Season Play Results

[SteveHorn]

I finished The Barclays at Red Dragon yesterday. Although I thought going in the winner would have to shoot somewhere around -20 to -25 with a course that has so many holes where birdie is a higher percentage chance this did'nt occur. The World Tour had yet another 1st time winner from a rookie Webb Simpson at (-17). Second at (-14) went to Scott Verplank. I finished tied for 3rd at (-13) with Bob Estes, John Daily and Anthony Kim. Notables in the top 10 ( in my top 25 in points ) were Jerry Kelly and Thongchai Jaidee.

Next The Deutsche Bank Championship at Mohican Valley. Once again another chance for the whole field to earn points and make that last quarter of the season run to the World Championship.

[Indy Anna Jones]

Finished up The Greenbriar Classic this morning, played on Wager's Greenbriar Resort (Pete Die rendition.) It's a beautiful but tough course; I shot -2 for the Thu-Fri rounds and missed the cut by 1 stroke. Bubba Watson, who now has 12 T10 finishes including 3 second place or T2 finishes, finally won a tournament, shooting a 65 in the final round (-23 total) for an easy 4 stroke victory. The rest of the T10:

T2. Steve Stricker, David Toms, Adam Scott, Geoff Ogilvey, Ryuji Imada -19
T7. Josh Teater, Chad Campbell, JB Holmes, Camilo Villegas, Robert Garrigus, Ryan Moore, Chris Riley, Kevin Na -17

Top money winners through 30 events:
1. Indy Anna Jones $12,385,928
2. Paul Casey $7,634,232
3. Jason Bohn $6,605,154
4. Bubba Watson $5,657,772
5. Joe Durant $4,674,463
6. Charles Howell III $4,484,338
7. Jonathon Byrd* $4,000,170
8. Retief Goosen* $3,951,078
9. Chris Couch $3,913,092
10. Greg Chalmers $3,332,896
(*non-tourney winners)

11-25 (in millions): Matt Kuchar $3.28; Ryuji Imada $3.26; Charlie Wi $3.09; Zach Johnson $3.00; Dean Wilson $2.95; Pat Perez $2.83; Steve Stricker $2.81; David Toms $2.80; Webb Simpson $2.79; Charley Hoffman $2.60; John Senden $2.52; Bryce Molder $2.49; Brandon de Jonge $2.47; Graham DeLaet $2.41; Paul Goydos $2.41.

There are some interesting and tight races to finish in the top 80 and to be eligible for the WGC championship tourneys at season's end. 77-82 are Steve Marino, Matt Bettencourt, Jeff Overton, Kevin Streelman, Michael Connell and Brandt Snedeker; less than $90,000 in earnings separate this group.

[Stan Nehilla]

Boy - look at that Jones gal beating up on all those guys.

[SteveHorn]

I completed The Deutcshe Bank Championship a couple days ago but have'nt had a chance to post the results till now. The whole field was eligble for this tourney with the winner being Bo Van Pelt at (-15). Tied for 2nd was Kevin Sutherland and Harrison Frazar at (-13). The rest of the top 10 all shot (-12). The only player in the top 25 in points to finish in the top 10 was Marc Lieshman. I was at (-4) after 3 rounds and missed the final cut by 2 shots. The killer was a triple on #18 in round 2. I hit it in the sand off the tee then proceeded to wiff and hit it only a foot on my 2nd shot. Then I tried to reach the green out of the sand over the water but splash in the drink she went. Oh well thats the way it goes sometimes.

Next up the KLM Open being played at Sawtooth. Then their will be one last chance for the entire field at The BMW Championship being played at Makossa. Both Sawtooth and Makossa are 1st timers in tourney mode.

[Indy Anna Jones]

WGC-Bridgestone, week 31. Another week, another missed cut, sigh. Thursday was a pretty good day, played L/D/B, other than a double-bogey which knocked me down to a -3. A strong front moved into the area on Thursday night though, so the greens were wet and a strong wind seemed to blow into my face most of Friday. I made a couple of birdies but several bogies because the wind stayed up in the 35-40MPH range for most of the round, and I had a lot of putts for par that I wasn't making. Ended up missing the cut by 2 strokes.
Paul Casey picked up his 4th tour victory for the season. Greg Chalmers gave him a pretty good contest until the 14th hole when a bogey dropped him back 2 strokes. By then the other challengers were in at -17. Another couple of birdies on the closing holes and Casey had an easy 3 stroke win, shooting -20. The rest of the top 10:
T2. Ben Crane, Stephen Ames, Charley Hoffman, Brendon de Jonge, Bryce Molder -17
T7. Charles Howell III, Greg Chalmers, Steve Stricker, Shaun O'Hair -16

Y. E. Yang finally made it over $100,000 earnings. There was no change in the top 10 earners.

Although the real WGC event didn't have a cut, mine did so that the "losers" could go over to the Reno-Taho Open. Since the field was pretty small I also added the bottom 10 earners from the WGC (minus 3 top 10 earners or previous winners, myself included) for this event. Here's a funny (humorous) thing. I wanted to "watch" the other scores hole-by-hole, so I chose Chad Collins as my "watchee" at the WGC. Chad developed the horrible putter-shank glitch (ie, the ball goes about a foot left or right several times) and ended up +22. Recovering his shattered ego on the 3 hour flight from Akron to Reno, he went on to shoot -18 over 3 rounds (no cuts) at the sparkling new Cliffs at Stoney Forest for his first tour win. The rest of the R-T top 10:

