[Ben Hollerbach]

Between Pebble Beach last week and Riviera this week, we have the chance to study 5 holes that have been played regularly on the PGA Tour for more than 70 years. Not only have then been in constant play, their lengths today are virtually as the were since construction and little space is available to lengthen them if desired.

Over these holes entire history, no one player has been able to develop a foolproof plan to conquer them. In many ways, what Bryson wants to do to most holes simply will not work on these holes. Length is not much of an advantage, accuracy is king.

The 16th at Riviera withstanding, The 4 other holes all require precise tee shots to setup ideal approach angles and keep your ball out of danger. While only the 8th and 18th at Pebble have water, a misplaced drive on the 10th at Riviera can feel like you've just lost a ball in the ocean. The greens on all 5 holes are treacherous, especially when missed in the wrong spots. Not many players can count on getting up and down after a missed green, so they are rarely willing to risk the potential.

When PGA Tour players don't feel that they can attack a hole the architect has won.

[Ben Hollerbach]

TaylorMade just posted a 2-Ball Challenge video for the 10th at Riviera. Dustin Johnson, Collin Moriakwa, and Matthew Wolff each play 2 balls on the hole, lowest combined score wins. One tee shot must be hit with the driver, the other can be hit with any club in the bag.


The hole was playing 295, All 3 players hit driver for both balls. 2 in the front bunker, one short left, 3 long. 5 pars, 1 birdie. Only DJ made a birdie after hitting a chip shot to kick in range. The average birdie putt length looked to be in the 12-15 foot range.

[David Ober]

TaylorMade just posted a 2-Ball Challenge video for the 10th at Riviera. Dustin Johnson, Collin Moriakwa, and Matthew Wolff each play 2 balls on the hole, lowest combined score wins. One tee shot must be hit with the driver, the other can be hit with any club in the bag.


The hole was playing 295, All 3 players hit driver for both balls. 2 in the front bunker, one short left, 3 long. 5 pars, 1 birdie. Only DJ made a birdie after hitting a chip shot to kick in range. The average birdie putt length looked to be in the 12-15 foot range.

Yep. One of the great holes in the world. Wish there were more like it....

[Ben Hollerbach]

Collin Morikawa, one of our leaders going into this week at -5, did not have a good day on the 10th.

[Tom_Doak]

When PGA Tour players don't feel that they can attack a hole the architect has won.

I could not disagree more with this statement.


These holes are no good unless the players feel they can attack the hole, but it often costs them strokes.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Tom,


Do you feel this applies to all the shots on a hole, or selective ones?


Take the 11th at Merion for example. Players don't hit a driver, or even 3 wood, off of the tee because they know it will most likely leave them a tricky or awkward approach. It's not that they can't hit a longer club, but the best play off of the tee is a strategic long iron, setting up the ideal approach to the green. Players know their best chance to score consistently is with this approach, even if they are choosing to hit a longer club into the green. This is what I mean by players not feeling they can attack the hole. Birdie is still possible but it requires two precise full shots to achieve it.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Round 1 scoring is pretty much on track of what's expected.

T. H. Kim is the leader after round 1. On 10 he laid up to 103 yards and then played his approach to 10 ft to make birdie. and he aced 16 to finish the day at -3.

Sergio made a very unusual eagle on the 10th, holing his second from the short right bunker that protects the 2nd green, from 44 yards away.

[Kalen Braley]

Using the Measurement tool on Google Earth, its interesting that 8 greens at Pebble are smaller than Riv. #10.  Comes in at just over 3200 sq feet.

[Ben Hollerbach]

2 more holes on the card and the leader now sits at -6 through a possible 25 holes.


Co-Leader after last week, Collin Morikawa, played the 10th and 16th 4 over par this week and now sits in 67th. While Joaquin Niemann and Alexander Noren both played the Riviera holes at -5 for the week, moving them into 2nd place overall. There's quite a bit of jockeying across the leaderboard, but yet the winning score and top10/25 isn't swinging all that much yet.



The players get a break this week, but will be back at it the following week playing holes 5, 6, and 11 at Bay Hill.

[Cliff Walston]

It is probably impossible to calculate, but the most interesting short holes are the ones with the biggest standard deviation, aren't they?  From an entertainment perspective, what the PGA Tour is, I like holes with eagles and doubles.  A wide spectrum.  Short, hard holes where everyone plays conservative and there isn't much delta are not that entertaining.  For example, Doak's 9th at Memorial Park was a great hole to watch.  Never knew what was going to happen.

[Tom_Doak]

It is probably impossible to calculate, but the most interesting short holes are the ones with the biggest standard deviation, aren't they?  From an entertainment perspective, what the PGA Tour is, I like holes with eagles and doubles.  A wide spectrum.  Short, hard holes where everyone plays conservative and there isn't much delta are not that entertaining.  For example, Doak's 9th at Memorial Park was a great hole to watch.  Never knew what was going to happen.

I gave Paul Rudovsky the scoring stats for the Houston Open so he could calculate standard deviation.  Holes 16, 15 and 13 were all off the charts high, 8 and 9 also up there.  It was an interesting exercise to me, suggesting you'd get more variation on some holes by moving tee markers forward - but the combinations of tee placement and hole locations seemed chosen to dampen the effect.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,


Do you feel this applies to all the shots on a hole, or selective ones?


