Daily Fantasy Golf Course Primer: The Open Championship
It's here! It's The Open Championship. It's not The British Open.
Now, get it right or pay the price.
With the semantics settled, we can dig into the third major of the calendar year: the British Open. Er, you know what I mean.
There's a lot for us to dig into this week, given that it's a major at a rotating course (and this course is super tough), so let's get started.
Course and Tournament Info
The Open returns to Carnoustie GC, which hosted this major in 2007, as well as six other times -- but just once since 1975 (1999).
That gives us a little info to rely on in terms of recent play, but there have been some tweaks to Carnoustie over the past 11 years. They're worth noting, but they don't seem like anything drastic enough to alter our view on the course entirely.
We still know Carnasty will be tough.
The Open back in 2007 played 2.381 strokes over par, on average, ranking it the fifth-toughest course on Tour that season. That shouldn't be a surprise, as 14 of the past 18 Open Championships have graded out top-10 in difficulty in terms of play relative to par.
Carnoustie should feature few scoring opportunities, as it had a birdie-to-bogey ratio of 0.61, sixth-lowest of the past 18 Opens.
Key Stats
Here is how certain key stats correlated to stroke differential in the 2007 The Open Championship.
2007 Open Championship | Correlation |
---|---|
Par 4 Scoring | 0.886 |
Bogey Avoidance | 0.868 |
Scrambling | 0.715 |
Birdie or Better Rate | 0.694 |
Greens in Regulation | 0.574 |
Ball Striking | 0.513 |
Par 5 Scoring | 0.476 |
Driving Distance | 0.322 |
Par 3 Scoring | 0.298 |
Sand Saves | 0.192 |
Driving Accuracy | 0.085 |
Translated into actual performance, here's how the top five in 2007 ranked in some of these more important stats.
2007 Stat Ranks | Padraig Harrington | Sergio Garcia | Andres Romero | Ernie Els | Richard Green |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Driving Distance | 12 | 1 | 4 | 22 | 64 |
Driving Accuracy | 37 | 8 | 62 | 64 | 33 |
Greens in Regulation | 12 | 4 | 30 | 30 | 9 |
Ball Striking | 8 | 1 | 32 | 45 | 37 |
Scrambling | 1 | 15 | 17 | 3 | 25 |
Birdie or Better Rate | 20 | 13 | 1 | 13 | 6 |
Bogey Avoidance | 1 | 2 | 10 | 2 | 10 |
Par 3 Scoring | 3 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 19 |
Par 4 Scoring | 9 | 3 | 24 | 2 | 16 |
Par 5 Scoring | 5 | 8 | 8 | 54 | 2 |
Padraig Harrington ranked first in both bogey avoidance and scrambling, indicating saving pars is of utmost important. The larger correlation shows that, as well.
Distance, rather than accuracy, mattered more for the top five, again coinciding with the correlations already examined.
As for putting, naturally these guys did pretty well. That's to be expected. Andres Romero ranked first in putts per round, Ernie Els was sixth, Harrington was eighth. Richard Green finished 18th there. Sergio Garcia was 42nd and ultimately lost in a playoff with Harrington.
That leads us here, to the most important stats that we can predict with some confidence (i.e. not putting).
Key Stats for The Open Championship at Carnoustie GC |
---|
Par 4 Scoring |
Bogey Avoidance |
Scrambling |
Strokes Gained: Tee to Green |
Strokes Gained: Links-Style Courses |
Par 4 scoring, bogey avoidance, and scrambling all mark pretty steady golfers who won't implode, and that's been part of the success at The Open in years past. It also coincides with the 2007 season at Carnasty.
Strokes gained data isn't available for past Open Championships, but even a study into how players graded out in the various stats entering that year's Open didn't show any particular strokes gained area as overly predictive of performance at The Open Championship.
In-season strokes gained: tee to green entering The Open, though, did have the strongest correlation, though modest at 0.24, with stroke differential. It's also never a bad idea to target strong tee-to-green golfers when the track is going to be tough.
Links specialists can be found on Future of Fantasy, and giving extra weight to performance on links style courses isn't a terrible idea, either, given that this is a genuine links course.
Event History Studs
These 20 golfers have the best stroke differential averages at the past 10 Open Championships (minimum two Opens in that span).
Golfer | Rounds | Stroke +/- | Golfer | Rounds | Stroke +/- |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Henrik Stenson | 36 | 2.24 | Zach Johnson | 40 | 1.47 |
Jordan Spieth | 20 | 2.09 | Rafa Cabrera Bello | 12 | 1.45 |
Phil Mickelson | 32 | 2.02 | Hideki Matsuyama | 18 | 1.25 |
Adam Scott | 38 | 1.96 | Charl Schwartzel | 32 | 1.23 |
Rory McIlroy | 30 | 1.91 | Retief Goosen | 21 | 1.21 |
Sergio Garcia | 38 | 1.90 | Louis Oosthuizen | 26 | 1.10 |
Rickie Fowler | 30 | 1.66 | Jason Day | 28 | 1.09 |
Tony Finau | 8 | 1.59 | Emiliano Grillo | 6 | 1.09 |
Marc Leishman | 24 | 1.49 | Francesco Molinari | 30 | 1.04 |
Dustin Johnson | 34 | 1.47 | Matthew Southgate | 10 | 0.98 |
This sure is a who's who list at the top, which shouldn't surprise us. The Open is no joke.
But you should know that Stenson withdrew from the Scottish Open due to a shoulder injury and is questionable for the Open.
Jordan Spieth, last year's winner, has made all five cuts at the Open and hasn't finished worse than 44th.
Phil Mickelson missed the cut last year but finished 2nd, 20th, 23rd, and 1st prior. He also was second in 2011.
The past 10 winners have been -- in order -- Spieth, Stenson, Zach Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Mickelson, Ernie Els, Darren Clarke, Louis Oosthuizen, Stewart Cink, and Padraig Harrington.
Just four of those are Americans, but three of the past five Open champs have come from the States.