munneypicks

2015 HP Byron Nelson Championship

Tournament: The fourth and final hoorah in Texas this season will take place in Dallas at the HP Byron Nelson Championship. This tournament dates back to 1944 but only really back to 2008 as far as our analysis will go. There was a redesign in 2007 and the tournament was moved exclusively to TPC Four Seasons at Las Colinas. This is a tournament that has seen it’s fair share of young up and coming stars win here with Jason Day, Keegan Bradley, and Jason Dufner etching their name on the wall of champions. An important point there though is, these players were not stars when they won here. And were priced like unknowns at the time of their victory so this is not a tournament that the favorites have run away with as it may seem at first glance. A list of champions and winning scores below:

2014 – Brendon Todd (-14)
2013 – Sang-Moon Bae (-13)
2012 – Jason Dufner (-11)
2011 – Keegan Bradley (-3)
2010 – Jason Day (-10)
2009 – Rory Sabbatini  (-19)
2008 – Adam Scott  (-7)

Field: A decent field on hand this week. Wonderboy Jordan Spieth is here, as is Jason Day, Jimmy Walker, Dustin Johnson, Keegan Bradley, and Matt Kuchar.

What to Look For: Full disclosure, this is the weakest tournament I have run across when trying to find correlated stats with winning here. Things just don’t jump off the page as they do with other tournaments. This makes finding a champion among the 150+ players a bit challenging, but we do have a few things to look towards. The strongest correlation I could find was scoring average. Five of the eight winners here since 2008 have ranked 30th or better in the year of their win. All except 2013 winner Sang-Moon Bae ranked in the top 60. When we see scores around -10 on a par 70, we know that it’s tough to score here and players that can string together four good rounds here will have a great chance to take home the hardware. At a tough course, there will be bogeys no question. That’s why birdie average is another stat that comes to mind this week. Every winner since 2008 has ranked 67th or better here. Making 18-22 birdies this week seems like a good formula for finding the winners circle. Usually Strokes Gained Tee to Green is one of my favorite stats to look at but this tournament doesn’t reward players who rank highly there very much. Both Bae and Todd ranked outside the top 90 in the year of their victory. Lastly, lean towards distance in the ever present distance vs accuracy debate. Todd is the only winner here that I would consider to be a short hitter. Accuracy isn’t nearly as important as last week as this course is certainly more open than Colonial, but never forget that an open course in Texas is guaranteed to see some windy conditions.

Free Pick:

Justin Thomas e/w*: I’ve been put off of three players this season because of their price and they have gone on to win. Sneds at Pebble Beach, Holmes in Houston, and Kirk last week. I’m not going to do that again with Thomas. Thomas is playing phenomenal golf carding four straight top 25 finishes. I expect Thomas to win this year and he has stated that’s one of his goals this season. JT ranks 20th in scoring average and 9th in birdie average and can bomb it off the tee. 

Good luck!

Chris Munney
@munneypicks
www.munneypicks.com