Week 22 - The Memorial, Porsche European Open
Milkshakes...
Memorial Day Weekend threw me off a day but I’m back on the pony, despite having been tossed off once again. Linn Grant made the final 4 of LPGA Matchplay to at least place but overall it was a whiff after some hot starts on Thursday and Friday on PGA and DPWT.
Full results are at the bottom!
Muirfield Village Golf Course
Off The Tee
Golfers will stare down a fairly long course but they will be met with generous fairways. That is where the generosity stops, because finding the rough at Murifield Village will lead to problems. Outside of 2020, when the weather/wind was quite an issue, the field typically finds the fairway over 70% of the time. Driving distance is generally around an average of 285, despite the length of the course, due to golfers clubbing down at times and doing their best to avoid the penal rough. It’s definitely one of the handful of weeks on Tour where accuracy rivals, if not surpasses, the advantage of distance off the tee. Solid driving will be necessary but it is not where golfers will be making the largest gains this week — but it can spell disaster.
Approach
Despite an extremely high rate of fairways hit, GIR numbers often are below 65%. This is partly due to when fairways are missed it’s quite difficult to muscle a good approach shot and also because even from the fairway, there will be more long approach shots than a typical week on Tour. A majority of the field can and will make the most gains through approach on an average week and that is even more so the case at Muirfield Village with the length of approach shots into smaller greens. It is hard to fake-it around here if the irons are not dialed.
Around The Green
We historically have seen more strokes gained than usual around the greens at Muirfield Village. Lower GIR rate leads to more chipping than usual from thick rough — not always just off the green. That said, we see through made-putt % that the greens themselves may not be that difficult to read so perhaps golfers with more skill around the greens can use that to their advantage if better chips have a higher chance of going in (that’s just me speculating)?
Putting
It varies year to year and saying something is “easy” is relative to the rest of the courses the PGA Tour plays, but in general, the greens at Muirfield Village have shown to not be difficult to make putts on. Anything that becomes “easier” than usual, reduces the effect of skill in said task. A lot of the “bad” putters on Tour and those who consistently lose strokes on the greens often do so because their make percentage is low from 4 to 8 feet. Muirfield Village historically has had a higher than average make % from this range, even through the redesign. Putts from inside of 3 feet also have one of the higher made %’s year over year, which may seem trivial but a lot of great ball strikers give away “easy” strokes which in the end will cost them tournaments.
The Memorial Tournament
0.75u - Xander Schauffele 14/1
0.2u - Tyrrell Hatton 25/1 ew
0.15u - Corey Conners 40/1 ew
0.1u - Denny McCarthy 150/1
0.05u - Hayden Buckley 250/1
Top 40 - 1u - Eric Cole +200
LIVE - 0.15u - Mark Hubbard 66/1 ew
LIVE - 0.1u - Patrick Rodgers 80/1 ew
Total Risk | 2.85u
Porsche European Open
0.35u - Antoine Rozner 22/1
0.12u - Ewen Ferguson 50/1 ew
0.1u - Jayden Trey Schaper 65/1 + 12/1 T5
Top 5 - 0.35u - Matthias Schmid 20/1
Total Risk | 1.29u
Mizuho Amercias Open
The highlight this week is that Rose Zhang is making her pro debut this week!
0.22u - Brooke Henderson 42/1
0.15u - Ruoning Yin 50/1 ew
0.1u - Megan Khang 65/1
0.1u - Angel Yin 66/1 ew
0.07u - Yuka Saso 125/1 ew
Total Risk | 0.97u
Public Results
2023 | -16.4 (-10.99% ROI)
2022 | +80.7u (22.9% ROI)
2021 | +57.46 (8.7% ROI)