TPC Potomac Key Fantasy Stats

Wells Fargo Championship

May 5th – 8th, 2022

TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm

Potomac, Md.

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,160

Purse: $9 million

with $1,620,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Rory McIlroy

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

Despite Quail Hollow being the permanent home of the Wells Fargo, for the second time in its 20-year history, a new venue will be used this year. Because of the Presidents Cup being held at Quail Hollow in the fall, the Wells Fargo will go up to the Washington D.C. area and TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm. This is the second time that Wells Fargo has traveled, in 2017 when Quail Hollow hosted the PGA Championship Eagle Point Golf Club in Wilmington, N.C. was the site. Now, this won’t be the last time for a move, in 2025 the PGA Championship will return to Quail Hollow meaning a move for the Wells Fargo. There have also been rumors over the years that the powers to be at Quail Hollow would like to not be the regular venue of the Wells Fargo which would mean the event will have to look for another home.
Now TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm was built in 1985 it was built with the purpose of holding the Kemper Open. For years the event was held at Congressional, but membership was looking for a U.S. Open, and event organizers didn’t want to pay the high fees for Congressional and at the time the thought of it being the permanent home of the tournament was intriguing.
But players hated the course, called TPC Avenel back then. The course had drainage problems and was never in that great a shape. One of the reasons the Kemper/Booz Allen ended was because of the course. The changes the Tour promised to the course never happened so Booz Allen dropped their sponsorship. After the last Booz Allen in 2006, the course had a massive renovation with every hole being worked on making it more pleasing to not only the members but touring pros. Both the Champions Tour and the Web.Com Tour held events and the players gave them positive reviews. So when a new event came to the Washington area, Quicken Loans officials gave it a two-year test in 2017 and ’18, to see what the reaction would be. The experiment worked, the drastic changes they made on the course were well received by pros and even though the Quicken Loans went away after the 2018 event, it was known that another PGA Tour event would be played at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, so it gets another run this week.

In looking at the stats of the old course from 2006, it ranked 47th in driving accuracy, 46th in greens hit, T-38th in birdie average, 14th in Scrambling, and 27th in putting average. As for past winners, they did have some major winners with Tom Kite, Mark Brooks, Lee Janzen, Justin Leonard, Rich Beem, Ben Curtis, and Adam Scott winning. But the course was famous for producing a lot of surprise winners as Frank Lickliter, Steve Stricker, Rich Beem, and Tom Scherrer claimed their first PGA Tour wins at TPC Potomac. If these names aren’t non-marquee enough, here are some more winners at TPC Potomac, Morris Hataksky, Tom Byrum, and Grant Waite, guys that hardly moved the merit in marquee value. Of all the champions at TPC Potomac, Bob Estes had the most victories at the time of their win with four. So you can see the trend of the course, winners that would be hard to promote in the following years.

So in 2007, the course was radically changed. Numerous competitive and aesthetic changes were made to the golf course to make it more challenging for tournament play. This included significant modifications, re-shaping, and enhancements to all 18 holes, featuring a complete re-design of holes 10, 11, and 13; lengthening of the course to 7,139 yards, with a new par-70 design; a new state-of-the-art irrigation system; an aesthetic and competitive design solution to stormwater management issues on holes 4, 5, 6, 10, 11 and 12.

During the renovations, all the greens, tees, and fairways were rebuilt with Bentgrass and a new irrigation and drainage system. The greens were re-orientated and re-contoured, and all bunkers were re-positioned and re-shaped giving it more of a Scottish feel, along with adding tall fescue grasses to some. All holes were re-graded and had their fairways reduced to approximately 30 to 35 yards. Accent features like stone walls and eight timber bridges create an older feel and charm. Along with all of these changes an expansive new practice facility and the short game area were built.

So who does the course favor? In past years the winners hit lots of greens and putting well, so this will be something that we will think about. Still, we have to judge this as a brand new course in which we really don’t know who the course favors. In picking our four categories we are going to pick four strokes gained stats which will help us choose who’s game is the sharpest going into this event. Here are the results from the 2017 and ’18 events that will help us judge what features players will need. With the changes, the course was more of a shotmaking course. In 2018 the course ranked 21st in Driving accuracy and 16th 2018. The course was 21st in Greens hit in 2018 and 9th in 2017 so it was important to hit lots of greens. For those that missed greens, scrambling became important, in 2018 it ranked 10th and in 2017 it was 6th. Putting was also important, in putting inside ten feet it ranked 28th in 2018 and 27th in 2017. As for par breakers, it was 18th in 2018 and 8th in 2017. All of these are decent rankings showing the course has some characteristics that we can pinpoint to determine who is best for the course. TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm played to a 69.89 scoring average in 2018 and ranked 18th, in 2017 it played to a 71.46 scoring average and ranked 4th so the course does have some bite to it. The winners of the events, 2017 Kyle Stanley won for the second time and in 2018 Francesco Molinari won for the first time on the PGA Tour but had won in Europe.

Of the 156 players in the field, 136 have stats on the PGA Tour for 2022. Unfortunately, Rory McIlroy and Paul Casey aren’t on this list because they didn’t play the minimum of 24 rounds (McIlroy played 22 and Casey played 18).

*Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green: The per round average of the number of Strokes the player was better or worse than the field average on the same course & event minus the Players Strokes Gained putting value.

*Strokes Gained Approach-the Green: Perfect stat to see who picks up the most strokes by hitting the green and getting it close

*Strokes Gained Around the Green: Of course players are going to miss greens, this stat help figure out who gets it up and down when they miss greens.

*Strokes Gained Putting: So who saves the most strokes on the greens

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

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