meant players like Kevin Kisner, Russell Knox, Justin Thomas, Kevin Na and Emiliano Grillo got such a great head start that they finished in the top-30 of the FedEx Cup Point race and got to play in the Tour Championship.

The point is you have to play in these fall events or you find yourself too far down.  For Adam Scott  in 2015 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 quarter 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 when 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 the Race to Dubai on the European Tour, 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.

Tiger Woods

Last month Woods created a stir by announcing that he was going to play in this week’s Safeway Open, then the Turkish Airlines Open in November and then his Hero World Challenge in December.  On Monday he announced that despite being healthy again and having no physical issues, his game isn’t ready for the PGA Tour so he won’t play in Napa or Turkey.  It’s unfortunate for the fans who bought tickets to see Tiger, ticket sales had doubled for this year’s Safeway Open.  But for Tiger it’s probably the best.  Over the last seven years he has shown up and because of physical problems wasn’t the Tiger Woods people wanted to see,  The old Tiger that seem to win all the time is probably gone forever, but nobody wants to see Tiger struggle to break 80.  Also Tiger can’t endure anymore back surgeries so he probably has one comeback to him.  So hopefully in the coming months with no pressure from fans or media he can try to find some parts of his game that will return him to the winners circle and by the time January rolls around we will see parts of the old Tiger again.  Many feel that Tiger won’t be able to compete on the highest level and will just retire from competition, but at least by taking his time he will give himself the best chance for success.  I don’t see him at the same level he was a decade ago, but I can see him winning again and possibly even winning a major or two before age catches up to him.

A new class of graduates

Two weeks ago 50 players from the Web.Com regular season and finals earned PGA Tour cards.  Of the 50 it was a mix of past PGA Tour members and some that even won on the PGA Tour like Scott Stallings, Will MacKenzie, Rod Pampling, Michael Thompson, D.A. Points and Rory Sabbatini.  We also saw a couple European Tour regulars like Andrew Johnston and Gonzalo Fdez-Castano earn cards along with U.S. Amateur winner Bryson DeChambeau who many feel could be a star in the future.

Of the 50 that earned cards, 40 of them will play at the Safeway and we have to look at the list because some of these players could win this week.  Defending champion Emiliano Grillo was one of those that earn his PGA Tour card on the Web.Com Tour and won the season ending Web.Com Tour Championship just two weeks before winning in Napa.  So it’s best to see who played well in the final weeks of the Web.Com Tour, players like J.J. Spaun, Michael Thompson, Grayson Murrary and Bryson DeChambeau could be the winner this week in Napa.

About the Safeway 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 was until the event moved to Napa for the 2015 event.  The event was suppose to move to the Institute Golf Course (which is suppose to be a great course) someday, but after the success at Silverado and Frys dropping sponsorship the event signed up Safeway as the title sponsor and for the foreseeable future will stay at the Silverado resort.

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 has become a big hit with the players, sponsors and fans and provided some great theater.

Let’s take a look at key stats that are important for those playing at the Silverado:

This is based on the most vital stats from Silverado Resort, North course based on data from last year’s Safeway Open and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2016.
This is the third year that the Safeway Open is being played at Silverado which has a history of holding PGA Tour events going back to the 60s. So the resort had a deep relationship with professional golf. A couple years ago Johnny Miller put together an investment group to buy the Napa resort. The two courses are good, but they were never updated with the advent of new equipment. So when Miller came in he wanted to rework the two courses and bring them up to date. He started first on the North Course by revamping all of the greens, put in new bunkering and realigned the fairways and trimmed the trees that were too cumbersome. The most important item in the change was changing the greens by adding some undulation and making them very fast. Miller also added 300 yards so it will play at a par 72 and at 7,203 yards.
Last year the course played to a 71.11 scoring average, close to a shot under par. It was the 33rd hardest course on the PGA Tour. One of the reason for the low scoring was perfect weather with perfect course conditions and no wind. For the pros the hardest aspect of the course is hitting fairways, 53.94% of the fairways were hit last year as it ranked the 10th hardest course to hit. Even with the tight fairways, the players hit 67.84% of the greens making it the 29th hardest course to hit in regulation. With that 1,630 birdies were made on the course as only 8 other courses saw more birdies made, so hitting fairways and greens will lead to making a lot of birdies. As for the greens they were the 39th hardest greens to score on which meant that lot’s of putts dropped during the week.

