DFS Dish: 2023 Sanderson Farms Championship

The Country Club of Jackson will host this week's Sanderson Farms Championship.

It's the 10th straight edition that it has hosted and with that much history, we have lots of data to lean on in terms of course history as well as the stats that make for a good course fit. Evaluating the course is always a top priority when building DFS rosters so with that in mind, let's turn our attention toward one specific course-fit angle, performance on bermudagrass greens.

Back on Bermuda

The PGA Tour takes on a nice dose of bermudagrass starting with the Florida Swing but much of the summer schedule shifts to bentgrass and poa annua, cool-season grasses.

Heading to Mississippi this week, we are back in bermuda territory and that's exactly what we see at the Country Club of Jackson.

You can sift through old quotes from the course and it's very clear that some golfers prefer the grainy grass better than others. Here are some examples:

Seth Reeves: "I feel like I just am comfortable with the Bermuda rough, Bermuda greens, it just feels like I'm at home."

Denny McCarthy: "living down in Florida the last five or six years I've gotten really comfortable with Bermuda greens. To me these are some of the best greens on TOUR, if not the best. Very similar to my home course I play Medalist and Turtle Creek down in Jupiter. So I'm just really comfortable on Bermuda."

Sam Burns: "I like the golf course, I like the Bermudagrass, similar to kind of what I grew up on home."

Peter Malnati: "This is like a comfort zone for me in terms of the type of grass, I grew up in east Tennessee and we have similar Bermuda fairways, Bermuda rough."

Those are all from just one edition (2021) but you get the idea.

Here are the top performers in adjusted strokes gained per round when playing on courses with bermudagrass greens, over the last two years:

Ben Griffin
Tom Hoge
Keith Mitchell
Stephan Jaeger
Ben Taylor
Davis Riley
Mackenzie Hughes
K.H. Lee
Alex Noren
Ludvig Aberg
Adam Svensson
Ryan Gerard
Alex Smalley
Russell Knox
Emiliano Grillo

We can also look at performance versus baseline to see who shows the largest increase in performance compared to their typical scores:

Ben Taylor
Ben Griffin
Trey Mullinax
Russell Knox
Aaron Baddeley
Mackenzie Hughes
Davis Riley
Charley Hoffman
Andrew Novak
Kevin Yu
Stephan Jaeger
Ryan Armour
Joel Dahmen
Tyler Duncan
Chesson Hadley

Overlap List: Names that show up on both lists include Ben Griffin, Stephan Jaeger, Ben Taylor, Davis Riley, Mackenzie Hughes, and Russell Knox.

We see a heavy dose of golfers who live in the Southeast which is not surprising.

Happy at home for Davis Riley

He's currently 62nd in the FedExCup standings so he's right on the motivational bubble of earning one of the final 10 spots to the first two Signature events of the 2024 schedule. On top of that, he's playing on familiar turf this week. He said this two years ago at the CC of Jackson, "So I'm very familiar with it and had some success, I won a few high school tournaments out here." He's a touch overpriced this week if you only look at average baseline performance but if you factor in his complete range of outcomes and his course comfort, Riley becomes a more attractive mid-range option on DraftKings this week.

Griffin getting a second look

The Sea Island resident twirled a T-24 finish in his 2022 debut at the CC of Jackson. It kickstarted his rookie campaign and he'd follow it up with top-25s in five of his next 11 starts before cooling his pace. We know from his social media that he practices at Sea Island where he is no stranger to rounds in the upper 50s and low 60s. Low scoring environments on bermudagrass suit his game and he'll see both this week at the Sanderson Farms Championship.