Heading to the Charlotte area for this week’s event, the PGA TOUR returns to a familiar venue.
It’s Quail Hollow Club, host of last year’s Presidents Cup.
When hosting the Wells Fargo Championship, the winning scores have fallen between 8- and 15-under in nine of the last 10 editions.
It’s a tough test and for DFS rosters, we want to lock in golfers that have previous success on tough tracks.
Tough Course Contenders
Quail Hollow Club is a brute of a test with six of the par 4s playing over 460 yards. Those holes play a combined 1.28 strokes over par.
The par 3s also add up to more than half a stroke over par.
It becomes a necessity to make up ground on the trio of par 5s but it’s still no easy task to turn in a red number at round’s end.
Here are the top performers in adjusted strokes gained per round on hard courses, over the last two years:
Rory McIlroy
Jordan Spieth
Keegan Bradley
Collin Morikawa
Matt Fitzpatrick
Xander Schauffele
Patrick Cantlay
Cameron Young
Viktor Hovland
Chris Kirk
Tony Finau
Shane Lowry
Corey Conners
Justin Thomas
Sungjae Im
We can also look at performance versus baseline to see who shows the largest increase in performance compared to their typical scores:
Scott Piercy
Keegan Bradley
Adam Schenk
Chris Kirk
Kurt Kitayama
Davis Riley
Cameron Young
Webb Simpson
Ben Taylor
Sahith Theegala
Akshay Bhatia
Jordan Spieth
Si Woo Kim
Rickie Fowler
Sam Ryder
Overlap List: names that show up on both lists include Jordan Spieth, Keegan Bradley, Cameron Young, and Chris Kirk.
Bradley a slow learner at Quail Hollow
When you look at the tough course list then Bradley pops out as a very viable option this week. It wasn’t love at first sight though, as Bradley missed the cut in three of his first four tries at the Wells Fargo Championship hosted by Quail Hollow. He flipped that script in his last attempt, posting a T18 at the 2021 edition. That could be a nice stepping stone to his first top 10 at the tough track.
Cam Young still due for a breakout win
Young has piled up eight podium finishes very quickly but is still searching for the maiden win. He’ll be making his course debut this week but will have plenty of course knowledge with Paul Tesori by his side. Tesori was the longtime bagman for Webb Simpson who is also a local resident at Quail Hollow. More importantly, he’s one of the best drivers on the planet with the distance to shorten a lot of the long holes at Quail Hollow. He’s also very strong when approaching from outside of 150 yards which is another valuable tool at this track. Despite the lack of course reps, Young looks like a good name to build around near the top of the board.
