TPC Southwind Key Fantasy Stats

FedEx St. Jude Classic

June 8th – 11th

TPC Southwind

Germantown, TN

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,244

Purse: $6.4 million

with $1,152,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Daniel Berger

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This is based on the most important stats for the TPC Southwind, based on data from last year’s FedEx St. Jude Classic and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2017.
Last week we told you how Muirfield Village has lost it’s reputation as the course to get ready for the U.S. Open. This week we have the course that is a perfect place to get ready for Erin Hills, that is the TPC Southwind, which has always been one of the toughest courses on the PGA Tour. Just in the last seven years it’s never been higher than 14th on the list of toughest courses of the year, in 2015 the course played almost a shot harder than it’s par and it’s 70.93 average ranked it 9th. Last year the course played to the same 70.93 average and ranked 10th. So why is that happening? The course is very tight with very difficult bermuda rough. So getting it in the fairway is key and the course has always been demanding in greens hit. As an example TPC Southwind ranked the 7th hardest course on the PGA Tour to hit fairways. In the last five years the highest it’s ever been was 11th in 2014 and it’s been in the top-ten three of the last five years. The same with greens hit, last year 57.34% of the greens were hit as it ranked the 6th hardest on tour. Over the course of the last six years it’s never been higher than 9th. So you can see why more and more players should be playing in this event as a warm-up, but the sad fact is that the good players don’t show up. Example of this, only two top-15 player, Rickie Fowler and Adam Scott are in the field this year. Even worst only 12 of the top-50 are in Memphis. This has been the norm for this event, since 2000 only ten years have seen more than one, top-15 players. In between 2007 and 2010 they got good fields to this event, in 2007 & ’10 six top-15 players were in the field. But including this year the pickings have been slim, only one top-15 player attended the 2015 & ’16 FedEx St. Jude Classic. On the other end of the spectrum, doing well in Memphis hasn’t help the following week in the Open. Last year Daniel Berger won but finished T-37th at Oakmont. In 2015 Fabian Gomez won, in 2014 Ben Crane won and in 2013 Harris English won in Memphis but all three didn’t even make it into the field for the U.S. Open. So maybe playing in Memphis isn’t the way to get ready for the U.S. Open, but the fact is TPC Southwind is very demanding, tough course.

In looking at our four categories, our first for TPC Southwind are strokes gained tee-to green. last year the course ranked T-10th while winner Daniel Berger was 1st. In 2015 the course was 6th while 2015 champion Fabian Gomez ranked 1st. Next important is one putt percentage, TPC Southwind ranked 47th last year and 46th in 2015, meaning that players had a lot of one putts. Berger ranked T-52nd while Gomez ranked T-2nd in that stat. .
Our third important stat is scrambling, players will miss greens and have to get it up and down. The course ranked 21st last year and in 2015 while Berger was T-24th and Gomez was 8th. Last is birdie average last year it ranked 14th and in 2015 was 11th which means it was hard to make birdies as in the field the average was thy 3.16 last year and 3.15 in 2015. For Berger he averaged 5.00 and was T-1st while Gamez he averaged 5.00 and was T-2nd in 2015.

*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

*One Putt Percentage: The figure that shows how many times a player one putts a green.

*Scrambling: The percent of time a player misses the green in regulation, but still makes par or better.

*Birdie Average: Average number of birdies made over the course of a round

The 128 of the 156 players from this year’s field with stats from 2017:

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