In looking at how last years winner Emiliano Grillo did it he couldn’t of been better in most stats. He was T-8th in Driving Accuracy and T-16th in Greens hit. Now Grillo didn’t make many birdies, he had 18 but 16 players made more than him.

For the second week in a row, the tour plays a course that doesn’t favor the long hitter, matter of fact the key to playing well at Sedgefield is to hit it straight and position your drives for the shot into the green. A look at the list of champions at the Wyndham since the event went back to Sedgefield in 2008 shows that the list of winners are guys that either hit is short and straight, or in the case of hitting it long players like Webb Simpson, Sergio Garcia and Patrick Reed that also can hit it straight and long. Another important aspect of driving, the holes that dogleg need players to lay it up to avoid going through the fairway and it’s always best to be in the fairways. The course is tree line and that is more of a hazard than the rough which is not as penal as it could be.
Like any other great Donald Ross course the greens are tough, first in hitting them if you miss them it’s a hard up and down. The greens are also pretty flat and lot’s of putts are made, but good and bad putters. So it’s a course that favors short hitters, those that do scramble well and average putters. Last week was a perfect example, winner Ryan Moore is one of the shortest hitters on tour, can scramble ok and putt ok and yes he does make lot’s of birdies. Now Grillo won thanks to hitting the ball great, keeping it in play and on the 19 greens he missed he got it up and down for par on 16 of those holes

So in looking at our four categories, we see how much driving and getting the ball on the green makes a difference. So we pick Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green because at Silverado putting the ball in play off the tee is very important, probably one of the most important items on this Robert Trent Jones course. Next up we pick scrambling, because if the greens are missed you have to still make par. After that putting is important, so we have picked Strokes Gained putting as our third most important element. Last is birdies as we pointed out lot’s of birdies are made on this course.

*Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green: Looks at the combination of length off the tee and accuracy, then getting the ball on the green so it determines who is best at all of these items.

*Scrambler: Who gets it up and down after missing a green.

*Strokes Gained Putting: The number of putts a player takes from a specific distance is measured against a statistical baseline to determine the player’s strokes gained or lost on a hole.

*Birdies: Players that make the most birdies
Also remember that there are 144 players in the field and this list only has 95 players. That’s because a lot of players who just got their PGA Tour cards from 2016 Web.Com Tour are in the field and played that tour full-time in 2016. As an example Emiliano Grillo didn’t have any stats when he won the Safeway Open last year, so it’s important to remember those Web.Com Tour players.

Players from this year’s field with stats from 2016:

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

For the rest of the players, hit this link:

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the Safeway Open:

Key stat for the winner:

Last year hitting fairways and putting became the keys to playing well.  Silverado had the 10th hardest fairways to hit last year so hitting it straight is important.  Also putting was important, on putting average it ranked 39th out of 50 courses meaning that lot’s of putts were made.  So look for that trait in a possible winner this week.

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.  The last two winnners Sangmoon Bae and Emiliano Grillo fit that bill so expect the unexpected for this week.
• Johnny Miller says the greens are perfect and fast, so good putters 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 35th hardest, so to win you have to get up and down on those greens you miss.
• Lastly a lot of journeyman are in the field along with the 40 recent Web.Com Tour graduates.  Yes there are 9 winners from last year’s PGA Tour season.  Yes Phil Mickelson, Paul Casey, Bill Haas, Matt Kuchar, Webb Simpson, Smylie Kaufman, and Emiliano Grillo are in the field.  Yes 7 players from the 2016 Tour Championship are in the field.
• Weather could be a problem as the weekend calls four up to 100% rain on Friday, 90% on Saturday and 60% on Sunday.  So it could become a scramble this week and you can have a very unusual winner on Sunday afternoon.