Welcome back to one more week of a “limited-field-no-cut-fall-swing” event. We have 78 players in the field this week in China for the WGC-HSBC Champions. Yes, it is called “Champions” not “Championship.”

This field looks more like a mini WGC event added onto a strong European Tour event. DraftKings is also offering contests for the Sanderson Farms Championship, if you are more interested in a full-field with a cut. I can’t blame you either way, but the WGC has much larger prize pools so I will focus on it.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at the course and see if we can pinpoint some key stats to take us to another BIG GPP win — or at least a couple good choices for an outright win.

Course snapshot

Course: Sheshan International Golf Club
City: Shanghai, China
Par: 72
Length: 7,261
Course Difficulty: 72.29 (13th)
Birdie Average: 3.69 (30th)
Birdie or Better Percentage: 20.82% (28th)

Course rankings (OFF THE TEE)

SG: Tee-to-Green: N/A
SG: Off-the-Tee: N/A
Driving Distance: N/A
Driving Accuracy: 58.99% (20th)

Course rankings (APPROACH TO THE GREEN)

SG: Approach-the-Green: N/A
GIR Percentage: 65.68 (22nd)
Proximity to Hole: N/A
Rough Proximity: N/A
Fairway Proximity: N/A

Course rankings (AROUND THE GREEN)

SG: Around-the-Green: N/A
Sand Save Percentage: 49.78% (24th)
Scrambling Percentage: 51.85% (3rd)

Course rankings (PUTTING)

SG: Putting: N/A
Putting Average: 1.770 (24th)
One-Putt Percentage: 37.69% (19th)
3-Putt Avoidance: 3.03 (22nd)
Putting from inside 10’: N/A
Putting from >25’: N/A

This is going to be a relatively straightforward course preview, and one I am not entirely thrilled to publish, but nevertheless, we have another event without strokes gained data so we must work with the cards we are dealt. This course will rely heavily on ball-striking, with a touch of scrambling. I think in all honesty, if you choose to enter contests for the WGC-HSBC you should be looking at recent form above-and-beyond everything else, coupled with some course history determinations and ball striking stats.

As far as your ball striking stat research or creating custom models, your emphasis should be extremely heavy on SG: APP and GIR percentage, as well as SG:T2G and SG:OTT, of course. But the way this course shaped up last year, being one of the easier or middle-tier courses to offer up birdies but the overall scoring was very difficult is an interesting combo.

As you can see below, this course offered up about 25 percent more birdies than bogeys, however the number of doubles-or-worse was a mind-boggling 175. Another added benefit to simply viewing recent form for these players is many have been playing all over the world, at different courses, conditions, etc., and it would be best to see who in general is playing well, not necessarily the best from 125-150 yards, for example. This course certainly provided some fireworks as last year’s winner Justin Rose was able to leapfrog Dustin Johnson’s six-shot lead on Sunday thanks to his six birdies on his closing eight holes while DJ failed to make a single birdie and carded a 77. This course certainly can be fair, but the majority of the field has plenty of disasters as well.

In summary, this is another suboptimal event for bankroll building and the key to success for players here will be ball-strikers but an added emphasis on recent form and course history. Please use caution when determining your contests to enter and remember to play light.

For this no-cut event I am going to list out the top cash and GPP plays in each price range to help you get a better picture of how to build your lineups (DraftKings prices indicated).

Expensive

Dustin Johnson: $11,500 (Cash/GPP)
Justin Rose: $11,200 (Cash/GPP)
Rory McIlroy: $10,700 (GPP)
Jason Day: $10,300 (GPP)
Tony Finau: $9,900 (Cash/GPP)
Tommy Fleetwood: $9,500 (GPP)
Tyrrell Hatton: $9,100 (GPP)

Mid-tier

Rafa Cabrera Bello: $8,900 (GPP)
Patrick Cantlay: $8,800 (Cash/GPP)
Matthew Fitzpatrick: $8,700 (GPP)
Ian Poulter: $8,600 (GPP)
Lucas Bjerregaard: $7,800 (GPP)

Value

Kyle Stanley: $7,600 (Cash/GPP)
Emiliano Grillo: $7,500 (GPP)
Eddie Pepperell: $7,300 (GPP)
Keegan Bradley: $7,500 (Cash/GPP)
Pat Perez: $7,200 (GPP)
Julian Suri: $7,000 (GPP
C.T. Pan: $7,000 (Cash/GPP)

Super value

Ashun Wu: $6,800 (Cash/GPP)
Brian Harman: $6,700 (GPP)
Brandon Stone: $6,500 (GPP)
John Catlin: $6,200 (Cash/GPP)