Flag Hunting: PGA Betting Picks - Shriners Children's Open

In the words of Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer Grant Napear, "If you didn't like last week's finish, you don't like Swing Season Golf!" Okay, it's not as catchy as I originally intended, but the back-nine of last week's Sanderson Farms Championship epitomized everything we love about this time of year: unproven commodities battling it out on the biggest stage of their golfing lives, a brutal collapse from the 54-hole leader, and a five-man playoff that included a 23-year-old phenom, two guys that hadn't finished better than 55th in their last three months on Tour, and a couple more that have been known to be on the wrong side of some crazy finishes.

As we depart the Deep South for Sin City, we encounter another venue that has been known to produce some wild theatrics of its own. From a walk-off hole-in-one, to an epic final-hole collapse by one of its most accomplished champions, and win number 1 of 82 for the most electrifying athlete we've seen in the modern age. If history is any indicator, TPC Summerlin is the perfect spot to keep up the breakneck pace we've started on this fall.

Without further ado, here's everything you need to know about TPC Summerlin and the Shriners Children's Hospital Open!

The Golf Course

TPC Summerlin - Par 71; 7,255 yards

Playing as a Par 71 and tipping out at over 7,250 yards, it would appear at first that TPC Summerlin is the longest test of golf we’ve seen to this point in the Fall Swing. However, before we go all-in on driving distance and long-iron proximity, we must also take into account that Summerlin is the first course we’ve seen in some time where elevation becomes a factor. Summerlin sits nearly 3,000 feet above sea level - second on Tour to the Barracuda Championship in Reno in terms of elevation, and this thin air (combined with the firmer conditions of Las Vegas desert golf), has elevated the average driving distance to over 300 yards here since 2020. (3rd highest of any Tour venue).

This boost in distance effectively shortens the golf course by 3-400 yards, and with 9 of the 11 Par 4s here already playing under 450 yards on the scorecard, TPC Summerlin actually gives players a few chances to club down off the tee to better keep the ball in play. The fairways here are the widest we’ve seen to this point in the swing season (~34 yards on average), but although landing areas are more generous, the penalty for wayward tee shots is ramped up as well. TPC Summerlin ranked 6th last year in terms of missed fairway penalty, as well as 4th in Rough Penalty. Missing outside of the rough lines can often provide a much stiffer penalty, as Summerlin sits right in the middle of the South Nevada desert, meaning extraordinarily wayward tee shots will be subjected to a crap shoot of sandy waste areas, boulders, and thick desert brush. Much like its two closest geographic cousins: TPC Scottsdale and Summit Club - TPC Summerlin is capable of ruining any player’s day who doesn’t fully respect the peril lurking on an off-the-tee foul ball.

As such, I’m much more inclined to select reliable drivers of the ball who can effectively avoid the danger off of these fairways. Every champion here since 2012 has ranked above field average in Driving Accuracy (average rank of 12.36), and only Patrick Cantlay has ranked inside the Top 10 in Driving Distance in that time. TPC Summerlin does also happen to rank as the 2nd easiest course to gain strokes off the tee, so I don’t believe you have to be an elite driver of the ball to find success here, but some documented reliability on similarly penal golf courses would be appreciated.

At over 7400 sq. feet on average, TPC Summerlin features the 5th largest greens on the PGA Tour. In addition, the increase in average driving distance has effectively decreased the projected proximity ranges I expect to see on many of these Par 4’s. Despite six of its eleven Par 4’s coming in at over 440 yards, TPC Summerlin is every bit of the wedge/short iron course as we’ve seen in Napa/Jackson. 63% of historical approach shots have come from inside 175 yards, and this pronounced distribution of short clubs into large greens means TPC Summerlin routinely ranks as one of the easiest courses on Tour to hit greens in regulation (72.1% since 2015). 

Although Summerlin is not the most daunting test for players in terms of the difficulty of approach shots, iron play is still far and away the most important of the three tee-to-green metrics in determining success. Top 10 finishers here have gained 3.67 shots on Approach on average (compared to just 1.58 OTT and 1.44 ARG), and only one player has managed to finish inside the Top 5 whilst losing strokes on Approach since 2018 (Abraham Ancer, 2019 & 2021). As is the case with most birdie shootouts we encounter on the PGA Tour, it will be essential to utilize your ball striking to continually generate easy birdie looks. It’s certainly not impossible to win this tournament purely on the back of a hot putter (see: Kevin Na; 2019), but getting to (-20) or beyond is an inordinately more difficult task when you’re having to rely exclusively on putts from outside 15 feet.

As far as the particular proximity ranges I'll be looking at, 62.5% of approach shots last year came from under 175 yards, and on most standard Par 4's at TPC Summerlin, you should expect guys to have a wedge or short iron in their hands. The 3 reachable Par 5's, as well as 3 Par 3's over 195 yards means there will be some long irons required, but with only one of eleven Par 4's this week measuring over 460 yards, I'd prefer to use Par 5 scoring as an all-encompassing metric rather than adding extra emphasis into long-iron proximity metrics. 

