BlogShriners Preview and Picks

Whose hot or going to be hot, our player watch:

Last week at the Sanderson Farms we saw a new star emerge as Cody Gribble won.  It was easy to see it coming, after finishing T-5th at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship, which was the last Web.Com Tour event it helped him get his PGA Tour card for 2017.  He took advantage of his good luck with a T-8th finish at Safeway and then looked awesome in Mississippi with a second round 63 followed by a final round 65.  It’s still early in the year but in his first two events Gribble seems to be putting very well, on tour he is 4th in Strokes Gain Putting.

For this week here are some players to watch.  One is 22-year-old California native and San Diego State alum Xander Schauffele.  He finished 26th on the Web.Com Tour money list and barely missed getting his card, but with a fine T-9th at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship he earned his PGA Tour card.  His first start at Safeway got him a T-60th finish, but he had problems in the final round shooting 77.  He was very consistent in Mississippi finishing T-5th, this time he was flawless in a final round 66.  Schauffele has never played in the Shriners but should be ok since he does make his fair share of birdies.  Last year he ranked 18th on the Web.Com tour in birdies and 31st in eagles, so he should fit in this week.  A couple of others that could do well in Las Vegas is Grayson Murray who was T-8th in Mississippi and led the Web.Com Tour’s par breaker list last year.  Another good choice could be Ryan Blaum who was T-26th at the Safeway and T-11th at Mississippi, he led last year’s Web.Com Tour most birdies made list.

Another player to watch is former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover. He has always been a king from tee to green, but has always lacked skill once on the greens.  He has worked hard on it and last week in his T-5th finish putted ok after leading the field in greens hit.  Again Vegas is a city were “Lady Luck” can rear up at any time with any players so maybe Glover will improve his record in Vegas, were he has missed the cut in his last three starts.

Also Troy Merritt has never played well in Vegas, but he was good last week in Mississippi finishing T-11th and in the Safeway he was T-15th.  In both events he has shot 70 or lower seven of his eight rounds so you just never know.

The Buzz:

The oldest running fall event, Shriners Hospital for Children has all of the glamour of Las Vegas on a course that a lot of players like to play on.  For some this will be a fun week with a little bit of golf mixed in with the fast-pace action of Las Vegas.

Founded in 1983 as the Panasonic Las Vegas Pro-Celebrity Classic, the event has undergone six name changes in the events history. Frys.Com became the Title Sponsor for the event in 2006, replacing its former title, the Michelin Championship at Las Vegas.  2007 was the final year of Fry’s involvement and in 2008 Justin Timberlake took on the duties of becoming the tournament presenter with Shriners Hospitals for Children sponsoring the event.  Timberlake is no longer associated with the tournament.

At the tournament’s inception, the managers of the tournament prided themselves on running a tournament that stood out amongst the slew of annual PGA events. It was the first event to offer a total purse of $1 million; at the trophy presentation, the winner used to receive his trophy with two showgirls by his side. Though these ideas help separate the event from others, the most drastic deviation from the norm is the tournament’s format, which in a way “borrowed” the format at the Bob Hope Open.

In its inception, the tournament was played over five rounds at between three and four courses. However, in 2003, when the original tournament founders abdicated control to another volunteer organization, the event was immediately switched to the more conventional four round format. Over the years, courses have been dropped and for the 8th straight year it’s only played on the TPC Summerlin.

One thing about this event, it’s always nice winning an event but for some of it’s past champions they never got back to the winners circle again on the PGA Tour.  Looked at the 16 past winners since 2000, only seven Ryan Moore (2012), Jonathan Byrd (2010), Martin Laird (2009), George McNeill (2007), Troy Matteson (2006), Stuart Appleby (2003) and Bob Estes (2001) won again.  The others, Smylie Kaufman (2016) Ben Martin (2015), Webb Simpson (2014), Kevin Na (2011), Marc Turnesa (2008), Wes Short Jr. (2005), Andre Stolz (2004), Phil Tataurangi (2002) and Billy Andrade (2000) never made it back to the winners circle and some of them don’t even play anymore on the PGA Tour.

Advantages of the Wrap-around schedule:

What a great world the PGA Tour is.  Just look at some of the players that had high finishes at the Safeway, CIMB and Sanderson Farms.  Winners Brendan Steele, Justin Thomas and Cody Gribble can now have a comfortable 2017, which is still two months away.  With all of there victories we know that there Christmas will be special.  The same for players like Patton Kizzire, he now doesn’t have to worry about the year because he has gotten it off in the proper manner with his runner-up finish at the Safeway.  Even guys like Xander Schauffele, who was playing in just his fourth PGA Tour event, his T-5th has put $153,300 in his pocket.  Gosh, how far things have gotten, in 1964 Jack Nicklaus won the money race with $113,284 less than what Schauffele made.  Oh it took Ben Hogan 16 years on the PGA Tour before he won his first $100,000.  Going a step further, Gene Sarazen collected money on the PGA Tour between 1920 and 1976 and this may seem hard to believe but in his 56 years of playing he won 38 times, seven of them majors and only won $77,787.  So it’s nice to see all these guys doing so well with the first day of 2016 still 79 days away.

One last thing, this week is the 20th anniversary of Tiger Woods first win on the PGA Tour.  In 1996 he won the Shriners by beating Davis Love III in a playoff.  for the victory he won $297,000 just about half of what Schauffele won for finishing 5th at the Sanderson Farms last week.

