Quail Hollow Key Fantasy Stats

PGA Championship

August 10th – 13th, 2017

Quail Hollow Golf Club

Charlotte, North Carolina

Par: 71 / Yardage: 7,600

Purse: $10.5 million (last year)

with $1,800,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Jimmy Walker

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This year the PGA Championship is being played at Quail Hollow. It’s an unique choice not that the course is not major-good, but the fact that the PGA of America and USGA tend to avoid courses that are regularly used on the PGA Tour. Of course the USGA goes to Pebble and Torrey Pines while the PGA has gone to Riviera, but it’s been close to ten years since this is happened when the USGA played the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. The big advantage is that for those playing fantasy golf we now can see who in the past has played well on a course and you can have an easy pick. It also makes this week’s stat comparison easier because we have a lot of history of Quail Hollow since it has held a yearly PGA Tour event since 2003.
So this week’s information is based on the most important stats for Quail Hollow, based on data from last years Wells Fargo, and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2017. What we do is take their rank for each stat and then add up the four catagories.
The scoring average of the field at Quail Hollow in 2016 was 72.95, so with par being 72 that means the average score was just a shot over par, making Quail Hollow the 9th hardest course to score on in 2016. In the last 16 months the course has gone through a lot of changes. First all the greens were redone, putting in a new type of champion Ultradwarf Bermudagrass which should be good for the summer heat. They also cut down several thousands of trees, so Quail Hollow will be a lot sparser than we remember it being. They also have come up with four holes that will be totally different as the 1st and 2nd holes are now one long, 540 yard, par 4. The 5th hole was changed from a par 5 to a par 4 and a new second hole was built, it’s now a par 3. Also major work was done to the 11th hole. Now the famous finish is pretty much the same as before, but the course is now a par 71 compared to it being a par 72. Even with the reduce par, the course picked up 25 more yards and will play at 7,600 yards. Now the one thing that use to be bad and is even worst this year is the rough, it will be hard for players to get it on the green if they miss the fairway.
The course is most of the time hard, you look at the list of winners, they are some of golf’s best ball strikers like Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk, Vijay Singh and Lucas Glover. Yes some weird winners like Derek Ernst, Joey Sindelar and last year’s winner James Hahn, They are on the list, but most of the time your going to get a quality winner, someone that plays well in major championships and WGC events. So in looking at our four categories, they are all related to ball striking, except for the last category which I think will be very important and that is scrambling.
First is driving accuracy, the field hit a total of 51.01% of the fairways and was the 5th hardest fairway to hit on the PGA Tour. As for last year’s winner Hahn, he hit 57.14% of the fairways and was ranked T-20th. The course is also long, so players have to hit drivers off the tee and you don’t see many players lay back with a 3 wood or long iron. Our second category is proximity to hole, this is the cousin to greens in regulation which Quail Hollow was 8th in last year, but it’s important to see how close a player can get to the hole and at Quail Hollow it’s a bit over 43 feet and ranks 1st on tour in 2016. As for Hahn, he was T-13th. Our three category is strokes gained tee to green, again this gives an overall look at a player from the tee to the green, last year Quail Hollow was T-10th, the same for Hahn he was ranked 10th. Last is scrambling last year Quail Hollow was 16th while Hahn was 53rd.

You may say how come Hahn did do well in those stats and still win, frankly these things happen. But if you look at past champions like Rory McIlroy in 2015 he was very high up in those stats.

Still the secret is that this week a ball striker or a very good putter will rule and take the championship.

*Driving Accuracy: Important because the fairways are close to U.S. Open length and if you drive it into the rough, it’s tough.

*Proximity to hole: Hitting greens is important, last year Quail Hollow ranked 12th, but in proximity to hole, which tells how close players get to the hole, Quail Hollow ranked 6th as the players averaged getting it 40 feet.

*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

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

Here are the 95 of 156 players from this year’s field with stats from 2017

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