Take the 11th at Merion for example. Players don't hit a driver, or even 3 wood, off of the tee because they know it will most likely leave them a tricky or awkward approach. It's not that they can't hit a longer club, but the best play off of the tee is a strategic long iron, setting up the ideal approach to the green.

Ben,


I don't feel like every hole should be the same and offer all options, obviously that would be pretty boring.  But I certainly wouldn't say "the architect won" by making everyone lay up off the tee on #11 at Merion.  It's a drive and pitch hole with some low ground in the mix, and a cool green setting that was worth making an exception for . . . but the blind lay-up tee shot there is no better than the one on the 8th at Pebble Beach.  No architect would do that by choice [in my opinion], it's just all they could do because of (a) Ardmore Avenue not allowing the tee to go any further back, or (b) the Pacific Ocean doing the same.  It works, but it ain't great.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Some pretty wild scoring this week, but those who played the 5th, 6th, and 11th super well have done well previously and those who were in good position going into this week failed to capitalize on some good scoring opportunities. As much fan fare that Bryson received from his play on the 6th, he played the 5th and 11th at 1 over for the week. Through 37 possible holes, the leading score is -7. For those who have played all 37 holes, Charlie Hoffman leads the way at -4.

[Ben Hollerbach]

As we have now hit the halfway point of the challenge, I'll begin to post the adjust single round scoring averages. Through 10 holes the leader is David Hearn at -2.76. For those holes that a player did not play, a scoring adjustment was applied using that players scoring average in compared with the pga tour average and the hole's average. Since David has only played 5 of the 10 holes, the confidence rating on his score of -2.76 is low. Especially compared with a player like Nick Taylor who has played all 10 holes this season.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Among all the holes so far, the trio at TPC Sawgrass played the most difficult as all 3 played over par for the week. the 17th tied the 8th at Pebble Beach for the most difficult and the 4th currently ranks 4th hardest overall. Even then, Cameron Percy was still able to play them at -5 for the week and Phil Mickelson & Rory Sabbatini played them at -4.

With 49 possible holes played, the lead is now at -8. The low score for any player who has played all 49 holes is Charlie Hoffman at -4. On thing that is very interesting when looking at the list of players doing well is the number of "who's that" players on the list. Very few highly ranked players, only 2 players in the OWGR top 10 make show up in the top 25 here (Bryson, Cantlay). There are also very few players who'd you consider bombers on this list, Only Bryson and Niemann are in the top 10 in driving distance right now.

3 more holes this week at the Honda (4th, 15th, 16th). I'll generate another adjusted scoreboard in a couple of days

Condensed Scoreboard:



Full Scoreboard

[Ben Hollerbach]

Three more holes in the record book. The course has been playing pretty challenging the past few weeks, with only 1 of the last 9 holes playing under par. Cameron Tringale was the low man for the week at PGA National with a -3 score. Tournament winner Matt Jones finished this week at -1, Which is the same he's played the last 5 weeks, slowly moving up the leaderboard into 2nd play. Grillo holds onto the overall lead at -8, it will be interesting to see who's in the field at Harbour Town to take the total win. Brendan Steele is the only player to have played all 61 holes, after a +3 showing this week at PGA National he has slipped back to +2 for the whole year.




The 18 hole adjusted scoring now has Cameron Percy leading at -2.47 through 16 holes. Based upon the fields current form and last years scoring, I suspect the final results will look something like this:

Total Field Average: +1
Top 25 Scoring Average: -1.4
Top 10 Scoring Average: -2.0
Lowest Scoring Average: -2.7

[Ben Hollerbach]

The spring challenge has come to an end and the cumulative winners are Tom Hoge and Emiliano Grillo at -10. Tom played a total of 53 out of potential 69 holes, and Emiliano played 38.

In total:

• 282 different players played at least 2 of the holes on the course
• 144 players played at least 9 of the holes on the course
• The average played played 8.8 holes on the course
• 18 players played all 18 holes on the course
• The most total holes played was 61 by Chris Kirk
• The average player played 24.7 total holes

Now for the 18 hole adjusted results:

The winner is James Hahn with a score of -4.29 for 18 holes, or a tournament winning score of -17.16. Going into the adjusted calculations I expected Grillo would take the win, but digging in a bit more, the holes Grillo did not play were some of the hardest, leading to a lower than expected adjustment bump. I'm most impressed with Tom Hoge, having played all 18 holes his natural scoring average of -3.17 finished 6th. While using an adjustment to calculate scoring potential leaves in some variability, Tom's score does not and reflects actual on course performance.

The final numbers for the event are as follows:

• Total Field Average (+1.17)
• Top 25 Scoring Average (-2.25)
• Top 10 Scoring Average (-3.18)
• Lowest Scoring Average (-4.29)

This concludes the early season short course scoring challenge. I have another 18 hole routing ready to go for the late season challenge. that I will post tomorrow.

[AChao]

Thank you for doing this Ben!  Great!

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