2. Bill Haas -16
T3. Nick Watney, Steve Elkington -15
T5. Retief Goosen, Jerry Kelly, Geoff Ogilvey, Padraig Harrington, JP Hayes, Robert Allenby -14

[SteveHorn]

I finnally completed the KLM Open the other day. For the 2nd time in the last 3 tournys Webb Simpson pulled out a 1 stroke victory at Sawtooth shooting (-13). I've been rather suprised that on numerous occasions of late that such so so scoring winning an event. Since The John Deere Classic (6) tournys have been won with the winner shooting either (-13) or (-14). About 80 percent of the time thats not good enough to win a tourney let alone 6 times out of the last 9 or 10. I ended up tied for 20th at (-8). Shot a dissapointing even par on the final round. My best round was accually the 1st round at 1 over. It was on (A-D-S). I hit alot more punches then ussual even a few off the tee and it worked pretty well most of the time.

Next is the last tourney before the closing fall events where the hole field is entered. The BMW Championship being played at a first time course Makossa.

[Indy Anna Jones]

Unreal. My final round was almost a carbon copy of the real PGA (nice win Keegan!, sorry Jason.) I really wished we had the AAC course, it was a beauty, but I chose Tomahawk Run by Wagers for this final major of 2011. I had pretty much the same problems I had last week, just couldn't hit the greens and when I did couldn't make the putts. I finished Friday at -2 and missed the cut at -4.
So, I had 6 players in contention going into the back 9. Joe Durant burned up middle portion of the event with 4 straight birdies between 6-9. Four of the contenders slowly peeled off but McIlroy and Dean Wilson kept it close, 2 shots back. Durant didn't birdie again until 14; Wilson meanwhile birdied 12 and 14 also to bring it to within 2 stroke. McIlroy bogied 13 and dropped to 3 strokes back.
Durant, still nursing the lead, then bogied 16. Wilson parred 16, then birdied 17 and 18 to eek out a one shot victory for his first win and first major championship.

The top 10:
1. Dean Wilson -19 $1459142
2. Joe Durant -18 $741219
T3. Rory McIlroy, Adam Scott, John Rollins, Jerry Kelly -16 $359653
T7. Jim Furyk, Robert Allenby -15 $205515
T9. Brendon de Jonge, J. B. Holmes, Paul Goydos, Charlie Wi, Kevin Streelman, Brandt Snedeker -14 $137256

Next week is the final regular event of the season before moving into the championship series. This is the Wyndham Championship at Towne Harbor by Smak2000, another course with narrow fairways, close in trees and lots of water.

[JaxDuffer]

I have about 1 or 2 events left. In a sense, I lost my luster for the game due to the cuts always being at like -4. My goal once this season is done, is to rework the entire field and test to see if I can get the cuts to E to +2. I think it is ridiculous to play a course like Bethpage, which is completely brutal for me on normal settings, and see the same -7 for the leaders and 4 players with + scores in the first round just like any other course. Totally unfair and unrealistic. My biggest wish on my "never gonna happen" wishlist, would have been a universal adjustment tool. That way before a particularly rough course, you could move the player field ability slider down but on easier courses you could set everyone back to normal.

[SteveHorn]

Jax. The bigest thing to effect the AI scoring is the "stroke avg. " number. The top PGA pros are around (69.75) to (70.25) as an average. The mid tier pros are anywhere else in the (70's) and the rest are usually between 71 to 72 in stroke average. Another key but not as signifacant is "birdie avg" That has alot more varibles. Guys like Bubba Watson or Dustin Johnson get more birdies per round somewhere about (4.25) but other good players may hit more greens but avg around (3.5 to 3.8) birdies a round. Most players are somewhere between (3 and 4) birdies a round. The better putters are around (1.55 to 1.60) putts per round with the mid range players (1.61 to 1.65) then the rest (1.66 to 1.74) putts per round. The big hitters usually aren't very accurate off the tee. Most big hitters avg. between 52 and 58 percent of fairways hit but some players like a Jim Furyk are about 70 to 74 percent of fairways hit. Alot are between (62 to 67) percent. GIR varies between low 60's to low 70's. Hope this helps in adjusting Ai player stats.

[Indy Anna Jones]

I did lower the stroke average by 2 and putting by .2 when I compiled the stats for these guys. Someone else mentioned this, but I've been used to seeing -1 to -2 as the cut, and around -14 for a tourney. I didn't think it would have such an effect, but I've seen several tourneys (besides the one I won) ending in the -20s. I've also noticed that it's very rare for an AI to lead all 4 rounds. It seems like almost every round has a -6 to -8 shooter, but it's someone different each day (with the exceptional of Casey and Bohn, that is.)
Leaving the SA at the pros' real average might cure the low scoring/cut problem for you. I still have no idea how to fix the putting jinx; I guess that's just another thing the Headgate people failed to cure.