Interestingly enough, the one facet of TPC Summerlin that routinely troubles Tour Pros most has been its around-the-green complexes. Since 2015, Summerlin has ranked as 4th the fourth most difficult course on Tour (behind just Augusta National, TPC River Highlands, and Muirfield Village), to gain strokes around the greens. However, although these greenside complexes have historically been Summerlin’s biggest challenge, the extraordinarily high Green in Regulation percentage does mitigate the effect that short game has in predicting success. Rather than treating short-game stats as a separator in the modeling, this fact leaves me even further entrenched in the belief that elite iron play should be elevated with the amount of trouble lurking for those forced to scramble from off the green.

And finally, onto the greens themselves: we’re back on Bentgrass this week for the first time since the BMW, but in terms of parallels that can be drawn both agronomically and geographically, TPC Summerlin falls a bit short when compared to the first two stops of the Fall Swing. Both notable desert courses on the schedule in 2023 (PGA West and TPC Scottsdale), use an over-seeded Bermuda in that part of the season, so the closest comparable we have would be at fellow Las Vegas courses Shadow Creek and The Summit Club - the hosts of the 2020 and 2021 CJ Cup. Both of those events featured pretty elite fields (i.e. nobody in this tournament), so unlike last week in Jackson, or last month in Napa Valley, my putting model isn’t based on a player's historic success in a particular region or grass type.

As unique as they are agronomically in the region, TPC Summerlin’s greens aren’t very nuanced from a design standpoint. They’ve ranked in the bottom ten in putting difficulty in three of the last four seasons and never higher than 19th. Of course, putting remains the second most important metric to project after approach play, but as long as a player has shown some recent proficiency with the flat stick, it’s safe to say he’s capable of making enough putts to keep pace in this week’s shootout. 

Key Stats Roundup: 

• Driving as a whole will be deemphasized in the modeling, but I do have a lean toward driving accuracy over distance
• Approach play is still king - honing in on wedge/short iron play specifically while using Par 5 Scoring as a stand-in for much of the long-iron weighting
• Big week for Birdie or Better %, Birdie Chances Created, and Strokes Gained in Easy Scoring Conditions. Anyone who wants to contend this week must keep the pedal on the floor for all four rounds to reach the lofty scores we’ve seen around Summerlin in recent years.
• Putting is far and away the second most important facet after Approach play, but with very few throughlines to draw from in terms of agronomy, I’m choosing to look at recent momentum shown on the greens (SG: Putting over a player's last 4-5 starts). 

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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod

2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 Units

Total Winnings: +311.229 Units

Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

Scouting the Routing

For those looking to dabble in the live market this week, it will be imperative to contextualize a player’s position on the leaderboard alongside where he is on the golf course and which holes he still has left to play.

In general, the swing season isn’t known for placing a great number of impediments in front of the world’s best, and TPC Summerlin is no different in that regard. 14 of the 18 holes here have conceded birdies at a >15% clip, and only six holes on property have historically played over par. Of those six, only the 3rd, 8th, and 17th holes are ones I'd classify as "Bogey Avoidance Opportunities," where par would cut the average field by at least a tenth of a stroke. The 492-yard 3rd is far and away the most daunting: conceding a birdie or better just 11.4% of the time whilst carrying a 27.3% bogey or worse rate. It's one of the few holes on property where I'd expect players to have to hit a green in regulation with a long iron, and with a scoring average of 4.21, the 3rd is certainly a nice hole to have in your back pocket when monitoring potential live-adds.

Breaking down the two nines individually, it's clear that the abundance of scoring opportunities at TPC Summerlin are present on its back nine. Two of the three Par 5's here (each carrying a BoB rate >40%), are on the inward half, as well as the drivable Par 4 15th that plays to a 3.6 scoring average and concedes a birdie or better at a whopping 45% rate. The back nine also features just one of the four toughest holes on the course (17), while the front nine includes four of the six toughest; including the aforementioned 3rd and 8th that play to a cumulative scoring average of 0.34 strokes over par.

As such, I'd be very weary at buying high on players starting on the inward half of the golf course (10-18), as once they make the turn onto the 1st hole, they aren't likely to see a clear-cut birdie hole until the final hole of the front side (Par 5 9th). Instead, I'd be focusing a lot more of my attention on players starting on the more difficult side. The two nines play nearly a shot apart relative to par (-0.34 vs -1.33), so if you can find a player making the turn onto the back-nine at (-1) or (-2), they could provide a decent value proposition versus some of the hotter starters working their way from 10-18.

Shriners Open Betting Card

Tom Kim (12-1)

Quietly on a stretch of seven consecutive Top 25 finishes dating back to the Scottish Open, Tom Kim looks to be carving a path into the OWGR Top 10 for the very first time. We already know Tom as one of the most reliable drivers of the ball on the planet (2023 Driving Accuracy Percentage of 67.31), but it has been the recent re-emergence of his iron play and putting that has sparked this latest run of results.

