This article is part of our PGA Tour Stats Review series.
Let's be clear up front: this is a complicated week for a stats column. Why? Match play. This week is the World Golf Championships-Dell Match Play. Match play, as Tiger Woods likes to point out, is unlike any other format. You can shoot 66 and lose, shoot 76 and win.
Additionally, this event moves to a new course this year, Austin Country Club in Austin, Texas, so there's an unknown there. And on top of that, this is the second year of the event utilizing World Cup-style pool play, meaning a bad Wednesday doesn't send you home.
Also, in a new wrinkle, halved matches are possible this year, which will lead to fewer meaningless matches on Friday and more motivation for those players to have strong bounce-back days. In short, you can recover more easily from a poor day, and one day's play isn't indicative of how your stats may be over the course of the week.
So in lieu of our normal stats column I'll just make a few points:
• Jason Day won last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and did it without his A-game. Day's strokes-gained ranks were 11th for driving, 29th for approach shots, fourth for short game and fifth for putting. His short game has been undersold at times, and this is yet another example of it. His clutch birdie putt on 17 and up-and-down out of the bunker on 18 were dynamite.
• Rory McIlroy said after the final round at Bay Hill
Let's be clear up front: this is a complicated week for a stats column. Why? Match play. This week is the World Golf Championships-Dell Match Play. Match play, as Tiger Woods likes to point out, is unlike any other format. You can shoot 66 and lose, shoot 76 and win.
Additionally, this event moves to a new course this year, Austin Country Club in Austin, Texas, so there's an unknown there. And on top of that, this is the second year of the event utilizing World Cup-style pool play, meaning a bad Wednesday doesn't send you home.
Also, in a new wrinkle, halved matches are possible this year, which will lead to fewer meaningless matches on Friday and more motivation for those players to have strong bounce-back days. In short, you can recover more easily from a poor day, and one day's play isn't indicative of how your stats may be over the course of the week.
So in lieu of our normal stats column I'll just make a few points:
• Jason Day won last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and did it without his A-game. Day's strokes-gained ranks were 11th for driving, 29th for approach shots, fourth for short game and fifth for putting. His short game has been undersold at times, and this is yet another example of it. His clutch birdie putt on 17 and up-and-down out of the bunker on 18 were dynamite.
• Rory McIlroy said after the final round at Bay Hill (after shooting 65 to finish T27) that he's ecstatic it's match play this week because his big number issue won't be as big a factor -- they all count the same. Through all those troubles he was fifth in strokes gained-putting last week, and we all know how important making putts is in match play.
• Danny Willett got onto a lot of people's radars last year with his strong performance at the Dell Match Play, held at Harding Park. He finished T3 at Doral and T22 two weeks ago in Tampa. Because he's not a PGA Tour member he doesn't have any official statistical rankings, but at Tampa he ranked T10 in driving accuracy, 11th in driving distance, T15 in greens in regulation and 11th in strokes gained-tee to green. It really was a strong all-around performance that could pay dividends this week. He's also trying to solidify his Olympic position.
• Andy Sullivan -- 31st in the world -- has a group that he can seemingly get out of (though Louis Oosthuizen continually surprises folks), and a game that's fairly steady. The game is on form too: T26 at Honda, T17 at Doral and T27 at Bay Hill.
• Jordan Spieth and Jimmy Walker have experience playing Austin Country Club. That could help them this week. Virtually no one else does. In fact, Adam Scott thinks he played a college event here but wasn't 100 percent sure (he in fact did).
• Branden Grace continually surprises people, has a T23 and T37 in his last two starts on the PGA Tour and in a group with Russell Knox, David Lingmerth and Chris Kirk is by far the favorite to emerge. He's 18th in greens in regulation.
• Fabian Gomez is going to win his group against Justin Rose, Matt Kuchar and Anirban Lahiri. Just watch. In fact, Gomez could contend at the Masters this year. I'm serious. He's that talented.
• Patrick Reed and Phil Mickelson are in the same group. Reed thrives on this format, and Mickelson loves it but has been away because it coincided with his kids' spring break in recent years. He's back, and that's going to be a fight to emerge to the next round.
• One more name for you: there's a reason Zach Johnson has ended up on a lot of Ryder and Presidents Cup teams. He's steady, doesn't get easily rattled, and can play with anyone. This is obviously singles match play, but he goes to Austin off very solid form: a fifth-place finish at Bay Hill that featured a Sunday 68 and a week in which he ranked T6 in greens in regulation, fifth in strokes gained-putting, fourth in sand saves and T19 in driving accuracy.
• The other PGA Tour event this week is the Puerto Rico Open, won last year by Alex Cejka in a five-man playoff. This event is being played at the same venue but under a new name and new ownership (it's no longer a Donald Trump property), Coco Beach Golf and Country Club.
En route to victory last year, Cejka ranked eighth in driving accuracy, third in greens in regulation and 28th in putts per green in regulation. (ShotLink was not at this event.) We recommend him this week, though he only made one start in the Florida swing, finishing T21 at the Honda. Of the five men in that playoff, Jon Curran, Tim Petrovic and Sam Saunders are in this week's field. Emiliano Grillo, aided by his win at the Frys.com Open, is in the Dell Match Play.
Notables to watch include David Toms, Ian Poulter, Angel Cabrera, John Daly and Retief Goosen. None of them really have had any strong form lately. Poulter is the first alternate into the Match Play and could wind up playing there if anyone pulls out before Wednesday.
