munneypicks

2015 The Memorial

Tournament: Last week it was Byron Nelson, but this week, it’s Jack. Arguably the best golfer of all time. The Memorial will take place at a course that he designed and in his home state of Ohio. Since 1976, the Memorial has taken place at the historic Muirfield Village and as we’ve seen over the years, this event truly brings out the best in golfers. Muirfield Village is a fair test of golf. It rewards quality shots and often punishes bad ones. Especially your iron shots. Golfers tend to build courses that suit their game. No exception here as there is room off the tee to be a bit wild, but no room for that with your iron shots. This tournament will challenge every area of a golfers game. Last year’s winner Hideki Matsuyama is the definition of someone with an all around game. And that’s what it’ll take to win here. This course will test the golfers and should be an exciting tourney throughout. A list of champions and winning scores below:

2014 – Hideki Matsuyama (-13)
2013 – Matt Kuchar (-12)
2012 – Tiger Woods (-9)
2011 – Steve Stricker (-16)
2010 – Justin Rose (-18)

Field: This field is usually one of the strongest in golf, but it certainly is lacking a bit of starpower its’ used to having. Four of the world’s top 10 players are missing including Rory and Bubba. But we do have Spieth, Fowler, Rose, Phil, and DJ on hand.

What to Look For: Top stats for this week are par 4 scoring, par 5 scoring, Strokes Gained: T2G, Scoring Average, and birdie to bogey ratio. These stats are the highest correlated stats with winning this tournament over the past 10 years. No winner here in the past 10 years have finished the season worse than 66th in SG: T2G. No winner has finished the season worse than 48th in scoring average. One winner has finished the season worse than 28th in par 4 or par 5 scoring (Carl Petterson in 2006). So we have some very strong things to look at this week. Another point to add is that these greens will be running close to a 13 on the stimpmeter. That is just as fast as Augusta National. A tidy short game will also need to be in play this week for the winner. Matsuyama last year was the first winner to win in his debut since 1976, but Hideki did play in the 2013 President’s cup at Muirfield so it gave him some experience before teeing off on Thursday in 2014.

Picks:

Jordan Spieth to Win: I don’t like backing players under 10/1 but there are serious questions regarding the players behind Spieth in the betting market. Spieth ranks in the top 10 in four of the top five stat categories (he ranks 39th in par 5 scoring average). He’s also an excellent scrambler and an excellent putter. And without Rory, Bubba, or Stenson in the field, I think the price is more than justified.

Notes on A Few Others: DJ is the 2nd favorite behind Spieth but as we saw last week is still too prone for the big number. His short game is also not strong enough to justify his price here in my opinion. Rose has great course history but terrible stats. He’s been very inconsistent and really only played well at the Masters and during his win in New Orleans. Kuchar has great history here, but his game seems off this year and his stats back that up. Finally Fowler is coming off a week in Ireland playing links golf and he doesn’t possess great stats for the course and that’s enough to put me off. 

Good Luck

Jordan Spieth to win @ 8/1