Sheshan Inter. Key Fantasy Stats

HSBC Champions

October 26th – 29th, 2017

Sheshan International Golf Club

Shanghai, China

Par: 72 / Yardage: 7,266

Purse: $9.75 million

with $1,660,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Hideki Matsuyama

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This is based on the most vital stats from Sheshan International based on data from last year’s WGC-HSBC Champions and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2017.
This is the 13th time that the WGC-HSBC Champions is being played at Sheshan International since 2006. The event was on the European and Asian Tour when first started in 2006 and was played twice in 2009. In 2012 the PGA Tour stepped in and sactioned sanctioned the event in which the win was given to Ian Poulter, but his earnings wasn’t official and they didn’t award FedEx Cup points. The next year the event became a full blow World Golf Championship event in which points and money were official. Since the event is played in China it doesn’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.
So we have to look at some of the simple stats to determine what is important, what kind of skills does it take to win at Sheshan International. Even with players like Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson and even Phil Mickelson winning there is a though that bombers rule, but that isn’t true when you see that players like Russell Knox, Y.E. Yang and Ian Poulter don’t hit it long. Last year Hideki Matsuyama won and yes he ranked 26th in driving distance on tour in 2017 but he won last year’s WGC-HSBC because of his putting, he had the lowest totals of anyone in the field. Of course we can easily say that his shotmaking wasn’t that keen, he was T-43rd in fairways hit and T-10th in greens hit, but if that was true Matsuyama would of been one of the leaders in scrambling and he wasn’t, ranking T-9th. He also was 4th in one-putts, so it wasn’t the case of him scrambling to victory, he did it takes to his putter which at time isn’t very strong. But in looking at the field, of the ten that finished in the top-ten, four of them were in the top-ten as the course was T-35th in putting average which meant that lot’s of putts were made on a course that has some of the best kept greens on tour. Now is hitting greens important? Yes and no, it ranked 26th as hitting fairways wasn’t that important as the course ranked 16th. Scrambling was important, it ranked 12th. The course has a good shared of birdies and eagles made, it ranked 29th in par breakers. Now the one thing that the course shows is that it’s par 5s are hard to play, last year it had the 5th hardest par 5s on tour as the 78 players averaged the courses four par 5s in 3 under for the week. Matsuyama shined in this stat as he was not only 11 under on the par 5s, but also 12 under on the par 4s, some of the reasons he won by seven shots.
The course is no push over, the par 72 course averaged 71.90 making it the 25th hardest course on tour in 2017.

So what can we look at historically to help us find players that should do well this week? Hard to point out so we are going to pick strokes gained for our top-3 categories. The first one is 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 par breakers as we pointed out making birdies and eagles is always important in winning events

Just like the other two Asian Tour events, there is a good share of Asian Tour players along with seven Chinese entrants led by Li Haotong, who finished 3rd at the British Open, closing on Sunday with a 63 at Royal Birkdale. Also a good share of European Tour players are in the field, so of the 78 in the field only 32 of them have stats from the PGA Tour in 2017.

*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.

*Par Breakers: Combination of birdies and eagles made to show under par totals

32 of the 78 Players from this year’s field with stats from 2017

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