PGA Championship Key Fantasy Stats

PGA Championship

August 6th – 9th, 2020

TPC Harding Park

San Francisco, Ca.

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,251

Purse: $11 million

with $1,980,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Brooks Koepka

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This is based on what we believe is the most important stats for TPC Harding Park, based on data from the 2005 WGC-American Express Championship and the Dell Match Play from 2015, and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2020. What we do is take their rank for each stat and then add up the four categories.
The first thing to understand, we can get a rough understanding from the stats from 2005, but the game was totally different then and the players were totally different so we just will use it as reference. The stats from 2005 tell us that hitting greens was important as seven of those in the top-nine were in the top-12 of greens hit. It was also amazing that winner Tiger Woods was the 3rd longest hitter for the week, runner-up John Day led and T-3rd Sergio Garcia was 2nd. Putting didn’t seem to play that much of a roll, in total putts Tiger was 6th while the rest were down the pack. and the par 5s played tough, yes John Daly may have been the best at 8 under but winner Tiger was only 3 under.

The course has very little history or stats, so it’s best to keep this plain and simple. One thing that will play a part that stats can’t predict is the weather and in looking at it frankly, it’s going to be very boring every day.
Each morning it will be overcast and foggy, with the clouds burning off by around lunchtime and be sunny before the clouds and fog roll back in about 3. Each day will be in the mid-60s, perfect sweater, or hoodie weather. Or the wind, it probably will blow in the afternoon.
Our first stat is Strokes Gained Off-the-Tee in which calculates the number of strokes a player gains based on driving it long and straight. This stat wasn’t around in 2005 but we can see how tough it was when we see the course was the 40th course in driving distance. The course averaged 294.3 yards which were long back then. The tournament was played in October which is the dry period in San Francisco so the fairways were firm and had plenty of run. In some ways, this is why the course became the 3rd hardest course to keep it in the fairway as 48.62% of the short grass was hit. So if you look at TPC Harding Park the true meat and potatoes of the course are driving it as long as you can, but straight.
Our second category is greens in regulation and Harding Park in 2005 was the 8th toughest on tour. For the size of the greens and the fact that this is a public golf course, that means the rough was pretty tough for only 59.84% of the players hitting the greens. Still, it shows that the course has more bite than we think it could have.
Our third stat is Strokes Gained Putting which wasn’t around in 2005. But they did measure the length of putts so we can look at that. Remember this, the greens at TPC Harding Park are Municipal greens which are big and flat with very little undulations so that the can be enjoyed and played quickly by the public. So it’s about right that the course was 23rd ranked on tour in putting average, 37th in One-putt percentage and 18th in 3-putt avoidance. Last is Par Breakers and the course was 11th which means birdies and eagles are hard to come. On the hole not much is know of TPC Harding Park, but the one thing we should all know it’s a good course and will be great for this week’s PGA Championship.

So here are our four choices for the most critical stats from players to do well at TPC Harding Park:

*Strokes Gained Off-to-Tee: Combination of distance off the tee and accuracy.

*Greens in Regulation: Number of greens hit in regulation.

*Strokes Gained Putting: The greens average 7,200 square feet, making them above average on the PGA Tour. So it’s important to see who putts the best and picks up shots on the green. With bumpy Poa Annua greens, it could spell the kiss of death if you don’t putt them well.

*Par Breakers: Who makes the most birdies and eagles per round.

113 of the 156 players from this year’s field with stats from this year:

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