This article is part of our PGA Tour Stats Review series.
This week is the final official PGA Tour event of the fall season, the OHL Classic at Mayakoba in Mexico. This event is crucial for anyone looking to make a late-year push in the world rankings to get into the majors, or for anyone looking to climb the Reshuffle List in advance of Monday's first reshuffle of the 2014-2015 season. Here's our stats preview:
History Lesson
The defending champion is Harris English, who won by four shots over Brian Stuard. In 2012, John Huh beat Robert Allenby in one of the longest playoffs in recent memory, and in 2011 Johnson Wagner beat Spencer Levin in a playoff.
Our pick here is English, whose best finish this season is a tie for 16th in Vegas (he also missed the cut at Frys and McGladrey). He won twice in 2013, the first as part of the 2013 season and the second here last year as part of the 2013-2014 season, which helped guide him to a 32nd-place finish in the FedEx Cup. He was 17th in greens in regulation and 20th in scoring average last season.
Who is Playing
Nick Taylor, last week's champion at the Sanderson Farms Championship, is playing, and besides being a recommendation because he's hot check this out: according to the PGA Tour, Taylor made 178 feet worth of putts on Sunday en route to victory. The field average: 80 feet. No wonder he ended up in the winner's circle.
Other notables in the field include Ben Martin
This week is the final official PGA Tour event of the fall season, the OHL Classic at Mayakoba in Mexico. This event is crucial for anyone looking to make a late-year push in the world rankings to get into the majors, or for anyone looking to climb the Reshuffle List in advance of Monday's first reshuffle of the 2014-2015 season. Here's our stats preview:
History Lesson
The defending champion is Harris English, who won by four shots over Brian Stuard. In 2012, John Huh beat Robert Allenby in one of the longest playoffs in recent memory, and in 2011 Johnson Wagner beat Spencer Levin in a playoff.
Our pick here is English, whose best finish this season is a tie for 16th in Vegas (he also missed the cut at Frys and McGladrey). He won twice in 2013, the first as part of the 2013 season and the second here last year as part of the 2013-2014 season, which helped guide him to a 32nd-place finish in the FedEx Cup. He was 17th in greens in regulation and 20th in scoring average last season.
Who is Playing
Nick Taylor, last week's champion at the Sanderson Farms Championship, is playing, and besides being a recommendation because he's hot check this out: according to the PGA Tour, Taylor made 178 feet worth of putts on Sunday en route to victory. The field average: 80 feet. No wonder he ended up in the winner's circle.
Other notables in the field include Ben Martin (winner in Vegas), Robert Streb (winner at Sea Island), Carlos Ortiz, Camilo Villegas, Angel Cabrera, Erik Compton, Will MacKenzie, Justin Thomas, Nick Watney and more.
Out of those, our other two recommendations (besides Martin, Streb and Taylor), are MacKenzie and Thomas.
MacKenzie was in the playoff (but lost) at McGladrey and is third in strokes gained-tee to green and first in strokes gained-total on the PGA Tour. Thomas, meanwhile, shot a 67 on Sunday at the Sanderson Farms Championship to finish T4, ranking first for the week in strokes gained-tee to green, and T4 overall for strokes gained-total.
Sunday Surgers
These players who played well Sunday at the Sanderson Farms Championship could help your fantasy team this week.
Blayne Barber - Barber gained 28 spots on Sunday with a final-round 66 to tie for ninth. He also finished T9 for the week in strokes gained-total.
David Hearn - The Canadian's Sunday 67 gave him a 23-spot jump on the final leaderboard and led to a T14 finish. For the week in Jackson he ranked ninth in strokes gained-putting.
Jerry Kelly - The veteran shot a 66 that rocketed him up 37 positions in the final results and into a tie for 22nd. For the week he was T22 in strokes gained-total and 11th in putts per green in regulation.
