🎌Frenzy In The Far East
ZOZO Championship Preview | Stats, Trends & More!
🎌Frenzy In The Far East
ZOZO Championship Preview | Stats, Trends & More!
In this week’s RunGood RunDown:
Optimal Lineup: Shriners Children’s Open
Something “Clicked” For This Golfer
The Canadian With A Chance
The Abundance of Par-3s
The Unique Nature of This Scorecard
The Strokes Gained Leaders For LIV Jeddah
Ownership Pivot Options
📊 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup
💡 Golfer Spotlight: Sepp Straka
Did Straka find something? Certainly looks like it. He was slumping hard this summer, missing six straight cuts and lost strokes from tee-to-green in nine straight.
Then ... something happened. He found it in Memphis, gained 5.85 from tee-to-green and hasn’t looked back since. His last three have been marvelous — runner-up, T7, runner-up.
💡 Golfer Spotlight: Mackenzie Hughes
The man who beat Straka in a playoff at the Sanderson Farms was Mackenzie Hughes and I find him to be one of the most interesting golfers in the field.
For the most part — it’s an “avoid” spot for a golfer coming off a win who doesn’t win frequently. However, in the last year, we’ve seen winners get hot on TOUR and rattle off a bunch of good finishes.
Hughes was building towards that win, finishing T46 and T25 in his two starts prior and he’s gained strokes on approach in all three during that run.
He’d had an extra week off to finish celebrating and get back to work. Now he heads back to Narashino CC where he finished T4 last year.
He’s certainly worth a consideration for more good play this week.
😎 20 Cracks At Par-3s!
There are (5) par-3s on this par-70 set-up. Being able to attack (or survive) these holes will certainly be a path to victory. Here are the Strokes Gained Leaders for Par-3s.
Tom Kim +0.1569
Tommy Fleetwood +0.0938
Stephen Jaeger +0.0898
Tom Hoge +0.0881
Hideki Matsuyama +0.0832
Honorable mentions: Cam Davis, Hubbard, Schauffele, Si Woo, Whaley
😎The Long & Short Of It
Accordia Golf Narashino CC continues to be one of the more unique courses on the PGA TOUR when looking at the scorecard. Basically every par-4 is either quite short or quite long. There’s basically no “medium par-4s”.
There are (5) that measure 425 yards or less (with four of those under 405) and (5) that measure 486 or longer. Let’s look at the best players in those ranges.
SG: Short Par 4s
Tom Kim +0.1319
Adam Long +0.1064
Corey Conners +0.0864
Sungjae Im +0.0812
Scott Stallings +0.0774
SG: Long Par 4s
Tommy Fleetwood +0.1677
Kurt Kitayama +0.1621
Christiaan Bezuidenhout +0.1232
Sungjae Im +0.1221
Xander Schauffele +0.1139
SG Long OR Short Par 4s
Sungjae Im +0.0965
Xander Schauffele +0.0928
Tommy Fleetwood +0.0845
Corey Conners +0.0788
Tom Kim +0.0716
🐫 LIV Strokes Gained
I think my stance on LIV is quite clear — I don’t find it particularly entertaining and it lacks context. However, I run a golf data website with the goal of being the best at it — so I need to track data from as many tours as possible. Currently LIV in one of the (6) tours that I’m tracking to compile a complete profile for every golfer.
Here are the best golfers, since joining LIV, who are playing in Jeddah this week:
🧪 Ownership Pivots
Since the start of the season, Mike Kavaliunas has been running the Projected Ownership model for RickRunGood.com and he’s absolutely crushing it. I’m going to use his current projections to point out a few possible pivots:
Anyone in the $10,000 to Collin Morikawa (16.6%)
Morikawa is the 7th best APP player in the field (L24), T22 & T7 in two trips to Narashino CC.
Mito Pereira (20.8%) to Sebastian Munoz (8.1%)
Munoz finished 4th here last year, coming off a stellar Presidents Cup, drives it well.
Sam Ryder (7.0%) to Kazuki Higa (0.5%)
Higa is ranked 83rd in the world, Ryder is 294. Higa’s L6: T3, MC, T20, WIN, T43, T9 — all on the Japan or Asian Tour. Won an event that included Si Woo Kim and (2) other Top 100 players.
Good Luck
Rick