Heading to Houston this week, the PGA TOUR will take on Memorial Park Golf Course for the second year in a row.
This is a municipal course that sees a lot of foot traffic over the course of a year. Roughly 55,000 rounds are played annually at Memorial Park GC.
It would likely take the title of “Most Affordable PGA TOUR Course” but affordability doesn’t help us set our weekly fantasy rosters.
Instead, let’s look at golfer quotes and also check how it played last year to see if we can dive into some course-fit stats that will help us build out our FanDuel lineups.
What we find is that the winning score last year was 13-under and just 37 golfers finished the week in red numbers. It’s a tough course so we will look at the top performers on other tough tracks.
After that, we will dive into the grass splits to see who overperforms their baseline on bermudagrass turf.
Tough Courses
Memorial Park Golf Course is a par 70 that stretches out past 7,400 yards. It’s long and unforgiving.
The field average was 71.5 shots per round over the first three days before the tournament officials eased up on Sunday (68.7 field average in round four).
There is always the possibility they decide they prefer that easier setup but for now we should assume a tough scoring environment.
Here are the top performers per round, when playing hard courses (+0.75 RTP or tougher) over the last two years:
Patrick Reed
Scottie Scheffler
Tony Finau
Christiaan Bezuidenhout
Aaron Wise
Tyrrell Hatton
Branden Grace
Brooks Koepka
Jason Kokrak
David Lipsky
Adam Svensson
Jason Day
Joaquin Niemann
Adam Scott
Cameron Tringale
We can also look at a golfer’s performance versus their baseline to see who over-performs most. Here is that list:
Francesco Molinari
Brandon Hagy
Mackenzie Hughes
Christiaan Bezuidenhout
Matthew Wolff
Dylan Frittelli
Hudson Swafford
Aaron Wise
David Lipsky
Jason Day
Adam Long
Charley Hoffman
Tony Finau
Richy Werenski
Ryan Palmer
Overlap List: the names that show up on both lists include Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Aaron Wise, David Lipsky, Jason Day, and Tony Finau.
Day, Bezuidenhout, and Wise are three of the top around-the-green performers on TOUR so taking a look at strokes gained around-the-green might not be the worst idea when heading to a tough course.
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Bermudagrass Greens
Memorial Park features wall-to-wall bermudagrass so golfers that grew up in the Southeast are usually the most comfortable on this grass.
That’s not always the case though, so let’s look at the numbers for verification.
Here are the top performers per round, when playing on courses with bermuda greens over the last two years:
Christiaan Bezuidenhout
Scottie Scheffler
Tyrrell Hatton
Jason Day
Cameron Tringale
Patrick Reed
Cameron Smith
Brooks Koepka
Charley Hoffman
Sungjae Im
Sam Burns
Adam Scott
Joaquin Niemann
Shane Lowry
Ryan Palmer
We can also look at a golfer’s performance versus their baseline to see who over-performs most. Here is that list:
Shawn Stefani
Trey Mullinax
Denny McCarthy
Jason Day
Stephan Jaeger
Brian Gay
Roger Sloan
Cameron Tringale
Kramer Hickok
Bill Haas
Paul Barjon
Christiaan Bezuidenhout
Peter Malnati
Jim Herman
Jimmy Walker
Overlap List: the names that show up on both lists include Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Jason Day, and Cameron Tringale.
Day Bezuidenhout are showing up on both overlap lists so those are two names to potentially research further this week.
FanDuel Focus
Aaron Wise ($10,700): We just saw him show up on the overlap list for his ability to shine on tough courses. Wise also checks the box when it comes to recent form. The University of Oregon product arrives with six straight top 30s, including three straight top 15s. He’s playing well and should be well-suited for this week’s course.
Cameron Tringale ($9,900): The average price per roster spot on FanDuel is $10,000 and Tringale checks in $100 cheaper than that. While he is still searching for his first PGA TOUR title, he doesn’t need to win in order to pay off this price tag. He has also flirted with contention plenty this year as he has found himself inside of the top 10 on the leaderboard after 10 of his last 34 rounds played.
Good luck with your lineups this week and check back tomorrow for some more course-fit analysis.
