Because of the Olympics in Rio, this year we have two Majors in July. It’s a beautiful time.
How Do We Measure Royal Troon?
In this weekly article, we typically use our free Trends tool to look at four important golfing statistics — Adjusted Round Score, Greens in Regulation, Driving Distance, and Driving Accuracy — and see how golfers with above-average marks in those metrics have historically performed at the course. This week we can’t do that, as the Open Championship (much like the U.S. Open) rotates sites every year. In fact, the site of this year’s Open Championship, Royal Troon in Scotland, hasn’t hosted any professional tournament since 2004, when Jordan Spieth was 11.
But we can make inferences on what Royal Troon will play like. After all, it is a European course, and those are generally links-style courses that favor accuracy over distance. However, simply bunching European courses together seems irresponsible: There are some, like Bro Hof Slott GC in Sweden, that play at an unreal 8,046 yards. And most courses in Europe don’t host a PGA Major, which further accentuates the mistake of comparing apples to golf balls by bunching courses together.
Perhaps it’s better to compare courses based on their distance and not their continent. However, there’s another point to be considered, and it’s a major one (no pun intended): Comparing non-Major courses to Major courses is likely misguided, even if they have the same length. The courses play differently and, perhaps more importantly, the fields are way different, which DraftKings takes into account on a weekly basis, pricing players largely according to Vegas odds. In a weak field, a mediocre golfer could be over $10,000.
Basically, we don’t know what type of course Royal Troon is and what kind of golfers it might favor. That’s frustrating, but that fact is so important this week. There is a lot of value in finding the signal through the noise. There’s also a lot of value in knowing that sometimes there is no signal to be found. That might even be more valuable because people tend to undervalue the edge that knowledge provides.
I won’t leave you completely high and dry, though. There is a particularly interesting part of this course that I believe is worth discussing, and Colin Davy, Peter Jennings, and I discuss it on this week’s PGA Daily Fantasy Flex podcast, which will be out soon.
Can Course Length Be Misleading?
The length of the course — 7,190 yards — suggests that ball-strikers will do well here. It is not incredibly long, and most golfers (with the exception of the top golfers like Jason Day, of course) are exclusively either ball-strikers or bombers. So the short course should favor accuracy, right?
Maybe not.
On the podcast, we discuss whether a course’s total length can sometimes be misleading when you look at the individual hole breakdown. You can have a course that is short overall but has quirky lengths on specific holes. I think Royal Troon could be like this.
While it plays under 7,200 yards and has manageable Par 3s and Par 5s, the course has Par 4s that are generally long. For example, Hole No. 8 is a Par 3 and plays only 123 yards. That’s a chipping contest. On the other side, Hole No. 15 is a Par 4 and plays at 499 yards. That is only 11 yards shorter than Augusta National’s Hole No. 13 — the Par 5 that ends Amen Corner.
I’m not saying that Royal Troon will play like Augusta by any means, but I am saying that perhaps looking at overall yardage may not be the best indicator of actual length that matters. A golfer’s entire score matters — he must play every hole. Does the overall length and the history of European courses suggest that accuracy is the most important stat here? Yes . . . but perhaps distance will be underrated this week.
