Scouting the Routing - 2024 The Sentry

Ian McNeill's free comprehensive course preview of the Plantation Course at Kapalua for the 2024 Tournament of Champions. In this piece, Ian overviews every key metric and trend you need to make an informed decision on this week's betting board.

2024 is finally here, and with it comes an abundance of dates to circle on our golfing calendars. From crowning the third-ever Olympic golfing champion to the return of three historic Major Championship venues and a brand new rotation of “Signature Events” which will continue to feature the best and brightest names the PGA Tour has to offer, there is plenty to look forward to as a golf fan (and bettor).

The first such headline event comes from the island of Maui. In its recent history, the Tournament of Champions has gained a certain reputation for the dramatic, as the last five tournaments in Kapalua have featured two sudden-death playoffs, a scoring duel of historic proportions, and Sunday comebacks of five and seven shots.

This year's rendition promises to give us a similarly star-studded showdown, as 21 of the OWGR’s top-25 will be kicking off their 2024 campaigns on the stunning coastlines of Kapalua. Before we get into the illustrious odds board on tap for golf bettors on Monday morning, this piece will serve to set you up to make those crucial decisions before the market shifts later in the week. Without further ado, here is my comprehensive scouting report for Kapalua’s Plantation Course and the 2024 Tournament of Champions!  

The Golf Course

The Plantation Course at Kapalua - Par 73; 7,596 yards

Past Champions

• 2023 - Jon Rahm (-27) over Collin Morikawa
• 2022 - Cameron Smith (-34) over Jon Rahm
• 2021 - Harris English (-25) over Joaquin Niemann (playoff)
• 2020 - Justin Thomas (-14) over Patrick Reed/Xander Schauffele (playoff)
• 2019 - Xander Schauffele (-23) over Gary Woodland
• 2018 - Dustin Johnson (-24) over Jon Rahm

Kapalua by the Numbers (Off-The-Tee):

• Average Fairway Width - 49.2 yards; 2nd widest on the PGA Tour
• Driving Accuracy - 72.2%; Highest on Tour
• Average Driving Distance - 304.2 yards; 3rd highest on Tour
• Missed Fairway Penalty - 0.37; 13th highest on Tour
• Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee Difficulty: +0.086; easiest on Tour

As you can tell from the numbers above, Kapalua is about as stress-free of a driving venue as you’ll ever see in professional golf. Over the last two seasons, only St. Andrews, Augusta National, and El Cardonal have offered players more generous landing areas off the tee, and the downhill nature of many tee shots (1, 7, 17, and 18 in particular) make Kapalua’s routing much less daunting than the 7,600 yards on the scorecard would suggest.

There is trouble to be found around Kapalua if players do happen to miss these expansive fairways, as the Plantation Course ranks in the top half on tour in both Missed Fairway Penalty and Penalty Fraction (the percentage of missed fairways that result in a penalty stroke). However, it should be noted that you’ll have to be exceptionally wild off the tee to find the more punitive portions of the golf course, as Kapalua’s rough penalty of just 0.14 ranks as the third-lowest mark on the schedule. 

Between the aforementioned width of the fairways and a buffer zone of benign rough providing a barrier for squirrely tee shots, only the exceptionally inaccurate will find themselves facing the penalties on offer around these links. As last year’s average mark of 304.2 yards will tell you, players will have no reservations about swinging away with their drivers off of almost every tee box.

When it comes to assessing the optimal driving profile around Kapalua, I’d prefer to take a player who can fully utilize the forgiveness provided by these 50-yard wide fairways. There has been a strong correlation between driving distance and success here at Kapalua, as each of the top five players in SG: OTT last year also happened to rank inside the top 10 in driving distance, and none finished worse than 13th on the final leaderboard.

