This article is part of our PGA Tour Stats Review series.
The final tune-up for next week's Open Championship will come this week at the John Deere Classic, aka the site of Jordan Spieth's first PGA Tour victory. Here's our stats preview.
But First ... A Positive Tiger Woods Stat!
Did you know that Tiger Woods led the field in proximity to the hole last week at the Greenbrier Classic at 23 feet, 11 inches? And did you know it was the first time in the stat's creation in 2003 that he did? Well, if that interests you, read this piece from PGATOUR.com's Bill Cooney, which gives more perspective on the accomplishment.
As anyone who watched Greenbrier knows, Tiger was held back by his putting -- for the week he ranked 52nd in strokes gained-putting.
History Lesson
The defending champion is Brian Harman, who beat local favorite Zach Johnson by one shot. In 2013, Spieth got that earth-shaking victory over David Hearn and Johnson in a playoff, and in 2012 Johnson beat Troy Matteson in a playoff. Steve Stricker won this event three consecutive years from 2009-2011.
The picks here are Spieth -- for the obvious reasons of being a three-time winner on the PGA Tour this year, including in his last start, the U.S. Open -- and Johnson. Johnson, who is coming off a sixth-place finish two weeks ago at the Travelers Championship, is ninth in driving accuracy and 16th in strokes gained-tee to green on the PGA Tour this season.
Who Is Playing
The field also includes Fabian
The final tune-up for next week's Open Championship will come this week at the John Deere Classic, aka the site of Jordan Spieth's first PGA Tour victory. Here's our stats preview.
But First ... A Positive Tiger Woods Stat!
Did you know that Tiger Woods led the field in proximity to the hole last week at the Greenbrier Classic at 23 feet, 11 inches? And did you know it was the first time in the stat's creation in 2003 that he did? Well, if that interests you, read this piece from PGATOUR.com's Bill Cooney, which gives more perspective on the accomplishment.
As anyone who watched Greenbrier knows, Tiger was held back by his putting -- for the week he ranked 52nd in strokes gained-putting.
History Lesson
The defending champion is Brian Harman, who beat local favorite Zach Johnson by one shot. In 2013, Spieth got that earth-shaking victory over David Hearn and Johnson in a playoff, and in 2012 Johnson beat Troy Matteson in a playoff. Steve Stricker won this event three consecutive years from 2009-2011.
The picks here are Spieth -- for the obvious reasons of being a three-time winner on the PGA Tour this year, including in his last start, the U.S. Open -- and Johnson. Johnson, who is coming off a sixth-place finish two weeks ago at the Travelers Championship, is ninth in driving accuracy and 16th in strokes gained-tee to green on the PGA Tour this season.
Who Is Playing
The field also includes Fabian Gomez, Steven Bowditch, NCAA champ and U.S. Open qualifier Bryson DeChambeau, Jonathan Byrd, Tim Cark, Harris English, Tony Finau, Justin Thomas, all three of last week's playoff losers -- David Hearn, Robert Streb and Kevin Kisner -- John Huh, last week's winner Danny Lee, Carl Pettersson and Patrick Rodgers, among others.
I had an interesting comment made to me by reader Lennykarl about how hard Thomas has had it on Sundays. It's true -- he had a chance to win at Sony, lost a lead at Humana and had a four-putt and hit three balls in the water on two holes on Sunday last week at Greenbrier. His Sunday scoring average is 70.69, which ranks him 103rd, and a stat called "final round performance," which measures "the percent of time a player's finish position improves or remains unchanged in the final round" has him ranked 181st out of 201 players. I'm sure Thomas will win soon -- he's way too talented not to -- but these recent struggles show how hard the learning curve can be for even the most talented rookies on the PGA Tour.
As for a pick, you can't go wrong with Lee, who put on a fantastic putting performance in the playoff last week, learning from his regulation putt on 18 that he left short to sink it and continue it to a second playoff hole, where he showed his lag putting skills by leaving himself just a winning tap in on an insanely long birdie putt at the par-5 17th. For the week he finished T17 in driving accuracy, 22nd in strokes gained-tee to green, seventh in strokes gained-putting and T1 in strokes gained-total.
And heck, any of last week's playoff losers aren't bad picks either. There's a reason they ended up in the playoff, after all.
