Houston Open

Write up later, but played one on open 

Davis Thompson (35-1)

Nick Dunlap (200-1)

Taylor Moore (60-1) 

The PGA tour wraps up the Florida swing this week and are headed to Texas for the Houston open. This is a pretty solid course to play in preparation for the masters, as there are some similarities to Augusta at Memorial Park in terms of pure length and some quirky, undulating green surfaces with short grass green side surrounds. This is a long par 70 venue measuring out at 7,412 yards (4th longest on tour) where we have seen a lot of bombers off the tee have success. This course lends itself to that style of play given the rough is not very penal, allowing longer guys to gain an edge with shorter approaches into greens. It’s a relatively tough course where the winner is usually in the mid teens, which can certainly be made tougher with Texas winds that we tend to see.

There’s just not much trouble off the fairways, so I prefer guys that are longer than average off the tee. We’ve seen guys like Tony Finau, Stephen jaeger, and Thomas detry play well here in the past 2 years. Who all have a similar off the tee skill set of long and sometimes erratic. This skill set is flooded all over leaderboards in recent memory at this event. Memorial Park absolutely favors distance over accuracy off the tee and is one of the key prerequisites I’ll be dialing in on.

This is one of the tougher courses on approach, ranking as a top 10 course in difficulty hitting greens. These are large, fast green surfaces that do have undulations making hitting the correct quadrant of the greens important to get birdie looks. Most approaches come from 150+ yards, with a lot of long irons over 200+. I’ll be looking for guys that are in form on approach and are good long term long iron players. Although I don’t think this is the most important statistic this week for a change with the edge you can gain with length off the tee and consistent around the green play.

These greens being so difficult to hit brings an added importance on around the green play. There are alot of difficult short grass chips around the greens here into speedy undulated greens that will challenge these guys in a way similar to Augusta. Around the green play on this golf course is actually an area we’re you can gain an edge, accounting for a big chunk of strokes gained on the leaderboard year after year. Guys will end up in some uncomfortable, tight lies which will warrant a solid around the green player in this spot.

To wrap this up, I think the ideal skill set on this golf course is length off the tee, relatively good long term long iron play, and really competent scramblers. With these greens being pretty tough to hit for even elite approach players, I will put an added weight on distance and scrambling. I’ll also be looking at some ancillary stuff such as 3 put avoidance which will be needed on these large green surfaces, and players that have had success on these long courses with little missed fairway penalty and tight lies around the greens such as Augusta, quail hollow, and of course memorial park history. I put these 3 in once lines opened

Davis Thompson (35-1)

Taylor Moore (60-1) 

Nick Dunlap (200-1)

Top 10 (ties included):

Davis Thompson (+280)

Top 20 (ties included):

Min Woo Lee (+150)

Min Woo Lee (40-1)