TPC 4 Seasons Key Fantasy Stats

AT&T Byron Nelson

May 18th – 21st, 2017

TPC Four Seasons Resort

Irving, TX

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,166

Purse: $7.5 million

with $1,314,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Sergio Garcia

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

Last year’s AT&T Byron Nelson again had weather problems, but it wasn’t as bad as in 2015 when the par-4 14th hole was changed to a par-3. The course played to a 69.12 average and was the 32nd hardest course on the PGA Tour schedule in 2016. The par 70 course has never played as easy as it did last year. Between 2011 and 2014 it played over par each year, with the hardest being in 2011 when it’s scoring average was 72.35.
To be fair the course has never been a winner on the PGA Tour since it was first played in 1986. With it’s iconic host Byron Nelson, players attended the tournament out of respect to Byron, but after his death in 2006 attendance started to go down. Over the course of the last couple of decades, tournament officials worked hard to change some of the problems with the course, but nothing has seemed to help. Golf Digest ran polls in which TPC Four Seasons was in the top-ten of worst courses and in March of this year GolfWeek ran this article claiming the course was the worst as 14% of the 50 players asked said it was the worst.
The good news is that this will be the last year TPC Four Seasons will be used as a new course, Trinity Forest on the other part of town was built with the thought of holding this tournament. So for one last year Four Seasons will be used as many of the pros will be very happy to see it go.

So what is the key to playing TPC Four Seasons? First thing to understand is there are a lot of hazards like water, deep bunkers, rough and trees so it’s a strategic, thinking man’s course. Since 2011, in looking at the winners stats greens hit is important as five of the six winners were in the top-ten in greens hit with Jason Dufner leading that stat in 2012. Of the whole field it was 22nd last year as 65.44% of the players hit the green. Over the course of the last six years it’s ranked between 3rd (in 2011) and 29th so we pick greens hit as our first category. Last year Sergio Garcia won ranking T-4th in greens hit.
Second on our list is driving accuracy. This is a weird stat because of the different range over the years. Last year the field ranked 22nd in driving accuracy and in 2015 it was 21st. But in 2014 it was 8th, in 2013 was 9th, 8th in 2012 and 6th in 2011. So why the difference? Wet weather, in 2015 and last year the fairways were wet so ball didn’t run much. In the other years between 2011 and ’15 dry weather caused the course to be dry and the ball ran into more trouble. Now for this year in looking at the weather forecast, it’s calling for dry conditions on Thursday but rain moves into the area on Friday and by Saturday and Sunday it’s going to be very wet. Still we are choosing driving accuracy as our second category because the course has some tight holes with good size rough.
Third have to pick Parbreakers because you have to make a lot of birdies and since there are only two par 5s, the opportunities just aren’t there.
Last we pick Strokes gained putting. People don’t realize how important putting is and since the greens at Four Seasons don’t have much undulation and are perfect it’s very important to putting well.

*Greens in Regulation: Stat is great barometer on how good players manage their games around TPC Four Seasons. Every year the players that hit lot’s of greens do well.

*Driving Accuracy: Percentage of fairways hit, it’s important to hit fairways in order to score well

*Par Breakers: Course always seem to give up a lot of birdies and eagles, so it’s a combination of both stats

*Strokes Gaining putting: A formula that determines which players pick up the most strokes due to making putts from different distances and the number of putts taken.

The 133 of the 156 players from this year’s field with stats from 2017:

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

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