Against some of the best fields you can find in world golf (Open Championship, FedEx Cup Playoffs, BMW PGA Championship, etc), Kim has gained nearly 2.5 strokes on Approach per start over the last 3 months, and perhaps more importantly for this week, Tom looks to be developing into one of the world’s most reliable putters as well. He’s gained strokes putting in each of his last seven starts - gaining over a stroke per round in 5 of those 7, and he’s done it across four different countries and countless different grass types. Now he returns to a venue in which he gained 6.1 strokes putting in his 2022 triumph, and a layout that couldn't be better suited for his overall tee-to-green profile. 

Over the long-term, Tom has been one of the best wedge/short-iron players in this field (behind just Eric Cole and Tom Hoge in Proximity <175 over his last 75 rounds), and nobody in this field can match his combination of elite driving accuracy, birdie chance creation, and putting baseline. 12-1 is admittedly a tough price to swallow on a player who has yet to fully enter the stratosphere of the “Super-Elites” on Tour, but given the propensity of past champions to repeatedly contend at Summerlin (Cantlay, Na, Sungjae, Laird, etc), and the lack of elite (or even reliable), options in this field, perhaps this number presents more value than we see on the surface. I have full faith in Tom to make his way into contention this week, and in my estimation, he makes a much better outright investment at 12-1 than the potential combination of unreliable assets available to us in the middle of the board.

J.T. Poston (33-1)

He’s long been one of the PGA Tour’s preeminent short-game maestros, but in the last few months, we’ve seen J.T. Poston morph into a more than capable ball-striker. Poston ended his 2023 campaign on a stellar run of iron play: logging six straight starts of positive approach splits whilst logging the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 8th best iron weeks of his entire career in that two-month span.

With this newfound weapon at his disposal, J.T.’s finished inside the Top 25 in six of his last seven starts, and comes into this week as the field leader in SG: Total over his last 36 rounds. J.T. also possesses some positive history around TPC Summerlin and one of its primary corollaries: finishing 4th here back in 2017 and registering a 6th and a 7th place finish in nearby Palm Springs over the last four years.

Poston’s long been established as one of the Tour’s best putters, and he’s routinely found success at shorter, more positional venues throughout his career (TPC Deer Run, Sedgefield, Harbour Town, etc). I have no doubts he’s capable of conquering Summerlin’s benign layout if he carries on this stellar run of ball-striking form into 2024.

Adam Schenk (33-1)

Was there any player that grew their stock more in the golf market than Adam Schenk in 2023? After coming maddeningly close to his first PGA win at the Valspar, Schenk reeled off six subsequent finishes of 9th or better in a three-month span from the Charles Schwab and the Tour Championship (three of which came in elevated fields), and became one of the Tour’s premier iron players in the process.

Schenk has averaged over 3 strokes gained per tournament with his iron play over his last ten starts (good for 3rd in this field and 8th on Tour), and unlike many of the ball-striking phenoms we tout on a weekly basis, Schenk is a player I trust whole-heartedly with the flat stick. 

The former Boilermaker rates out 15th in this field in SG: Putting, 11th in Birdie or Better rate, and has gained a cumulative total of 18.3 strokes with his putter in six starts in Summerlin (3rd in the field when adjusted on a per-round basis). He’s utilized his hot putter in Vegas to register 5 finishes inside the Top 30 over his six starts and recorded his two best results here over the last two years (3rd in 2021; 12th in 2022). Given his history around this venue and the ball-striking form he’s currently in, if there were ever a time or a place for Adam Schenk to find his breakthrough win, you’d have to put this week at TPC Summerlin near the top of the heap.

Aaron Rai (70-1)

He hasn’t been as consistent as the first three names on the betting card, but when things have come together for Aaron Rai in 2023, he’s not been afraid to jump into contention in some truly elite fields. Like Tom Kim, Aaron Rai possesses a truly elite tool in his driving accuracy: hitting 69.1% of his fairways over the course of the 2023 season (#1 in this field), and on seven separate occasions this season, Rai has gained at least 4.5 shots on approach. Notably, many of these spike approach weeks have come on golf courses that feature a similarly skewed distribution of wedges and short irons:

• +6.7 SG: APP at Detroit GC
• +8.2 at Oakdale CC
• +7.4 at Colonial
• +4.9 at Harbour Town

However, Aaron’s most impressive result of the season came just a few weeks ago at the DP World Tour’s flagship event. Rai gained 12.5 strokes from tee to green in a 2nd-place finish at Wentworth - a field that featured the entire European Ryder Cup team alongside names like Adam Scott, Billy Horschel, and Tom Kim. It’ll be a stark decline in class this week in Vegas, and Rai has already shown he’s capable of replicating these gaudy ball-striking numbers around TPC Summerlin: gaining 7 shots on Approach in a 20th-place finish here last year. I don’t see any reason why the Englishman should be this far down the odds board, but I’ll gladly take the discount on a player who seems destined to capture his first Stateside win in short order.  

Best of luck guys, and Happy Hunting!

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