Have to talk about Draft Kings:

For the last year and a half we have all loved Draft Kings.  Until about two months ago a week didn’t go by without me filling out a card in Draft Kings games.  Gosh I loved in May when Draft Kings started games with the European Tour.  But over the course of the last six weeks, I have gotten very frustrated with them.  Maybe it’s because of the lack of interest of players to participate.  Ratings for golf are down and frankly even our page views on Golfstats are down.  Golf isn’t the only sport that is affected, even NFL football ratings are 10% down.  Many feel this is because of the presidential race going on, people are more interested in that than sports.  But I have to say that Draft Kings has gotten to be very tough to win at of late.  No it’s not because I am not picking the right players, it’s the games are the same and getting boring.  I really wish that Draft Kings would have some new type of games, maybe matchups, maybe final round games.  Anything that is different than what we are having now.  I also am not loving the payout scheme, the purses are growing smaller and the payouts use to be around 23%, they are going down in some games to 12 and 13%.  What I don’t understand about Draft Kings, they should go out of their way to pay off more folks, up to 50%.  They could do that with smaller prizes which honestly wouldn’t affect their take.  If you win you want to play the game the next time.  You start losing and you tend to not want to play, specially when the payouts start getting slimmer and slimmer and it gets harder to win money and stay ahead.  I know that the number of people that sign up for a game dictates the payouts, maybe they should think of having less games.  The purpose of this is to see if anyone else feels this way?  If so write me at Golfersal@aol.com.

I really think this lack of interest is an anomaly brought on by the elections.  It could also be over saturation and way too much golf each week of the year.  After Thanksgiving golf will have a five week rest but I really feel that golf should have a rest right around mid September because there is too much golf.  But for me I am taking some time off from Draft Kings until the games have better payouts or at least to the Hyundai Tournament of Champions.  I love the challenge of Draft Kings and with the success of Draft Kings so goes the success of GolfStats.Com but they have to make it worthwhile for me to play their games.  Right now it’s just not right.

Course information:

• TPC Summerlin was designed by Bobby Weed and Fuzzy Zoeller in 1992. The Par 71 course measures 7,255 yards. It has a course rating of 74.3 and a slope rating of 139. The tees, fairways, and rough all comprise of 419 Bermuda Grass, cut at 3/8″, 3/8″, and 2″ respectively. The greens consist of a 1/8″ cut of A-1/A-4 Creeping Bent Grass. This short cut mixed with the always speedy Bent Grass explains the rather Stimpmeter reading of 11 feet. As for hazards, the course features 99 sand bunkers (with 51 around the greens) and water comes into play on four holes.
• The signature hole at TPC Summerlin is the short 341-yard par four 15th hole. The large elevated green is reachable from the tee; however, numerous bunkers guard the green, making the play risky, but possibly very rewarding. As for accolades, Golf Digest rated this as the fourth “Best in State” course for 1995-96, and the fifth best for 1997-98. Also, GolfWeek awarded it 98th in the category of “America’s 100 Best Modern Courses” for 1997.
• Last year was the eight time that Summerlin was the only course used and they made a big change in 2009 changing par to 71 by making the third hole a long par 4 at 473 yards.  In addition to this change, trees were added along the right side of the fairways on Nos. 9 and 16, both par 5s. The rough also was grown longer than in years past and for holes 7, 9, 11, 12, 13 and 16 the fairways are going to be between 3 and 5 yards narrower than in 2008.  All of these changed to try and make the course play a bit tougher.  In 2008 Summerlin played to an average of 69.070, while in 2009 with par reduced it played just about the same, 69.152. In 2010 it played to a 68.956 average, while in 2011 it was 68.883, 2012 was 69.713 and the 40th toughest course at of 49. In 2014 the course played to a 69.546 average and was the 43rd hardest course out of 48.  In 2015 the course played to a 69.659 average and was the 42nd hardest course out of the 52 played.  Last year the course played to a 70.080 and was the 34th hardest course out of 50.
• Lot’s of birdies are made on this course, last year 1,701 were made along with 50 eagles.  The finish is demanding with the par 3 17th hole played the third hardest hole at 3.128 while the 18th hole was the 11th hardest at 3.977.

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open:

Key stat for the winner:

Making lots of birdies is important.  The average for the last 12 winners since the course reverted to a 72 hole affair is is 22 under and the winners average making 25 birdies per round.  So the secret is to make a lot of birdies.

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

• With fairways that are wide open, fairways with lots of roll, dominating the par 5s has been a key.  It’s also interesting to note that in the last 12 years the winners have averaged 12 under par on the par 4s.  Last year Smylie Kaufman was 6 under on the par 4s while Ben Martin was 9 under in 2015 and in 2014 Webb Simpson was 12 under the same as Ryan Moore was in 2012. Jonathan Byrd was the best at 14 under in 2010 while the least lowest was 6 under by George McNeill in 2007.
• Being an accurate driver, a long driver or a person that hits a lot of greens doesn’t give you a big advantage.  Scrambling is very important it ranked 10th on the PGA Tour last year.  If there ever was a tournament that favors the newcomer, this is it.
• Most of the time the weather is wonderful, but every now and then high winds bring big challenges to the players, those that can handle these conditions have the advantage.  But for this year look for perfect conditions with very little wind so scoring will be low.
• You have to realize were your at, in Las Vegas “lady luck” is very important in winning, a lot of players that you would never think would win have found the “luck factor” in victory.