Bob Hope Classic
Wednesday Jan 20 – Sunday Jan 24, 2010
From Sony Open in Hawaii the PGA jumps to California this week for the only 90 hole event on tour and a pro-am outing at that as well. Being a pro-am it means the format resorts to a pro playing with a team of amateurs on four courses over four days with the leading pros dueling on the host course on Sunday. This year the five rounds follow exactly the same rotation format as the year before - Palmer Course, Nicklaus, La Quinta, Silver Rock and Palmer Course again - all of which are relatively easy desert courses where players typically post low scores. All four courses are heavy on par fives and looking at last year's results (bearing in mind the same format) the top three ranked T1st, T1st and 3rd in this stat. In fact, of the top five Par 5 performers Charlie Wi finished the lowest at a respectable 35th after two poor final rounds.
Bermuda grass is another common theme across the four courses here in California so it may be an added bonus to keep an eye out for those players who have perfomed well in the bermuda rich areas of Arizona, Florida and particularly Hawaii where the tour has just visited.
One thing that also seems eminent to me as a result of the five round and pro-am format is the age and conditioning of a player. My highlighting of a player's age is self explanatory - accompanied by team of amateurs, each of the first four rounds are like to take much longer than usual to complete so by the time the player comes into the fifth round he is mentally and physically exhausted, the younger the player, the more stamina he is likely to have. With regards to conditioning I am looking for players who haven't had a prolonged lay off, ie. over two months, as again a lack of stamina could come into play.
Finally, I am going to be looking for a player who in previous visits to the course has manged to post consistent scores in the mid to low sixties on the Palmer Course as not only is played twice, but more importantly, it is the final day course where the tournament can be won or lost.
This week's picks are as follows.....
Brian Gay - For me Gay seems to tick all the boxes for the Bob Hope. To start, he's tuned up after playing in both the SBS Championship and the Sony Open after the Christmas break, the Sony being to most significant to me as it was here that he ranked 2nd in Putting Average on bermuda greens. Continuing with the bermuda theme, all of his three wins on the PGA have come on this type of green (St. Jude Classic 2009, Verizon Hertitage 2009 and Mayakoba Golf Classic 2008) so he has proven form there. All of these three wins also prove Gay has the ability to post some low scores (-18/-20/-16). It should be noted that over the last three months he ranks 7th overall in Putting Average and 12th on Par 5s. Last year's outing here also saw Gay post a 63 and 66 in successive rounds on the Palmer Course, had it not been for his poor 2nd and 3rd rounds he would have mounted a serious challenge to the top of the leaderboard, I'm sure he can do it again this year. 1pt e/w @ 40/1 (various bookmakers)
After trawling through all the stats and previous course form I'm really sruggling to find anyone else worth backing. I had considered Martin Laird as he leads the last three months in Par 5 performance and is quite simply on red hot form at the moment. However, the Scotsman seems to have been tipped in at least two other places and I missed the tempting 45/1 on Stan James and can't bring myself to take the 33s across the board. Due to the format of the tournament I may look to have a look again in running when I can see what courses a golfer has left to play and his potential to improve.