Kapalua by the Numbers (Approach):

• Green in Regulation Rate - 76.0%; highest on the PGA Tour
• Strokes Gained: Approach Difficulty: +0.013; 13th easiest on Tour
• Key Proximity Ranges:
  • <125 yards (accounted for 27.5% of approach shots last year)
  • 150-175 yards (20.4%)
  • 200+ yards (27.6%)

Approach play routinely ranks as one of the most crucial facets in projecting the outcome of any golf tournament, but with the sheer volume of second shots we expect to see from the fairway (plus a projected winning score well into the 20s), iron play will be my key differentiating factor in determining which players truly have the upside to take this title down. 

In fact, over the course of this event’s history, a whopping 39% of strokes gained by top-five finishers have been on approach. With players forced to keep the pedal down for all four days, metrics like Birdie Chances Created become much more important, as a winning score above 20 under is much more difficult to attain on a diet of putts exclusively outside of 15-20 feet. 

Unlike many of the wedge-fests we saw in the Swing Season, Kapalua does feature quite a bit of variety in terms of the approach yardages we project to see from players throughout their rounds. The three most prevalent historical ranges come from inside 125, outside of 200, and from 150-175, so players will have to utilize a multitude of different shots and clubs to create birdie opportunities. 

This medley of proximity ranges leads me more in the direction of general approach metrics like SG: APP and Birdie Chances Created, but I will be building a separate weighted proximity model given the sheer importance of identifying the field’s best iron players. I’d go as far as to say if a player isn’t rating out as an elite option using either of those two methods, he has no place on my outright betting card.

Kapalua by the Numbers (Around the Greens):

• Scrambling Percentage - 57.3% 
• Sand Save Difficulty - +0.011; 15th most difficult on Tour
• SG: Around the Green Difficulty: +0.013; 13th easiest on Tour

Of the three tee-to-green metrics, the greenside surrounds at Kapalua are the area that has provided the greatest historic challenge to player scoring. The Scrambling Percentage here sits slightly below the PGA Tour average (57.3 vs 58.7%), and last year, only 14 courses on the schedule made it harder for players to gain strokes around the greens.

However, when the best ball-strikers in the field are projected for a Green in Regulation rate over 80%, it severely limits the opportunities those with elite short games will have to accentuate their superior ability. I’d expect much of a player’s short-game prowess to be tested in getting up and down for birdie on one of Kapalua’s four Par 5s, so I’ll be using Par 5 scoring as a bit of a placeholder for the traditional short-game metrics. 

As testing as Kapalua’s greenside surrounds may be, ball striking will inevitably win the day in a tournament where winning scores may approach 30 under par. In my overall modeling, I’ll have a far below-average weight on SG: Around the Greens, Sand Saves, and Bogey Avoidance.

Kapalua by the Numbers (Putting):

• Average Green Size - 8,722 square feet 
• Agronomy - TifEagle Bermudagrass
• Stimpmeter - 10.5/11
• 3-Putt Percentage: 4.1%
• Strokes Gained: Putting Difficulty: -0.007; 6th most difficult on Tour

As we’ve grown to expect in recent months on the PGA Tour, the eye-popping scores we project at Kapalua this week will place as high an emphasis on putting acumen as we could see all year. Only one of the last five ToC Champions has managed to capture this title whilst gaining less than five strokes to the field on the greens, and the field leader in SG: Putting at Kapalua has finished no worse than second since 2020.

Most of the difficulty on Kapalua’s greens comes from the sheer size of these complexes. At over 8,700 square feet, the greens at the Plantation Course measures over 45% bigger than the average course on the schedule, and as a result, three-putt percentages are over a full point higher than the Tour average (4.1 vs. 3.0%). There’s certainly an argument to be made for metrics like Approach Putt Performance and Three-Putt Avoidance, as Kapalua ranks as one of the toughest courses on Tour to putt from outside 15 feet.

Besides these more general putting metrics, I’ll be placing a special emphasis on a player’s historic acumen on slower Bermudagrass complexes. As is the case with many windswept, coastal venues, the green speeds here at Kapalua tend to rate out as some of the slowest on the PGA Tour. Courses like Pebble Beach, Harbour Town, Corales, and past iterations at Kapalua will all provide solid parallels for the putting conditions I expect this week.

