While the stars line up in Austin, there is another show taking place down in the Dominican Republic.
It’s an alternate-field event at the Corales Championship.
The host venue is long, a 7,670-yard test from the tips. The fairways are very generous and there isn’t a lot of trouble when you miss offline. That allows all play styles to compete here.
Looking for course-fit stats this week, we have slow, paspalum greens and windy conditions. We could isolate those splits or we could take a look at one stat that would incorporate pieces of all those splits. I’m talking about performance on coastal courses. Playing by the coast you see a lot of paspalum turf, windy conditions, and slow greens which is what we see here at Corales.
Coastal Comfort
As I just talked about, there are a lot of overlapping themes that come along with coastal golf on the PGA TOUR.
Grame McDowell had this to say two years ago, “The greens are just that little bit slower and the ball just reacts a little differently coming into these greens. I’m becoming a little bit of a Paspalum specialist. Unfortunately, there’s only a few events on the PGA TOUR that they play these events.”
Ricky Barnes also mentioned the weather on top of the grass differences, “You’ve got to acclimate to grass and weather and wind. I do hit a lower flighted golf ball, so I do trust myself when we get into windy conditions, but if it does pick up around here, you’ve got to control your golf ball.”
Here are the top performers in adjusted strokes gained per round when playing coastal courses, over the last two years:
Thomas Detry
Akshay Bhatia
Joel Dahmen
Taylor Pendrith
Patrick Rodgers
Emiliano Grillo
Doug Ghim
Nicolai Hojgaard
Wesley Bryan
Russell Knox
Wyndham Clark
Erik van Rooyen
Ryan Moore
Ben Martin
Charlie Hoffman
We can also look at performance versus baseline to see who shows the largest increase in performance compared to their typical scores:
Wesley Bryan
Akshay Bhatia
Rafael Campos
Robert Garrigus
Thomas Detry
Tyson Alexander
Doug Ghim
DJ Trahan
Ryan Moore
Joel Dahmen
Chris Stroud
Harry Higgs
Jonathan Byrd
Seung-Yul Noh
Ben Martin
Overlap List: names that show up on both lists include Thomas Detry, Akshay Bhatia, Joel Dahmen, Doug Ghim, Wesley Bryan, Ryan Moore, and Ben Martin.
Bhatia building his case as a Coastal Killer
The youngster won in The Bahamas last year on the Korn Ferry circuit but finishes outside the top 10 in every other start. He added two more top 10s in The Bahamas this year while also popping at the Puerto Rico Open (solo second) to earn Special Temporary Membership. There is something about windy, coastal conditions that seems to bring out the best in Bhatia.
Past champ Dahmen to get back on track
Dahmen became a PGA TOUR winner at the 2021 Corales Championship. He could use a confidence boost right now, so it’s easy to see why he’s making the trip this week. Dahmen arrives with six straight finishes outside the top 40, missing the cut in two of those starts. I like his chances of getting back into the mix on a course he’s proven to like in the past.