TPC Potomac Key Fantasy Stats

Quicken Loans National

June 28th – July 1st, 2018

TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm

Potomac, MD

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,107

Purse: $7.1 million

with $1,278,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Kyle Stanley

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

Isn’t it a shame that after looking for that perfect course for the Quicken Loans, they found one at the TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm but now that it’s the home of the event, it will be the home for the last year. Know of this is official yet since the schedule for 2019 hasn’t been announced, but it looks like Quicken Loans which came in at the last minute to sponsor this years event at TPC Potomac has inked a deal to sponsor a tournament next year in Detroit. So common sense tells us that the odds are very good that this event moves to Detroit next year, leaving the Washington D.C. area without an event.

The shame of all this is that since TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm first opened 32 years ago in 1986, the course was constantly criticized for being a terrible place to hold a tournament. Over the years millions of dollars were spent in trying to make the course better and between changes in 2007 and 2015 the course has gotten to a level that last year pros stop criticizing the course and actually giving the course phrases for not only the design with the condition it was. So now that they finally found a perfect solution, the course will again be abandoned from tournament play at least for the foreseeable future.

So the PGA Tour has one more go of this course and based on stats from last year’s event, here are the key stats that were needed to play well on the course. The biggest key for players last year was there play from tee to green, The course ranked 17th in driving accuracy and 9th in Greens in Regulation. You can tell the importance of these stats when you see the scrambling stats, last year the course ranked 6th hardest on tour. In looking at the top-12 from last year, five of the 12 were in the top-ten in greens hit so we can see what our number one category is, greens hit. While the course ranked 9th, last year’s winner Kyle Stanley hit the most greens of anyone in the field, 55 of 72. Our second choice is Strokes Gained Off-the-Tee since the course ranked 17th in driving accuracy while tournament champion Kyle Stanley was 1st in Strokes Gained Off-the-Tee and was T-3rd in driving accuracy rank. Our third stat is scrambling, the course ranked 6th in 2017 while Stanley was 46th for the week. Our last category is Par Breaker because not only did Stanley rank T-6th enroute to winning but the course was 8th in that stat.

The good news, the winds will be light each day and there will be no rain. The bad news tempertures temperatures will be in the middle 80s to the lower nineties.

*Greens in Regulation: Stat is great barometer on how good players manage their games around Augusta National. Every year the players that hit lot’s of greens do well.

*Strokes Gained Off-the-Tee: Measurements off the tee to see who saves the most strokes with perfect drives on the course compared to the field

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

*Par Breakers: The course allows a lot of birdies and eagles to be made, so parbreakers is the percent of time scores are under par.

Of the 120 players in the field, 112 have stats on the PGA Tour for 2018.

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