Shinnecock Hills Key Fantasy Stats

U.S. Open

June 14th – 17th, 2018

Shinnecock Hills Golf Club

Southampton, N.Y.

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,440

Purse: $12 million (last year)

with $2.16 million (last year) to the winner

Defending Champion:
Brooks Koepka

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

The U.S. Open is going back to Shinnecock Hills, a course that held the Open in 1986, 1994 and then 2004. Unfortunately, the Shinnecock membership was unhappy with the way the course was set-up, and when the course was burnt out over the weekend, the membership had enough. They swore that they were finished and that they would never hold another USGA event on the course again. As we all know, things and people do change over the years and when Mike Davis took over membership took not only a liking towards the USGA’s executive director but trusted that he would do the right thing with another U.S. Open.
We have to say that since Davis took over the overall concept of the U.S. Open setup has drastically changed. On the surface, some felt that Davis made the courses play too easy. Others contend that the USGA is allowing bombers to have too much of an advantage with fairways getting wider.
Yes in the last ten years many courses do have wider fairways, but that is mostly because of the way the courses are. For years the USGA went to courses like Winged Foot, Oakland Hills, and Southern Hills, courses that have been around for close to a century that was tree-lined with lot’s of rough and hard, small greens. However, over the last 50 years, the USGA has changed it’s thought process on the courses that held the Open, changing in 1972 when Pebble Beach was first used. Many back then felt that the course was a drastic change from what U.S. Open courses were, one of the reasons it took so long to hold a U.S. Open on the course finally. However, 1972 was such a big success they went back to it ten years later, then again in 1992, 2000 and 2010. Pebble will hold the Open next year, that’s six times in less than 50 years.
However, what Pebble did was get the USGA to change their thought process on what a U.S. Open course was. Thus it opened up to having different types of courses like going to Shinnecock Hills in 1986. With the success of Shinnecock, a course that was more link style than any other course to hold the Open, it then opened up to more courses along the same line. Today we see the Open being played at Torrey Pines, which isn’t a links course but along the ocean, Pinehurst, which now has prominent links feel to it, Chambers Bay and Erin Hills. All of these were a big success except for Chambers Bay, which had crowd problems and the turf didn’t make for good conditions. I think that one day Chambers Bay will be back, mostly for its location in the major starved Pacific Northwest than any other reason. To go a step further, even Oakmont has changed drastically as they removed all the trees from the course and gave it a links-style feel.

So what does this mean for you who are trying to make a pick of six winners for your DraftKings picks? That the way we think about the U.S. Open has changed and it will continue this year. Shinnecock is going to be drastically different than it was 14 years ago. First is the added yardage, almost 450 yards have been added to holes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16 and 18. It is hoped that with the added distance some of the fairway bunkers and features that protected Shinnecock would be back into play which means the USGA won’t have to make the greens impossible to hold and drastic. Another significant change, trees were removed, and some of the underbrush cut back, a lot like was done to rave reviews to Oakmont C.C. Another significant change was that the course replaced some of it’s rough with fescue that will be more challenging for players and give the course a feeling of being tighter. The reason for that change was because the USGA and Davis felt that Erin Hills fairways were too wide last year, mostly because the anticipating wind didn’t appear and the fairways weren’t as firm as they would have liked.
Now it doesn’t mean the fairways will be tight; they won’t be. In 2004 the average fairway width was a touch of 25 yards wide, this year it’s a bit over 40. So in a way, this gives a significant advantage to those that hit it long, even though they may not it hit straight. But as many players learned last year including Dustin Johnson, if you got off the wide open fairways into wispy fescue rough you were in for major problems, so players like Justin Rose, Charl Schwartzel, Adam Scott, Jon Rahm and Bubba Watson joined Johnson going home to watch the U.S. Open on TV instead of playing.

In looking at Shinnecock this week, one thing can be predicted, that yes a bomber can and will win. However, that bomber better be like Brooks Koepka was last year in which he was able to hit it on the fairway. Another aspect of winning is hitting many greens, something that not only Brooks Koepka do correctly last year leading the field in that stat.
Several items are essential that compares the way Shinnecock, and it’s winner Retief Goosen played in 2004 comparing it to the way Erin Hills and Brooks Koepka played last year.

Here is a chart that shows those comparisons between Shinnecock in 2004 and Erin Hills last year:

So with that said, how can we judge this course? First, we are going to do something that worked during last years U.S. Open in picking our four key stats. We are going to use strictly strokes gained stats. Our first is Strokes Gained Off-the-Tee because driving will be necessary. With wider fairways and the course being played over 7,450 yards yes this is a bombers course. However, like last year we saw the fescue factor and the same would happen this week if you miss the fairway and in the wispy fescue, good luck in trying to make par.
Our next stat is Strokes Gained Approach-the-Green because hitting greens are essential and you have to make sure to hit the greens. Our third stat is Strokes Gained Around-the-Green because players will miss greens and win they will have to get it up and down. Last is Strokes Gained-Putting because that is going to be very important for players this week.

*Strokes Gained Off-the-Tee: The per round average of the number of strokes based on the number of fairways and distance hit

*Strokes Gained Approach-the-Green: Takes into account the number of greens and the proximity to the hole in the interest of interest of saving shots.

*Strokes Gained Around-the-Green: Number of strokes gained from shots around the green, lot of it is scrambling and bunker play..

*Strokes Gained-Putting: The number of strokes gained in putting

The 84 of the 156 players from this year’s field with stats from 2018. Remember there are a lot of foreign players in the field plus a record 23 amateurs without stats:

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