RADIO
Just two weeks after crowning our 2024 FedEx Cup Champion, the PGA Tour is back to start its race for the 2025 Season-Long title. The “Swing Season,” will be taking on a bit of a different role in 2024, as instead of being an optional, uncorrelated set of events for players to accrue FedEx Cup points for a playoff charge, this year’s fall swing will be a tryout for the Tour’s preeminent “in-betweeners.”
For players unable to break into the Top 50 of last month’s playoffs, the eight events on the docket from Napa Valley in September, to Sea Island in November will provide a potential launching pad into next season’s “Signature Events.” For names like Tom Kim, Min Woo Lee, and Jordan Spieth, (all of whom currently sit outside the top 50 of the year-end standings), the thought of missing out on these opportunities would be a huge blow to their potential 2025 ambitions.
The first stop of the fall swing comes to Wine Country: Napa Valley, California. And while we won't be getting an appearance from any of the Tour's cast of truly marquee names, six of the 24 players teeing it up in this month's President's Cup will be teeing it up -- including two-time winer at Silverado Max Homa, defending champion Sahith Theegala, World No. 6 Wyndham Clark, and a host of young stars still looking for their top-level breakthrough. This piece will serve to break down every key trend and statistic I'm weighing to project a player's viability in the outright market and set our readers up to make the crucial decisions necessary on pre-week betting boards. Without further ado, here is my comprehensive scouting report on Silverado Country Club and the 2024 Procore Championship!
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The Golf Course
Silverado Country Club (North Course) - Par 72; 7,123 yards
Past Champions
- 2023 - Sahith Theegala (-21) over S.H. Kim
- 2022 - Max Homa (-16) over Danny Willett
- 2021 - Max Homa (-19) over Maverick McNealy
- 2020 - Stewart Cink (-21) over Harry Higgs
- 2019 - Cameron Champ (-17) over Adam Hadwin
- 2018 - Kevin Tway (-14) over Ryan Moore & Brandt Snedeker (playoff)
Silverado by the Numbers (Off-The-Tee):
- Average Fairway Width -- 26.4 yards; second narrowest on the PGA Tour
- Average Driving Distance -- 286.8 yards; 14th lowest on Tour
- Driving Accuracy -- 51.3%; lowest on Tour
- Missed Fairway Penalty -- 0.32; 11th lowest on Tour
- Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee Difficulty: (-0.010); 14th toughest on Tour
With a scoring average that routinely sits in the bottom 10-15 on Tour in terms of difficulty, Silverado Country Club won't provide much of an impediment to players this week. However, one area where Silverado does pose a much more difficult test to the average Tour venue is in its fairway percentage.
At just 27 yards wide on average, Silverado features the second narrowest landing areas on Tour, and in conjunction with the generally firmer turf conditions in Northern California, we’ve seen the historical driving accuracy percentage around Silverado sit at just 51.8%.
While the driving accuracy here is substantially below the Tour Average (52% vs 62%), the GIR % sits slightly above the average tour stop (68% vs 66%). Some of that has to do with the shortish nature of this course and the wedges these guys will be routinely hitting into greens, but it also speaks to the ineffectual nature of this rough.
In 2011, Silverado had its infamous kikuyu rough removed in favor of a much more predictable blend of Rye grass & Kentucky Bluegrass. With the length only grown up to 2-3” at its longest, this rough is some of the easiest to play from on Tour - giving up the 4th most Birdies or Better from off the fairway.
This lack of encumbrance to wayward misses means players like Cameron Champ and Kevin Tway have had no trouble overpowering the narrow confines of Napa Valley, and in fact, 5 of the last 7 champions also ranked inside the top 15 in driving distance that week.
Now, before we go filtering entirely by Driving Distance in your modeling, I’d also like to point out that driving in general has been a below-average stat in terms of predictiveness on Fortinet leaderboards.
Adam Hadwin came just one shot short of Cam Champ in 2020 whilst losing strokes off the tee. Marc Leishman came fourth in 2022 losing 2.3 shots with his driver (67th out of the 70 players who made the cut). And recent leaderboards have been flooded with the likes of Sahith Theegala, Brendon Todd, Danny Willett, Taylor Montgomery, and Justin Lower: none of whom would be considered prolific drivers of the ball.
