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The PGA TOUR pros continue to rack up the air miles as some of the stars fly back from Tokyo to play in this week’s WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.
We will see the regular-season finale next week at the Wyndham so this is the last event for most of the superstars, before the FEC Playoffs begin.
The course is a familiar one, TPC Southwind, in Memphis, Tennessee.
It’s a par 70 that plays just over 7,200 yards. That doesn’t sound intimidating but there is water lurking around every corner and the bermuda rough, while not long, can be very tricky.
Historically, we’ve seen elite iron players thrive here while comfort on bermudagrass is also a big positive. Let’s look at those two angles when trying to research potential Yahoo DFS targets.
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Approach Play
The recipe for success is very simple at TPC Southwind.
Billy Horschel summed it up nicely a few years ago, “Put the ball in the fairway, hit really good iron shots, putt really well inside 10 feet. You don’t have to go stupid low here, you’ve just got to manage your game very well.”
If we look at the top-5 finishers here last year, four of the five gained at least 5 strokes approaching-the-green. The year before that the top-3 finishers combined to gain 14.8 strokes on approach.
Let’s hop over to the NBC Sports Edge Driver tool and see who is averaging the most strokes gained approach per round, over the last three months:
Collin Morikawa
Paul Casey
Tyrrell Hatton
Patrick Cantlay
Louis Oosthuizen
Rory McIlroy
Hideki Matsuyama
Jason Kokrak
Brooks Koepka
Viktor Hovland
Sam Burns
Stewart Cink
Xander Schauffele
Martin Laird
Daniel Berger
Stewart Cink ($20): You can find him in the bargain bin this week as he arrives off back-to-back missed cuts. There is plenty of good to see, if you ignore those last two starts. On top of that, he’s posted top 10s in his last two trips to TPC Southwind (2017, 2018).
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Putting Upside on Bermuda
The best putters are generally the best putters because they can quickly adapt to each new set of greens they see each week. They can handle varying undulations, firmness, and grass types.
That last one is what we are going to look at more closely. Finding golfers that are more comfortable on grainy bermuda greens is one way to find top-heavy finish upside.
Heading back to the Driver tool, we can filter by events since the start of the 2019 season that have been played on bermuda greens (I excluded any of the greens overseeded with bent or poa triv). Here are the top putting performers when running that filter:
Matthew Fitzpatrick
Brooks Koepka
Bryson DeChambeau
Billy Horschel
Sam Burns
Webb Simpson
Sungjae Im
Harris English
Jordan Spieth
Kevin Kisner
Louis Oosthuizen
Brian Harman
Patrick Reed
Carlos Ortiz
Xander Schauffele
Brooks Koepka ($41): The Florida State product is no stranger to bermuda and does his best putting work on this surface. That includes a +9.3 SG:Putting effort during his 2019 victory at TPC Southwind. Overall, he’s gained roughly 22 strokes putting in eight appearances at TPC Southwind, losing strokes to the field in just two of those starts.
Hopefully, these stats will give you some names to dive into when it comes to researching your final selections this week over at Yahoo!
