Welcome back to The PGA Process.
The AT&T Byron Nelson featured a weaker field, but the event was dominated by some of the class players on Tour. Sergio Garcia, Matt Kuchar, Jordan Spieth, and Brooks Kopeka made up four of the six golfers in the final groupings on Sunday.
Let’s review our process for the week that was.
The PGA Process is intended to review decision-making so that we may improve weekly. Some weeks we will be up and others we will be down, but the main intention is to learn from our successes and failures.
(Lineup Percentile: 78th)
What Went Wrong at AT&T Byron Nelson
This past week, I thought that you needed to go down into the sub-$7,000 range to afford some of the golfers with higher Upside. At $6,400, Thomas Aiken seemed like a decent value who could make the cut at TPC Four Seasons. Aiken came into the Byron Nelson in solid recent form (four cuts made in his last five events) and his Long-Term Greens in Regulation (73.1 percent) was tops in the entire field.
I also considered Luke List and Bronson Burgoon in the lower-end salary range because both golfers are longer off of the tee than Aiken. I ended up going with Aiken because I believed that he was in better recent form, but the lack of power in his game may have ultimately hurt him on a course that calls for Driving Distance.
On another note, what a disastrous final hole Ryan Palmer had. He was tracking toward making the cut (-2) but bogeyed the 18th hole to miss the weekend by one stroke. At any rate, I knew that Palmer would be an extremely popular play this week due to his top-notch course history at TPC Four Seasons. I was fine with using him because of his excellent Driving Distance (306 yards) and solid Recent Adjusted Round Score (68.9). It was a tough result, but Palmer had a litany of great data points in his corner at AT&T Byron Nelson.
What Went Right at AT&T Byron Nelson
Heading into the week, I thought that there was a legitimate chance that Sergio Garcia would be in only 5 percent of lineups on DraftKings. I knew that Dustin Johnson would be extremely popular (for good reason) and the often-popular Matt Kuchar was just $100 more than Garcia, who made a simple (and great) leverage play. Under no circumstances should Garcia have come at a $400 discount to Charley Hoffman.
Even though Danny Lee doesn’t have much distance out of the tee box (283 yards), he was available for a great price for his recent form. After a sneaky T17 at the Masters, Lee followed up that finish with a missed cut, T58, a T9 at a Bomber’s course (Wells Fargo Championship) and a T35 at The Players. With the field’s fifth-best Recent GIR (69.3 percent), Lee rated highly in my Model.
A Quick Look Ahead at Colonial Country Club
The Tour stays in the Dallas/Fort-Worth area this coming week for the Dean and Deluca Invitational. Another Par-70 playing just over 7,200 yards, Colonial is not necessarily a Bomber’s track like TPC Four Seasons (Las Colinas). That does not mean that golfers with Superman strength off of the tee can’t do well, but distance seems not to matter as much as it did at AT&T Byron Nelson:
Instead, Colonial Country Club is a ball striker’s track that calls for golfers to pepper the greens regularly. This trend features golfers with a 60th-percentile Recent GIR score or better:
This Recent GIR trend captures five of the eight golfers who finished T5 or better in last year’s event at Colonial Country Club:
As always, stay locked into the PGA Homepage for all of the articles and information you need to dominate this coming week!
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You can read past PGA Process articles here: Players Championship, Wells Fargo Championship, and The Zurich Classic.