The generosity of Silverado’s rough certainly opens the door for bomb-and-gouge strategies to be employed, but the data tells us this tournament is far from won and lost off the tee. In fact, I’d expect a bulk of the critical strokes this week to be gained with finesse as opposed to power.
Silverado by the Numbers (Approach):
- Green in Regulation Rate -- 68.5%; 13th highest on the PGA Tour
- Strokes Gained: Approach Difficulty: (-0.004); 15th toughest on Tour
- Key Proximity Ranges:
- 125-150 yards (accounts for 18.4% of historical approach shots)
- 100-125 yards (18.3%)
- 75-100 yards (10.0%)
This “finesse” range that I speak of starts with the second shot at Silverado. With 8 of the 10 Par 4’s here measuring under 425 yards (and none measuring over 460), effective wedge play will be paramount when attempting to project players capable of creating birdie chances on these holes. Over 50% of historical approach shots have come from inside of 150 yards, and none of the 25-yard increments from 150-250 yards come close to their week-to-week average on the PGA Tour calendar.
This discrepancy makes wedge play the clear #1 skill to possess when forming my player pool this week -- especially considering that approach play has been over 2x as predictive as driving when projecting top five and 10 finishers. In fact, since 2019, only Cameron Champ has managed to capture this title while gaining less than three shots to the field with his approach play, and top five finishers on average have gained 3.7 shots to the field with their irons/wedges.
I'll be looking particularly closely at Proximity, Good Shot Rates, and Strokes Gained splits from <150 yards, as well as many of the recent wedge-intensive, short course results over the last three months (Deere Run, River Highlands, Detroit GC, etc.).
Silverado by the Numbers (Around the Greens):
- Scrambling Percentage -- 60.1%; 2.6% above Tour Average
- Sand Save Difficulty -- (+0.007); 17th easiest on Tour
- Up-and-Down Difficulty (Fairway) -- (-0.019); 8th toughest on Tour
- Up-and-Down Difficulty (Rough) -- (-0.015); 9th toughest on Tour
- SG: Around the Green Difficulty: (-0.012); 9th toughest on Tour
It'll be a common thread over the course of the fall swing, but with winning scores projected to touch 20-under and GIR percentages sitting comfortably in the upper-60s, around the green play has been largely mitigated in its overall predictiveness around Silverado CC. Top five finishers have gained just 16% of their total strokes with their short games (compared to 32% on Approach and 35% Putting), and five top-six finishers over the last four seasons here have attained that finish despite losing strokes to the field with their short games.
Of course, on a venue with four par fives, around the green play is an important proxy when assessing those most likely to continually take advantage of the course's most scoreable stretches. However, the old adage remains on the other 14 holes. Players that have to routinely scramble for par on Silverado's collection of 390-yard par four's aren't likely to be keeping pace with the breakneck scoring at the top of the projected leaderboard.
Silverado by the Numbers (Putting):
- Average Green Size: 5,400 sq. feet
- Agronomy -- Poa annua/bentgrass
- 3-Putt Percentage: 2.5% (0.5% below Tour Average)
- Strokes Gained: Putting Difficulty: (-0.003); 12th toughest on Tour
And finally, as we visit the state of California for the first time since February's West Coast Swing, the poa annua greens of Silverado CC will provide its most daunting test. For players not comfortable with its unpredictability, poa annua's uneven surfaces can cause havoc to the putting psyche. And although it's Golden State relatives in Pebble Beach, Riviera, and Torrey Pines all boast much more difficult greens statistically, players hailing from California have experienced every bit of the advantage associated with these three iconic Golden State stops.
Between Sahith Theegala, Max Homa, Cameron Champ, and Brendan Steele, we've seen an incredible recent run of six of the last eight champions here at Silverado hail from California. It should come as no surprise, in a field with a shortage marquee names able to separate themselves with elite tee-to-green play, that a mental edge on the greens has provided a key difference to so many past champions.
I'll be looking particularly hardly at historic putting splits on poa annua (particularly here in California), and see a real avenue for targeting players who do hail from the area. It's been five years since a winner here at Silverado has gained less than four shots to the field on the greens, so any shortcut we can take in projecting this week's best putters could prove to be a decisive edge in the Championship's handicap.
