TPC Boston Key Fantasy Stats

The Northern Trust

August 20th – 23rd, 2020

TPC Boston

Norton, Ma.

Par: 71 / Yardage: 7,342

Purse: $9.5 million

with $1,710,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Patrick Reed

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 Boston, based on data from the 2018 Dell Technologies when the course was last used on the PGA Tour and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2020.

The good news, the PGA Tour returns to an old friend the TPC Boston. A beloved course which was the home for 16 years of the Deutsche Bank and later the Dell Technologies Championship, the former FedExCup playoff event was a casualty of needing a sponsor at the same time that the PGA Tour was in need to drop a playoff event so it was an easy event to eliminate. If anything good came out of the whole mess was that the folks at Northern Trust realized the value of not only the course but the area which is between Boston and Provenance, Rhode Island. The venue fits perfectly into what Northern Trust wants so they put it into the rotation and it will be played every other year, so it’s a win-win for everyone and even though it’s not perfect at least TPC Boston will be in the Playoffs every other year.
TPC Boston is an Arnold Palmer design that has been reworked by Gil Hanse and Brad Faxon. The course has a touch of links-style as it plays firm and fast, but it’s still a course for long hitters as in its 16-year history players like Adam Scott, Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Charley Hoffman, Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, and Justin Thomas have won on it. Its last champion was Bryson DeChambeau in 2018, just before he went on his transformation into being the longest hitter of the ball today, back then DeChambeau hit the ball a long way. So with that, it tells you something about the course, which is that all of these players like to hit it long, so TPC Boston is for those that bomb it. On the other end of the spectrum, short hitters like Chris Kirk, Olin Browne, Webb Simpson, and Steve Stricker have won, mainly because of their impressive around the green game. Still, the focus should be on long hitters and ball strikers having a significant advantage. Of the 16 champions, ten of them ranked in the top-ten in greens hit, so if a long hitter is on his game, he does have a significant advantage. So should you stop reading right now and pick say Bryson DeChambeau? Probably not, if we have learned one lesson since the years of Tiger Woods dominating every event, there are a bunch of guys that can win from week to week. An example of that is Jim Herman who won last week at Wyndham. Or Collin Morikawa who won the PGA Championship or even Justin Thomas who won the WGC-FedEx St. Jude the week before. The point it, these guys are so good and there are so many of them from week to week you just don’t know who is going to win.
So that doesn’t mean to hand any one of them the trophy right now, anything can and will happen in the next seven days. One thing historically about TPC Boston you have never seen a poor putter win here, the greens are 5,800 square feet and have a lot of undulation in them so look for a player who is in the zone inside of ten feet, like DeChambeau, Rahm or Thomas. Guys like Collin Morikawa who are weak in putting will struggle.
Another aspect of TPC Boston, scores are generally low, and the big reason is the par 4s. In 2018 the last time the course was played they averaged 3.99 as only ten courses had easier par 4s. Of the 11 par 4s, six of them play under par, and the toughest par 4 is the 6th hole playing at a 4.038 clip which means with all of the holes on the PGA Tour it’s the 410th hardest of the 918 holes played in 2018.
So look for players that hit it long, hit lots of greens, and are in putts inside of ten feet. Now on the other realm of the spectrum, the par 5s are some of the toughest on the PGA Tour. In 2018 they played to a 4.68 scoring average and ranked 23rd, while they ranked T-13th on tour in 2017.
The great news is the perfect weather in Boston for the whole week, look for beach type of conditions with temperatures in the mid-80s and low humidity each day, perfect for scoring and for everyone to enjoy themselves.

So in looking at our four categories, our first is plain and simple, driving distance. This week is about raw power and brute, getting it out there as far as you can so that you have the easiest shot into the green. Hard to believe in 2018 the winner Bryson DeChambeau was 10th in this stat with an average drive of 311.8 yards as Brooks Koepka led the week with an average drive of 325.5 yards. Now the previous winner in 2017 Justin Thomas was 3rd in driving distance while in 2016 Rory McIlroy led the stat with an average drive of 312.9 yards.
Our second stat is greens in Regulation, again a nice simple stat in which it’s the number of greens a player hit in regulation. DeChambeau hit 54 of 72 greens in regulation which ranked T-7th as Rafael Cabrera-Bello, who finished T-7th lead hitting 58 of 72 greens. In 2017 Justin Thomas hit 51 greens and ranked T-13th and in 2016 Rory McIlroy hit 53 and ranked T-18th.
Our third stat is Strokes Gained Putting and for DeChambeau it was determined that he gained 4.876 strokes in the four rounds, thus he ranked 4th in that category. He had a total of 60 putts of 7 putt and under and only missed four which went into the equation in helping determine his final number.
Out fourth stat is par 4 average and the course played to a 3.99 average on the par 4s, the 41st hardest on the PGA Tour (10 were easier) while DeChambeau played the par 4s in 6 under which wasn’t that great when you see that C.T. Pan was 11 under on them.

*Driving Distance: The average drive based on all the holes played.

*Greens in Regulation: A nice simple stat in which it’s the number of greens a player hit in regulation.

*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 4 Average: How players do on par 4s, who plays them the best.

Of the 125 players in the field, 124 have stats on the PGA Tour for 2020 (Tiger Woods is the only one without stats:

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