The PGA TOUR heads to Harbour Town Golf Links for the RBC Heritage.
There is plenty of course history to dive into but let’s focus on some other stats which might help us find some DFS value nuggets, before they become course horses.
For this week’s course, we know it’s in South Carolina so we can look at performance in the area. After that, let’s dive into past performance on courses with small greens, since Harbour Town GL has some of the smallest greens on the circuit.
Regional Comfort
Golf courses in each state often have their own identity but when it comes to how the turf and weather set up, we can often group states into zones.
Keeping a tight zone in our search, let’s look at historical performance in South Carolina or the two states that border it (North Carolina, Georgia).
Here are the top performers in strokes gained total per round when playing in the Carolinas or Georgia in the last two years:
Webb Simpson
Dustin Johnson
Justin Thomas
Corey Conners
Emiliano Grillo
Cameron Smith
Matt Fitzpatrick
Shane Lowry
Charley Hoffman
Alex Noren
Si Woo Kim
Tyrrell Hatton
Cameron Tringale
Denny McCarthy
Brian Stuard
Shane Lowry ($36): The Irishman has been contending in the biggest events lately but will he be able to pull from that same bag of momentum the week after a major? Only one way to find out. Lowry is 3-for-4 at the RBC Heritage with a pair of top 10s on his tournament resume.
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Tiny Greens
The greens at Harbour Town Golf Links are some of the smallest on TOUR.
They check-in at 3,700 square feet on average while the regular TOUR stop is closer to 6,500 square feet.
Playing on tiny greens puts an emphasis on course management and short-game skills.
Here are the golfers with the top performance (SG:Total per round) when playing on greens that average under 5,000 square feet, over the last two years:
Daniel Berger
Patrick Cantlay
Justin Thomas
Collin Morikawa
Dustin Johnson
Matt Fitzpatrick
Russell Henley
Kevin Streelman
Charley Hoffman
Webb Simpson
Jordan Spieth
Corey Conners
Brian Harman
Kevin Na
Rickie Fowler
Matt Fitzpatrick ($41): Harbour Town GL will test every part of your game. It’s no surprise then that an all-around talent like Fitzpatrick really enjoys the challenge. He calls this his favorite stop on TOUR. I guess it helps that he used to vacation here with his family. As for his game over the last year, he ranks 14th off-the-tee, 13th on approach, 6th around-the-green, and 17th in putting. That’s very similar to a Rickie Fowler in his prime. When one area of his game might not be clicking, he can make up for it with another aspect.
Hopefully, these stats will give you some names to dive into when it comes to researching your final selections this week over at Yahoo!