Key Stats Roundup: 

• Driving Distance
• Strokes Gained: Approach -- with particular emphasis placed on proximity splits from <125 and 150-175 yards
• Birdie Chances Created
• Birdie or Better %
• Strokes Gained: Putting - particular emphasis on 3-putt avoidance and a positive track record on slower Bermuda greens
• Par 5 Scoring
• Kapalua History + a proven aptitude in easy scoring conditions 

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The Sunday Shortlist

Before the odds come out on Monday morning, here are 2-3 names I’ve identified as significant targets upon my initial research.

Xander Schauffele

Although Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa have stolen much of the ball-striking limelight in recent years, Xander Schauffele’s approach splits over the last 12 months have been as elite as we’ve ever seen out of the 30-year-old Californian. Xander gained over a stroke per round on approach in 2023 (second in this field) and lapped even Scottie Scheffler in my key proximity range of 175-200 yards -- gaining nearly a tenth of a stroke per shot from this range since January 1.

Unlike many of the PGA Tour’s other preeminent ball-strikers, however, Schauffele can also claim himself as one of the sport’s elite putters (sixth in this field over his last 50 rounds). This combination of elite approach play and reliable putting makes him an incredibly dangerous prospect on easier setups, and Kapalua has proven no different in his five-start sample. Schauffele has recorded finishes of first, second, fifth, and 12th on Maui since 2019, and on very few of those occasions (save for 2018) has he come into the Sentry with his game this well-optimized for the skill set required at Kapalua.

As the fourth-ranked player in this field (per OWGR), Xander won’t exactly be sneaking up on any oddsmakers to start 2024, but given Scottie’s notorious putting woes and Hovland’s curious lack of positive history around Kapalua, I don’t believe a player with Xander’s profile should be far off either of their numbers on outright odds boards. At any price flirting with 16-1, I’d be very comfortable making Schauffele my leading man at Kapalua this week.

Tom Kim

One year removed from being the hottest name in the golfing world, 21-year-old Tom Kim comes into 2024 as one of the game’s most quietly consistent performers. Over his last 10 worldwide starts (including the Open Championship, the entirety of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, and two DP World Tour Rolex Series Events), Kim has no finish worse than 25th; recording a win, a runner-up, and three additional top-10s in the process. 

Tom has attained these results largely on the back of his putter and iron play, as since the Scottish Open, Kim has yet to lose strokes on the greens in any of those 10 starts and has lost strokes on approach just once. He hasn’t exactly been straddling the field average either, as on nine separate occasions over the last five months, Tom has gained at least four strokes on the field with his irons or putter. 

Of course, Kim remains one of the most dependable drivers of the ball on the planet, and his short game is more than reliable enough to mitigate potential damage around Kapalua’s tricky greenside surrounds. With a fifth-place finish already to his name on debut here last season, I’ll be very interested in any number >25-1 Monday morning.

Eric Cole

If you consumed any of my content over the course of the Fall Swing, you’ll be very familiar with my affinity for Eric Cole. The 35-year-old Floridian made waves throughout his debut year on the PGA Tour, but the last four months are where he's truly showcased his best play. Cole recorded four top-four finishes in five starts from September to November, and perhaps most notably, he did so whilst making marked improvements to his biggest historic flaw (off the tee). 

Not that a faulty driver will hurt him too much this week, as Kapalua is a course that saw a player with a similar statistical profile (Cam Smith) set a PGA Tour scoring record in his win two seasons ago. The generosity of these fairways should ease many of the deficiencies Cole still possesses off the tee, and when isolating for putting and iron play, Eric Cole can count himself as one of the best players on the entire PGA Tour. Over his last 50 rounds, Cole ranks sixth in SG: Approach, third in Birdie Chances Created, seventh in Weighted Proximity, and second in Birdie Conversion Rate. 

It’s difficult to project a player who has yet to close the deal on this stage to overcome some of the Tour’s preeminent stars, but statistically, Eric Cole possesses every tool required to have success around the Plantation Course. He’ll be a lock for me in the Top 10/20 markets, and if the outright number starts to drift into the 60-70/1 range, I won’t be able to resist a player flying in this type of form. 

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