Daily Fantasy Golf Course Primer: Shriners Hospitals for Children Open
After a stop in wine country, the PGA Tour heads to Sin City for the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. TPC Summerlin is the venue, a 7,255-yard par 71 that features bentgrass greens and some picturesque views reminiscent of a lush green oasis in the middle of the desert.
Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay are the two most recent winners, and each contended well in their non-winning years -- DeChambeau finished T7 in fall 2017 and Cantlay was runner up to Bryson last year. Prior leaderboards were not so top-heavy with star power, but ball strikers pop once again this week.
Long drives and greens in regulation are the name of the game week in and week out, and Summerlin plays to the advantage of the world's best off the tee and approach players. Last year, DeChambeau ranked fourth in the field in both driving accuracy and greens in regulation and was third in scrambling. That'll do the trick just about every week.
Let's dig into the course and see what stats we can use to build our daily fantasy lineups this week.
Course and Tournament Info
Course: TPC Summerlin
Par: 71
Distance: 7,255 yards
Fairways/Rough: Bermudagrass
Greens: Bentgrass
| Season | Par | Yardage | Avg Score | Avg O/U Par | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 71 | 7255 | 69.369 | -1.631 | 38 |
| 2018 | 71 | 7255 | 71.542 | +0.542 | 10 |
| 2017 | 71 | 7255 | 69.623 | -1.377 | 40 |
| 2016 | 71 | 7255 | 70.08 | -0.92 | 34 |
| 2015 | 71 | 7255 | 69.659 | -1.341 | 42 |
After a blip two years ago that saw this course play as one of the toughest on Tour with a single digit-under par winner, it was back to a birdie-fest last year. Give credit to Cantlay for contending back to back years in such different conditions and field/course dynamics.
Summerlin features long par 5s and one long par 3, and mostly short par 4s. Of the 11 par 4s, 6 fall between 400-450 yards, and 2 are less than 400 yards. The overall yardage gets exaggerated by the 606-yard 13th hole and the 239-yard 8th.
TPC Twin Cities (3M Open) was a new course on Tour last year, but it is a par 71 with bentgrass greens that saw a couple young elite ball strikers plus DeChambeau duking it out for the title on the 72nd hole. Other high birdie rate courses with short par 4s are Sedgefield Country Club (Wyndham Championship) and TPC Deere Run (John Deere Classic, where DeChambeau has won).
Twin Cities, Sedgefield, and Summerlin all ranked in the top eight in greens in regulation percentage last season, while Deere Run was not far behind in 18th. All except Sedgefield rank among the 25 lowest scrambling rates, and all four courses saw average driving distance over 300 yards last year.
Key Stats
These stats will be key to success in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open at TPC Summerlin.
| Key Stats for the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open |
|---|
| Strokes Gained: Tee to Green |
| Strokes Gained: Approach |
| Birdies or Better Gained |
| Strokes Gained: Par 4s (400-450) |
| Scrambling Gained |
We can cover our bases with strokes gained: tee to green, and especially in a field where studs have reigned recently we should be focusing on the best all around golfers. Many of them will overlap with the best approach players, and strokes gained: approach is the single most important statistic this week. Top 10 finishers gained more strokes with approaches than they did off the tee and around the green combined, and golfers who missed the cut actually lost more strokes on approach than they lost off the tee and around the green combined.
Two years ago notwithstanding, we can expect the field to go low this week, making birdies the name of the game here. We'll want birdie makers for DFS purposes given the scoring rules across the industry, and whether we are eyeing outright winners, top 10s/20s, or matchup betting we'll want to identify which golfers are going to make the most birdies.
Short par 4s are littered throughout the course, and finding golfers who do well in this range will help us identify golfers who are capable of strategizing their way around a golf course. Golfers who do well on a variety of hole lengths generally are the best at knowing when to bomb driver and when to club down to get into the appropriate range for their approach shot.
Scrambling success was highly correlated with leaderboard position last year. Eleven of the top 18 in scrambling percentage finished inside the top 15 at the end of the week, and the Shriners had the 5th lowest scrambling percentage of the entire season at just 53.02%. Three of the four ahead of it were major championships.
Course History Studs
DeChambeau and Cantlay are in well-trod territory here, but with just five appearances between the two of them, their history samples are still relatively small. Not so for Scott Piercy, who has played this course every year since 2009 and has just one missed cut and nine finishes of T32 or better.
World No. 1 Brooks Koepka has two top-five finishes and two missed cuts in four trips to Summerlin, most recently a runner up finish three years ago.
Webb Simpson won the event in 2014 and has made the cut each of the five years since with three more top 20s in that span.
Chesson Hadley has played the event five times in the last six years and has three top 10s, including a T7 last year and T4 the year prior.
Mike Rodden is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Mike Rodden also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username mike_rodden. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.
