This article is part of our PGA Tour Stats Review series.
With just two weeks to go before the season's final major, focus on the PGA Tour now shifts to Tiger Woods' Quicken Loans National, with players jockeying for position both for the FedEx Cup Playoffs and those desperately trying to make the Web.com Tour Finals to have a fighting chance to keep their cards. Here's our stats preview.
History Lesson
The first thing to know about this event is that it's taking place at a new venue: Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, which has played host to Presidents Cups. So basically, past history for this event won't help us much this week. The defending champion is Justin Rose.
Who is Playing
The field includes Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas, Rose, Rickie Fowler, Danny Lee, Nick Watney, Bill Haas, Ollie Schniederjans, Harris English, James Hahn, Steven Bowditch, David Lingmerth, Patrick Rodgers and Jimmy Walker.
Our picks for this week are Fowler and Lingmerth. Fowler always seems to rise up before a big event -- the PGA is coming -- and while his results of late has been a bit inconsistent, the Scottish Open win and third-round 66 at St. Andrews proved he can turn it on at any moment. He ranks 10th in total driving and fourth in proximity to the hole from 75-100 yards. For someone not super long, that last stat is clutch.
We continue to not recommend Woods, whose inability to take his game from the range to the course is a disaster for fantasy owners and
With just two weeks to go before the season's final major, focus on the PGA Tour now shifts to Tiger Woods' Quicken Loans National, with players jockeying for position both for the FedEx Cup Playoffs and those desperately trying to make the Web.com Tour Finals to have a fighting chance to keep their cards. Here's our stats preview.
History Lesson
The first thing to know about this event is that it's taking place at a new venue: Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, which has played host to Presidents Cups. So basically, past history for this event won't help us much this week. The defending champion is Justin Rose.
Who is Playing
The field includes Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas, Rose, Rickie Fowler, Danny Lee, Nick Watney, Bill Haas, Ollie Schniederjans, Harris English, James Hahn, Steven Bowditch, David Lingmerth, Patrick Rodgers and Jimmy Walker.
Our picks for this week are Fowler and Lingmerth. Fowler always seems to rise up before a big event -- the PGA is coming -- and while his results of late has been a bit inconsistent, the Scottish Open win and third-round 66 at St. Andrews proved he can turn it on at any moment. He ranks 10th in total driving and fourth in proximity to the hole from 75-100 yards. For someone not super long, that last stat is clutch.
We continue to not recommend Woods, whose inability to take his game from the range to the course is a disaster for fantasy owners and hampering any shot of improving results. We'll see if that changes this week where he knows a win either here or at the PGA will extend when his 2014-15 PGA Tour season ends.
We continue to recommend Schniederjans as an ultimate sleeper, as his strong play, now as a pro, continues. Last week he was in contention at the Canadian Open before falling back on Sunday with a 73. For the week he ranked 10th in driving distance, first in strokes gained-putting (gaining nearly nine strokes for the week on the greens) and T22 in strokes gained-total. The kid has game and is someone to watch if he can get the playing opportunities with no status on any tour.
One More Thing ...
PGA Tour Live launches Thursday. It's a new Over-The-Top (OTT) service from the PGA Tour and MLB Advanced Media, which will show two featured groups every Thursday and Friday morning before Golf Channel's coverage. Some weeks it will go off the air at that point while other weeks it will transition to a featured holes telecast. For fans who have enjoyed the Live@ feature for years, this replaces that.
The featured group content is $4.99 per month, while the featured holes and any weekend content (which will happen at select events), is free. For a fantasy owner -- especially in leagues that change by the day -- seeing how the course is playing and how a specific player is playing under the biggest spotlight is a gamechanger and may just give you the edge you need to win your league.
