TPC Southwind Key Fantasy Stats

WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational

August 5th – 8th, 2021

TPC Southwind

Memphis, TN

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,233

Purse: $10.5 million

with $1,890,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Justin Thomas

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This is based on the most important stats for the TPC Southwind, based on data from last year’s WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2021.
So we now have two WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitationals in the book, and despite Firestone South being a unique course, I think that players now are ok with TPC Southwind.
The one surprising aspect of TPC Southwind was that many felt it would be a tougher test. The last year the FedEx St. Jude Classic was played at TPC Southwind in 2018, the course played to a 70.52 scoring average and was ranked 11th on the PGA Tour. Since course stats were kept in 2003, the oddity of TPC Southwind was that it always played over par. So when the course played to a 69.50 average many wondered what had happened to the course. The course played again under par with a 69.55 average and was ranked 14th hardest even last year. The only exclamation of this was the fact that the old FedEx St. Jude had fields of 156 while the field for the World Golf Championship is under 80 players.

Memphis has been pretty dry of late. It had about an inch over its average in June, but most of the rain fell in earlier June. In July rainfall was down, so the rough will not be the way they like it. It doesn’t look like they will have any precipitation this week as the temperature each day will be in the low 90s with very little wind. Over the last eleven years, while the FedEx St. Jude Classic was played on it, the fairways and greens were always hard to hit. But that changed in 2019, probably when the event went from a June start to an August start. Still, TPC Southwind will be tough enough to make for a challenging week of golf.

In looking at our four categories, our first for TPC Southwind are strokes gained tee-to-green. Last year the course ranked 22nd in driving accuracy and 9th in greens in regulation while winner Justin Thomas was T-12th in driving accuracy and T-7th in greens in regulation, so he was 1st in Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green. Over the years, this has been an essential stat for the champions. In 2019 Brooks Koepka won and was 6th. In 2018 Dustin Johnson won and was 1st in this stat. The same with the winner Daniel Berger in 2017 and 2016, he was first in both years. In 2015, champion Fabian Gomez ranked 1st, so that is pretty consistent, and the reason that strokes gained tee-to-green is essential. The next significant stat is one-putt percentage, TPC Southwind ranked 36th last year, 47th in 2020, and 45th in 2018. This means that many players had many one-putts, probably since the greens at TPC Southwind are petite at 4,300 Square feet. Last year’s winner Justin Thomas didn’t do well in this stat, he ranked T-51st with only 29 one-putts. The previous year Brooks Koepka was T-1st as he had 42 one-putts. In 2018 Johnson ranked T-30th while in 2016 he was T-52nd while Gomez ranked T-2nd in that stat in 2015. Still, the norm is for the best players to have a lot of one-putt greens.
Our third important stat is scrambling; players will miss greens and get it up and down. The course ranked 31st last year, 37th in 2019, and 31st in 2018. Last year’s winner Justin Thomas was 6th while in the previous year Koepka was 1st while Johnson was 4th in 2018, T-24th in 2016, and Gomez was 8th in 2015. Our final category was birdie average last year, it ranked 16th, while in 2019, it ranked T-24th. In 2018 it ranked 10th, in 2017 it ranked T-10th, it was 14th in 2016, and 2015 was 11th which means it was hard to make birdies as in the field average was 3.70 last year, 3.73 in 2019, 3.27 in 2018, 3.11 in 2017, 3.16 in 2016 and 3.15 in 2015. For Thomas, he averaged 4.75 birdies per round which ranked T-8th, while in 2019, Koepka averaged 5.25 birdies per round and was 3rd. Johnson also averaged 5.25 in 2018 and ranked 1st, in 2016 was 5.00 and was T-1st while Gamez averaged 5.00 and was T-2nd in 2015.
So yes, TPC Southwind can be considered a shotmaker type, of course, and we will probably get a shotmaker winner.

*Strokes Gained tee-to-green: Course may have only been the 14th hardest course on tour, but you need to hit it long and straight along with hitting lots of greens as it ranked T-3rd in this category last year. So this is important to find a player that will do well in this stat.

*One-Putt Percentage: The figure that shows how many times a player one-putts a green.

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

*Birdie Average: Average number of birdies made over the course of a round

The 56 of the 66 players from this year’s WGC-FedEx St. Jude field with stats from 2021:

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