Nine Bridges Key Fantasy Stats

The CJ Cup at Nine Bridges

October 18th – 21st, 2018

The Club at Nine Bridges

Jeju Island, South Korea

Par: 72 / Yardage: 7,196

Purse: $9.5 million

with $1,710,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Justin Thomas

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

Last year was the first CJ Cup@Nine Bridges, and it was a big success. The Club at Nine Bridges is one of those hidden gems. A private course that is on Jeju Island, so even if you were to make a trip to Korea, landing in Seoul, it would take a significant effort to fly to Jeju Island, landing in the small town of Jeju and then making the 30-mile trek to Nine Bridges.
For the average golfer the course is, but for the best golfers in the world, it’s pretty tame. That showed as 24 of the 78 players were under par, but for the week the course played to a 73.19 average making it the 4th hardest course on the PGA Tour in 2018.
Since the course has just one year of history and for those wanting to see who played the best go to this link for the results of last year’s tournament with full course stats.

Based on the most vital stats from Nine Bridges from last year’s event and data from all the players in the field with PGA Tour stats from 2018 we have cobbled together some stats that will help you decide on who statistically to chose. Unfortunately with the event being played in Korea, we again like last week 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. Now the stats from last year don’t come out and tell you the secrets to playing well at Nine Bridges. But in looking deeply at some of the stats, one thing does get your attention, play on the par 5s. Last year’s winner Justin Thomas played them in 9 under, while runner-up Marc Leishman played them in 12 under. For the week the par 5s played to an average of 4.88 making the course the second hardest on tour in 2018 so playing par 5s well is essential. On the opposite of the spectrum the par 5s may have played easy, but the par 3s and 4s played tough as winner Thomas was 3 over on the par 3s and 3 under on the par 4s. Another stat that sticks out and tells you something about it is hitting fairways, last year the 78 players hit an average of 72.42 fairways meaning that only two other courses had easier fairways to hit, so if you think about this, you come to the conclusion that this course is perfect for sluggers. As for hitting greens, the course ranked 38th in hitting greens again meaning that a lot of players hit greens. And even though standard putting stats are not an accurate indication of putting, in looking at the putting stats it shows that more putts are made on this course than any other course on the PGA Tour.
So the stats are very vague based on one year, so in looking at our four categories, we are picking very complicated stats that will help find those that are best suited for Nine Bridges. So we choose Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green because it helps to see who drives 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 recognize the importance of putting, so we have picked strokes gained-putting. Next is Par Breakers because we see the importance of making a lot of eagles and birdies, last year the course ranked 8th on the PGA Tour in Par Breakers. As we pointed out lot’s of birdies are made on this course. Our final category is Par 5 average, as we said first off that stat strikes out as being essential to win this event.

*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-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

*Par 5 Scoring average: The find who plays the best on the par 5s.

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

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