Few events outside of major championships bring about a field as strong as the Memorial Tournament. This is Jack Nicklaus’ tournament, held at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio – a Nicklaus-designed course. Muirfield is home to over 70 bunkers, small and fast greens, and water is in play as a hazard on 11 holes.
Stretching almost 7,400 yards in length, this course will test every aspect of a player’s game, making our Adjusted Round Score metric one of my focus points this week. I will also be placing a slight emphasis on ball-striking, but I suggest checking out Bryan Mears’ article on important statistics for this week’s tournament to see which statistics should be weighed heavily in your model this week.
Another interesting aspect to this event is that it is an invitational; only 120 golfers will play this weekend. The normal cut rules still apply, with the top-70 players after completion of the second round making the cut, meaning nearly 60 percent of the field will be allowed to play into the weekend. This opens the door a bit for some of those lower-priced players who tend to float around the cut line every Friday afternoon. Finding a player who has missed some cuts recently, but only by a single stroke or two, could create an opportunity to have a significantly under-owned player get four rounds of action this week.
Anyway, let’s get into some course history. Here are the top-25 finishers from the last five years.
We actually have 13 players who finished in the top 25 at least three times since 2011, but four of them are not in the field this week. Here are the remaining nine that are available for selection this weekend.
As you can see, we have bombers like Dustin Johnson and accuracy/course-manager players like Matt Kuchar appearing on the list. As previously mentioned, there are different ways to attack Muirfield, and I don’t plan on excluding any certain type of player this week.
Let’s get to some players.
$9,000 – $12,400
Before we dive in, we first have to deal with the three-headed monster. Jason Day ($12,400), Jordan Spieth ($12,300), and Rory McIlroy ($12,200) are the three best players in the world right now, and we have the unfortunate task of deciding which, if any, we are going to ride this week. In a super-rare occurrence, each of these players is coming off of a win at their last event.
Day’s course history — making four of seven cuts and never finishing higher than 27th — is the worst of the three, but it is safe to say that he is a much different player now than he was in years past. All three of these players are fine plays if you are willing to pay the premium, but I may lean towards Rory, who ranks the highest of the big three in my Player Model this week. He has an aggressive style of play that sets up well for DraftKings scoring.
The only player ranking higher than the big three in my model this week is Hideki Matsuyama ($10,600). His course history is wildly impressive, but we are dealing with only two appearances at this event to draw that conclusion from. In his two appearances, however, he finished T5 last year and won the tournament the year prior. Matsuyama’s eight competitive rounds here have all been under par, and he is coming into this tournament with four straight top-25 finishes, which include events with fairly strong fields.
His Recent Adjusted Round Score of 67.1 is the third-highest in this event and he is the only player outside of the big three who currently has at least a five percent Vegas implied chance to win. Rostering Matsuyama offers some salary relief from the previously mentioned players, but he is also likely to carry high tournament ownership.
We can’t head towards the lower end of this price range without mentioning Matt Kuchar ($9,900). Relative to recent finishes, no player is in better form than Kuchar, who has four top-10 finishes in his last five tournaments. The packed field has brought his price back below the $10,000 range, but he is still significantly more expensive than he was in The Players and The Masters, where he was $8,100 and $7,800, respectively.
He is a prior winner here and has five top-10 finishes in the past seven years. Am I now running on three straight (maybe four) weeks of mentioning Kuchar? I am, but his consistency in this article will remain until his consistency on the course wavers.
$7,000 – $8,900
Kevin Kisner ($8,600) had missed consecutive cuts before finishing T10 in last week’s DEAN & DELUCA Invitational, where he managed to hit 65.2 percent of his Greens in Regulation (only 0.2 percentage points lower than his long-term average). This suggests that he is coming back to form, as he has been struggling to find Greens in Regulation recently, shown by his Recent GIR of only 58.8 percent. He also had a great week on the greens, which led him to finish seventh in Strokes Gained: Putting.
There is risk in chasing a hot putter, but Kisner has been a consistently solid putter, as shown by his 28.9 Long-Term PPR. Avoiding big mistakes is going to be important at the Memorial, and last week Kisner managed to not make a single double-bogey or worse in all four rounds of play.
A second-round 68 wasn’t enough to make the cut after Jim Furyk ($7,300) turned in a 75 in the first round of last week’s DEAN & DELUCA Invitational. Furyk found the sand on seven occasions last week and was only able to save par on one of them. This could be concerning as he navigates through the bunker-ridden Muirfield, but this is a course that he knows well. In his last seven appearances at this event, he has missed the cut once, finished top-25 six times, and top-five twice.
Excluding players with less than three appearances at the Memorial, only Luke Donald ($7,200) has a higher Adjusted Round Score than Furyk. Making six cuts in just as many appearances, Donald has been in contention on a few occasions. Donald’s 85 percent Consistency rating on the year trails only Dustin Johnson and Mr. Consistent (Matt Kuchar) for players with at least two events this calendar year. His history here is the best thing going for him, as his recent-form GIR, Adjusted Round Score, and Driving Accuracy are down from his long-term averages.
$5,700 – $6,900
At the very top of this price range sits Daniel Summerhays ($6,900), who has made five straight cuts, including a top-25 finish at the packed-field Players. He has done this despite hitting only 55.8 percent of his fairways through his last four tournaments, and riding a hot putter to the tune of 28.1 putts per round. His course history is spotty, but his two missed cuts have come with an uncharacteristic average of 30 PPR – 1.4 putts more than his long-term average. If he can get his accuracy off the tee closer to his long-term average of 61 percent, he should among the 70 players getting some action on Saturday and Sunday.
Jason Bohn ($5,900) is causing an unnecessary amount of intrigue this week. It isn’t because his course history is great or because his recent form looks good; it is actually the opposite. His recent-form GIR, driving distance, driving accuracy, and most notably, Adjusted Round Score, are all down from his long-term statistics. With a -1.8 adjusted round differential, the hope would be that Bohn is able to come back to his long-term average of 69.8.
He managed to make the cut last week largely due to his putter, which is the only thing that has remained consistent for him through his last four events. He managed to convert 18 of his greens hit in regulation into birdies last week, which was the best in the field. He did manage a slight uptick in his ball striking, though, and $5,800 is a price I am willing to pay in a few tournament lineups for a chance to get him as he ascends to his Long-Term Adjusted Round Score.
Long Off the Tee
I think I may have shared this shot in the past, but I don’t care because it is awesome. You’ve probably seen it before, but watch it again because . . . it is awesome. I will readily admit that I am one of those guys who wants Tiger Woods back on Tour in a bad way, even if it is just to see him play seven holes and fake an injury.
Here it is: Tiger’s chip at the 16th hole during the final round of the Memorial in 2012.
Good luck this weekend!
