The 2016 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational
This week, some of the best players in the world will travel to Akron, Ohio, for the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational — one of four World Golf Championship events. The event is held at Firestone Country Club, which is a par-70 course that stretches over 7,400 yards. The field is stronger and smaller than that of a typical PGA Tour event, so every golfer will play four rounds regardless of their scores, barring a withdrawal.
Game theory and strategy should shift to reflect the absence of a cut, making some boom-or-bust birdie makers intriguing in large-field tournaments. Course History reveals that several types of golfers have been able to succeed regularly at this course, so I plan on heavily weighting both recent and Long-Term Adjusted Round Scores, since the metric is our best measure for the overall quality of a golfer.
Course History
First, we will take a look at the top-25 finishes from the past five years.
Now, we will take a look at those golfers who have finished in the top 25 at least three times since 2011.
Only Rickie Fowler, Justin Rose, and Jim Furyk have had at least three top-10 finishes since 2011, which is notable since the smaller field in theory would make a top-25 finish more attainable than it usually is in full-field events. Luckily, our Player Models feature Course Adj Rd Scores for each player, in turn ironing out any wrinkles we might get from the small field.
A Quick Note
The field size and pricing idiosyncrasies of this tournament will change our pricing tiers. We will keep it consistent by adopting the tiers used by Bryan Mears in his weekly article, where he uses our free Trends tool to take a look at the most valuable statistics for this week’s event.
$8,000 – $12,100
Jason Day ($12,100) leads the entire field in both LT Adj Round Score and birdies per tournament, but he also leads the field in salary. Rostering Day will leave you with an average salary of only $7,580 to fill out your remaining five roster spots, but the big names below him should absorb some of the top-tier ownership, which could create a discount in terms of ownership arbitrage. His Course Adj Rd Score is tied for the fourth-worst among players in this salary range, but Day is playing at an elite level this season. Through his last nine events, he has finished outside of the top 25 only once — when he finished 27th at the Memorial earlier this month.
Brooks Koepka ($9,900) finished 13th at the U.S. Open, capping off a three-event stretch in which he also had back-to-back second-place finishes. His Rec Adj Rd Score of 67.2 through those events is the third-highest in the field. His impressive finishes have come despite a short-term drop in Greens in Regulation, which is 6.6 percentage points lower than his long-term average, but he has compensated for his GIR by averaging two putts per round fewer than he has through the past 12 months. There is less fear surrounding a regression on the greens, because his long-term average of 14.5 birdies per tournament shows an ability to score without a hot putter.
Jim Furyk ($9,500) is striking the ball wonderfully, as he has hit 71 percent of his fairways and 72.6 percent GIR through his last four events. His Course Adj Rd Score of 67.8 is the best of any player in the field with more than one appearance at Firestone CC. Dating back to 2011, he has three top-10 finishes and has avoided finishing outside of the top 25 in all five appearances here. Justin Rose ($10,200) has similar course history, but Furyk offers more roster flexibility and his Rec Adj Rd Score of 68.7 is 1.3 strokes better than Rose’s.
$7,300 – $7,900
J.B. Holmes ($7,700) burned anyone who had him in a lineup for the U.S. Open, where he missed the cut despite coming off of a fourth-place finish in his prior event. He hit only 58.3 percent GIR at the U.S. Open, but that isn’t very far off from his long-term average of 63.7 percent. Holmes is a bomber, whose 310-yard average Long-Term Driving Distance gives him the ability to overpower most courses and is the reason he has been able to average 14.8 birdies per tournament through the past 12 months. His Scrambling rate of 40 percent through his last two events is atrocious, but at least his recent inability to save par is mitigated this week because there is no cut for him to miss. Also in his favor are seven Pro Trends, which are the most of any player priced below $8,700.
Plus/Minus, Pro Trends, and other premium exclusive metrics are accessible via our free Ratings tool.
There are only nine golfers in this salary range, and seven of them have seen a recent decrease in GIR. David Lingmerth ($7,600) is the only one who has seen a note-worthy increase, as his recent GIR of 68.8 percent is 5.4 percentage points higher than his 12-month average. Although he has averaged 29.9 putts per round (PPR) through his last four events, his Recent Driving Accuracy (DA) of 69.6 percent and ball striking should put him in position to make birdies if he can revert toward his long-term average of 28.9 PPR. He finished fifth in his first appearance at this event last year and is coming into this year’s event with three consecutive top-30 finishes and a 12th-place finish at the U.S. Open.
Harris English ($7,300) finished 37th at the U.S. Open, and prior to that he had made three consecutive cuts. He hit only 60.8 percent of GIR through those four events, but he still managed 13.8 birdies per tournament due to an average of only 27.7 PPR. Rostering English may seem like chasing a hot putter, but his long-term average of 28.6 PPR is still exceptional. He takes advantage of his opportunities when he is hitting greens in regulation: The two events this season in which he hit at least 70 percent GIR have resulted in second- and third-place finishes.
$5,600 – $7,200
Emiliano Grillo‘s($7,000) 68.7 Rec Adj Rd Score is the second-highest of players in this salary range. He also leads all golfers priced below $7,300 in both Long-Term and Recent-Form birdies per tournament. He finished 17 under par last week at the ISPS Handa Global Cup, good for second place after losing in a playoff to Jun-Won Park. This week will present Grillo with a much stronger field than the one he faced last week in Japan, but he did manage to make the cut in the U.S. Open, where the field was packed and the conditions much tougher than what is expected at Firestone CC.
Coming into the U.S. Open, Kyung-tae Kim ($6,200) had five top-five finishes in his six prior events overseas. He barely missed the cut and probably would have played into the weekend if he hadn’t triple-bogeyed the 10th hole on Friday. He did manage to make three birdies in each of his rounds, and although a blow-up hole could hurt his overall performance at least he is still guaranteed four rounds of play. His LT GIR of 68.8 percent is fourth among players in this tier, and his 28.5 average PPR is tied for fifth in the field.
A Well-Deserved Win
I had a video in mind that I was prepared to leave you with this week, but that all changed Sunday, when Billy Hurley lll won his first PGA Tour event at the Quicken Loans National. I did not have him in any of my lineups, but watching him get his first victory was an incredible sight. There are several reasons why it was such an awesome story, most of which are touched upon in the video below. Congrats, Billy!
Good luck to everyone this week!
