Hey everyone, welcome back. The name of this article is a work in progress. Kind of want to change it from Redkacheek’s Core, so we will see what brilliant name I come up with for next week. But for the first event write-up of the 2025 season: WM Phoenix Open, we will go with Redkacheek’s Playbook.

We have a fun week ahead of us…the course rotations are behind us and we can feel a lot better about the data we are using, our process and the overall strategy for attacking the next few weeks. For this article, I will reiterate what I spoke about on the FGB Podcast this week with Axis regarding the golf course, highlighting my key stats for the week and ultimately the foundation of my player pool. Let’s first take a quick 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. Stay tuned for a video next week as I use it to walk down Torrey Pines, but until then you can browse the FREE version or the PRO version yourself.

So let’s start there. I think diving into the course provides a great starting point every week to determine the type of players you want to focus on, or possibly avoid.

The biggest takeaway from this part of the Course Preview is the de-emphasis on Driving Accuracy and emphasis on Driving Distance. When you see everything about this course is easier than Tour Average, but Driving Accuracy is way down. That is a preference not a defense, for this course. This screams OTT, with emphasis on Driving Distance.

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. There isn’t much I can do with the approaches this week, guys are really going to be working throughout the bag, but you can see how the ball-striking stats in the Radar plot, and the Proximity in the middle table are accentuated.

So the main takeaway for building your player pool this week and using any number of tools is that this course is the complete opposite of last week at Pebble. Expect players to hit a lot of drivers, not concerned with hitting it in the rough (although there is some water out there), and then being very aggressive with their approach shots. Again, the way I come to that conclusion is seeing Driving Accuracy at 56%, GIR% at 65.9% and DD of 308 for the Top 10. This is just an easy way to determine how a course plays Tee-to-Green.

The last piece, which can be seen in the Radar plot is putting. Yes, putting will be a separator from the Top 25s to Top 10s. Now, these greens are quite easy with an average make of 3’, but we are still destined to roster many guys that just won’t have it on the greens this week. Still though, it isn’t a bad idea to look at the putting performances from the fall swing specifically.

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 this model are:

SG-T2G
SG-OTT
SG-APP
SG-ARG
SG-PUTT
GIR %
Proximity
Birdie or Better %
Bogey or Worse %

Easily some of my favorites, and honestly the best collection of “FORM” we can analyze.

Keep an eye on this tool as more data, filters and capabilities are added. One other tool I want to quickly highlight is the Rolling Stats. If you are in a pinch, or simply want to gauge the field fairly 1-to-1 across 3 timeframes, the Rolling Stats is the absolute best. Here is a look at the players under $9k who rank inside the top 60 in all Ball Striking categories/timeframes, which is usually a big decision point.

Spectrum Data