PGA National’s Champions course will play host, once again, to the Honda Classic. The course is a par 70 that plays a little over 7,100 yards depending on the setup. The course features TifEagle Bermudagrass greens. For more info on how the course has played historically, check out yesterday’s article.
Checking the Chalk
The perfect storm for high ownership is swirling around Justin Thomas ($11,900) again this week. He’s the defending champ here. This wasn’t necessarily the type of track we’d envision JT performing well on when he was a young, aggressive birdie chaser. Thomas can grind out courses as well as anyone these days, which is a valuable skill here. Oh, and he’s been in the top 10 in four of his past five starts … which is pretty good, too.
Scott Piercy ($8,100) is the soup du jour this week at $8,100. His form has been great recently with nine straight made cuts since the CIMB in October. Over that stretch, he’s finished with six top 20s for his efforts. Piercy has hit at least 50 greens in regulation in each of those starts.
The blend of course history and recent form is on Michael Thompson’s ($8,000) side, too. He won here back in 2013 and has played reasonably well in spurts at this event since then. Thompson has finished no worse than 13th place in his past four starts, though his ball-striking dipped just a bit at the Genesis. His whole game has been clicking recently outside of that blip on the radar, though, and he is going to be a popular option this week.
GPP Pivots
Gary Woodland ($9,800) is the most obvious play to me in the upper salary tier. He’s made 20 consecutive cuts which is the longest current streak on Tour. Out of his last 31 rounds, 20 have wound up in the 60s. During that stretch, he’s had five top-10 finishes. Woodland just continues to put the ball in play, make cuts, and find the top of the leaderboard. What’s not to like?
I’m hesitant to play first-timers at a course like this in general, but I’m making an exception for Joaquin Niemann ($7,600). His best putting surface is Bermuda, which is what we’re switching over to this week. If he can keep the ball in front of him this week I think he has a good shot at catching a hot putter and making some noise over the weekend.
Cash Locks
We’re back with the cash locks this week. So far this year, we’ve hit 14-of-16 made cuts including 10 top-20 finishes. This week’s locks are Woodland — who I discussed above — and Jason Kokrak ($7,300). Kokrak is an interesting case this week because of his price. He was slated to be in the mid-$8,000s at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and withdrew. Kokrak made the start the following week and was only $7,600. He put together another solid ball-striking week and finished 37th because of a rough outing on the greens. Kokrak is playing some of the best golf of his career. Per DataGolf, his 50-round moving average has peaked right around 0.8 strokes gained on approach a few times in his career and he’s still a bit below that number right now. If he peaks there again, I’ll get off him at some point, but his current ball-striking is sustainable at this point so I’m loading up on him.
