TPC Kuala Lumper Key Fantasy Stats

CIMB Classic

October 11th – 14th, 2018

TPC Kuala Lumpur Golf & C.C.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Par: 72 / Yardage: 7,005

Purse: $7 million

with $1,620,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Pat Perez

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 2018.
This is the sixth 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 70.66 average which was a shot and a quarter under par as only ten other courses on the PGA Tour were easier in 2018, with only six of those courses having full-field events on a single course held on them.
So the course is very easy, it ranked 40th 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. But since then Justin Thomas won twice and Pat Perez won last year, he ranked as the 122nd longest driver on tour and in the past, he has been in the upper half of driving distance.

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 close to seven out of ten fairways, (68.18%)a very high percentage. They also hit lot’s of greens, over 7 of 10 (72.17%). Of the greens that they missed they got it up and down five and a half out of every 10 tries and averaged 31.61 putts per round. So it’s easy to see how each of the players in the field averaged 4.16 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 layup.

So in looking at our four categories, we are going to do a weird thing and that brings 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 lots of greens. These are all traits in helping one make lots 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 an Asian Tour event so there are twelve players that are from that tour and will not have stats:
Asian Player (Rank on Asian Tour)
Kiradech Aphibarnrat (7)
Gaganjeet Bhullar (5)
John Catlin (8)
Minchel Choi (12)
Rahil Gangjee (11)
Berry Henson (13)
Leun-Kwang Kim (225)
Sihwan Kim (10)
Ben Leong (38)
Sanghyun Park (2)
Shubhankar Sharma (1)
Scott Vincent (4)
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.

*Par Breakers: Players that make the most birdies and eagles averaged per rounds played

62 of the 78 Players from this year’s field with stats from 2018.

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