Key Stats Roundup (in order of importance):
- Wedge play (specifically looking at Proximity Splits, Strokes Gained, and Good Shot Percentages from <150 yards)
- Positive history on Poa Annua greens (special emphasis on other California courses like Riviera, Torrey Pines, and Pebble Beach)
- Par 5 Scoring
- Birdie or Better Rates
- Although driving as a whole will be devalued in my modeling, I do give a slight edge to distance over accuracy
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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 UnitsTotal Winnings: +311.229 Units
Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36
H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE
— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022
The Sunday Shortlist
Before the odds come out on Monday morning, here are two to three names I’ve identified as significant targets upon my initial research.
Wyndham Clark
Wyndham Clark rolls it down the hill beautifully for birdie on 11. 🤌
📺 NBC & Peacock | @BMWChamps pic.twitter.com/9lds7PKWbD
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) August 25, 2024
Although he came into the year on the back of titles at two of the Tour's most demanding venues (Quail Hollow and LACC), Wyndham Clark's 2024 has been largely highlighted by a repeated proficiency on the schedule's more intimate stops. From Pebble Beach to Harbour Town, River Highlands and Southwind, Wyndham has repeatedly raised his baseline when fairways begin to narrow, and when wedge play becomes the most coveted tool in a player's arsenal.
In fact, the argument can be easily made that Wyndham has turned himself into the best wedge player on the planet -- particularly from <100 yards. He ranks in the 98th percentile in both Strokes Gained/shot and Proximity to the hole over the last 12 months (a mark only surpassed by Scottie Scheffler in that time), and his Good Shot Percentage (categorized by an approach that finishes within five feet of the hole from <100 yards), sits at a whopping 23.3% -- beating the second-best mark in this category by 5.4%.
Wyndham's elite length will afford him many opportunities to flip wedges into these greens, and with the flat stick, he also boasts an incredible track record on West Coast poa annua: ranking 11th in this field in Strokes Gained: Putting over his last 36 rounds, and recording the fourth-best putting week of his entire career on these very greens two years ago (+7.7).
He may not be a Californian by birthright, but a win at Silverado would fit very nicely next to his two previous victories in the Golden State (LACC & Pebble Beach). In a field that includes a few more marquee names than we're used to seeing this time of year (Sahith, Homa, Conners, Min Woo, etc.), I hope there's just enough noise in his recent results sheet to throw books of the scent of the Oregon Duck. Anything in the 16-1 range on Wyndham would make for a great start to the betting card.
Tom Hoge
ONE MORE ROTATION!
Tom Hoge came close to a hole out eagle, but settles for a tap-in birdie on 2.
A great round going for the TOUR vet whose -4 thru 11.
+3500 live to win @FDSportsbook. pic.twitter.com/H1chuOePlm
— Golfbet (@Golfbet) July 27, 2023
Although Wyndham makes a great case for himself as the best wedge player from inside 100 yards, there is no other player on Tour that can argue against Tom Hoge as the class of the golfing world our other key wedge range. Hoge has been the PGA Tour frontrunner from 100-150 yards (a range that accounts for over 35% of Silverado's approach distribution), in each of the last two PGA Tour seasons, but over the last 12 months, the TCU-alum has really formed a hammer-lock in the advanced metrics.
Hoge leads the entire PGA Tour in Proximity to the Hole from 100-150 yards (17.4 ft.), and absolutely laps his contemporaries from a Strokes Gained Perspective. Over a 353-shot sample, Hoge has gained an average of 0.112 strokes per shot from this range -- a mark that bests the #2 player in this range (Lucas Glover), by the same margin as Glover is currently beating the #20 ranked player in this statistic (Hideki Matsuyama; +0.042).
If you've followed golf statistics for any amount of time, however, it won't surprise you to see Hoge written up for his approach play. But the case to be made for him this week extends far past his pedigree with the second shot. Hoge has gained strokes off-the-tee in five of his last six starts at Silverado CC, and sneakily, he's built a borderline elite profile as a poa annua putter.
Over his last 36 rounds, Tom ranks 10th in this field in putting on the four California poa courses, and his best result of the 2024 season to date (T3 at the Travelers Championship), came on a similarly wedge-intensive venue with bentgrass/poa annua greens. Already a champion at nearby Pebble Beach, and coming off of a year with three top-12 finishes in California alone, Silverado feels like the perfect venue for one of the game's premier ball-strikers to capture his second top-level trophy.
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