Kuala Lumpur Key Fantasy Stats

CIMB Classic

October 12th – 15th, 2017

Kuala Lumpur Golf & C.C.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Par: 72 / Yardage: 6,985

Purse: $7 million

with $1,260,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Justin Thomas

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This is based on the most vital stats from TPC Kuala Lumpur based on data from last year’s CIMB Classic and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2017.
This is the fifth year that the CIMB Classic is being played at TPC Kuala Lumpur. With it played in Malaysia, we don’t have true Shotlink stats to work with, they don’t even measure driving distance so we are stuck with the old-fashion stats of fairways and greens hit, scrambling, number of putts, birdies and eagles made. The one thing to understand about this week, last year TPC Kuala Lumpur played to a 70.30 average which was a shot and three quarters under par as only six other courses on the PGA Tour were easier in 2017, with only two of those courses having full field events on a single course held on them.
So the course is very easy, it ranked 38th in fairways hit and since we don’t know driving distance we can surmise that bombers love this course. But that may not be true, Ryan Moore won the event in 2014 & ’13 and we can’t say that Moore is a bomber, matter of fact he is in the bottom 20% in driving distance so you can’t call Kuala Lumpur a bombers delight.

So what can we look at historically to help us find players that should do well this week? Looking at the field from last year, all of them hit six and a half out of ten fairways, a very high percentage. They also hit lot’s of greens, over 7 of 10. Of the greens that they missed they got it up and down 6 out of every 10 tries and averaged 29.29 putts per round. So it’s easy to see how each of the players in the field averaged 4.22 birdies per round and either made birdie or eagle on a quarter of the holes that they played. So frankly for the average pro, TPC Kuala Lumpur is a lay up.

So in looking at our four categories, we are going to do a weird thing and that is bring back the same categories as we used last week. So we pick Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green because it helps to drive it long and straight and hit lot’s of greens. These are all traits in helping one make lot’s of birdies and eagles. Next up we pick strokes gained around the green because not only scrambling but Sand saves are important on the greens that are missed from the fairway. Our third category that is important is putting, so we have picked strokes gained putting. Last is birdies as we pointed out lot’s of birdies are made on this course.

One thing to realize that that is not only a PGA Tour event, but also a Asian Tour event so there are ten players that are from that tour and will not have stats:
S.S.P. Chawrasia
Gavin Kyle Green
Scott Hend
Jazz Janewattananond
Phachara Khongwatmai
Richard T. Lee
Prayad Marksaeng
Juvic Pagunsen
Poom Saksansin
The odds of one of these Asian Tour member winning this week are very slim.

*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.

*Strokes Gained Around-the-Green: Looks at the combination of gaining strokes by getting 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 average: Players that make the most birdies averaged per rounds played

60 of the 78 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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