Hey everyone, welcome back. Sticking with this article name from the WM Phoenix Open: Redkacheek’s Playbook. It is fitting enough, covering almost everything from start to finish…so yeah, the Playbook! Let’s dive in.

This week’s event: Genesis Invitational was moved to Torrey Pines (South Course) from Riviera due to the fires in Pacific Palisades about 3-4 weeks ago. Fortunately, we just saw this course host the Farmers so much of this course specific data should be fresh in your mind.

For this article, I will reiterate what I spoke about on the FGB Podcast this week regarding the golf course, highlighting my key stats for the week and ultimately the foundation of my player pool. If you missed the podcast, I would encourage you to go back and watch the first half as I walked through the Course Preview PRO on video. So you might get some additional benefit here as we discuss everything.

Let’s first take a good look at the course.

Course Preview PRO

As you may have seen, the new Course Preview PRO tool has so much amazing data to kickstart our research every week. For me, this is where I start on Monday. This gives me several key details that I will use to determine the players with the best fit for this week, or maybe some key stats I will take a closer look at that may lead to under-owned success.

So let’s start there.

With all of the red tiles, it’s obvious this course is tough, much tougher than the other Tour courses. The things that stand out the most to me is the difficulty tee-to-green. Driving Accuracy is way down. GIR is down, and even more down from the Rough (31% vs 71%), but interestingly there isn’t a greater penalty for missing the fairway than a regular course on Tour. This tells me this course is difficult into and around the greens. Driving the ball well here can be a big advantage, but from what we have seen in past years, the top performers aren’t separating themselves OTT, but on Approach…and Putting.

Furthermore, this part of the page gives us a look at relative stats for the Top 10 and Top 25, as well as the approach distances. Almost all Approach distances are at the Tour average, but even though 200+ is slightly less, we can see it is relatively much higher than the other categories. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look at the best mid and long iron players…which I just happen to have using the StatModel Pro:

Now this isn’t enough to automatically check their names, it is vital to look at OTT numbers as well, but these are the best mid- to long-iron players over 3 different timeframes.

The last piece, which can be seen in the Radar plot is putting. Yes, putting will be a separator for the Top 25 and Top 10 finishers. I think this will be overlooked and would encourage you to always consider at least SG:Total (or SP:Total), and consider Putting. To back this up, here is our list of recent winners and their lead-in form, you will see how ball-striking form is vital, but SG:P was an under-the-radar lead-in stat. (whew…lot of dashes there)

Rolling Stats & StatModel PRO

This section will be used to highlight the stats I am using for the week. Still working through the BETA for StatModel PRO, but would encourage you to check it out. Actually really useful to blend data from up to 3 different timeframes. Could be as simple as using the Strokes Gained category from last 12 Rounds, then again from last 24 Rounds and then again for last 100 Rounds. Would provide some even weight to near term form and long-term form. But for now, I will just share the best lead-in stats from the StatModel for last 12 rounds and last 36 rounds.

 

The stats included in at least one of my 3 models this week are:

• SG-T2G
• SG-OTT
• SG-APP
• SG-TOTAL
• SG-PUTT
• GIR %
• Driving Distance
• Proximity (150-175,175-200,200+)
• Birdie or Better %
• Bogey or Worse %
• SPECTRUM! (OTT, APP, PUTT, TOTAL, T2G)

 

Easily some of my favorites, and honestly the best collection of “FORM” we can analyze. This may seem like a lot, but keep in mind these are spread across specific timeframes, so basically I am focused on different sample sizes for each group of stats.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what

 

Spectrum Data

 

IT’S BACK! Let’s take a look at Spectrum Edge for this week (Spectrum data also included in StatModel PRO):

I am going to highlight the top Spectrum APP and Spectrum OTT…so here are those:

Weather Outlook

 

Windfinder

 

Weather might be dicey this week. Check the link above, but here is a look at Thursday’s weather. I don’t think this will warrant any kind of wave advantage but worth keeping an eye on into Thursday morning.

 

CORE PLAYS

ELITE TIER

Alright, let’s get into my Core Plays. These will be the players I am overweight on OR clicking in SE. Sometimes it’s the same thing, other times I will play someone in SE and avoid them in large-field GPPs.