What To Look For: 2021 Shriners Childrens Open

Sam Burns won the Sanderson Farms Championship last week.

Not only was Burns in my top picks to win, but I was 9-5-2 in my singles matchups.

This week the Tour comes to Las Vegas for the Shriner's Childrens Open.  Not sure why they dropped 'hospital' from the title...

Last week I discussed how The Sanderson Farms Championship is starting to grow on Tour veterans.  The Shriner's Childrens Open is one of the more favorite Tour stops on Tour.  

A large subset of the Tour lives in the Palm Beach/Jupiter Florida area, Orlando, Scottsdale, Sea Island Georgia and the Dallas area.  But a growing number of players live in the Las Vegas area as it has a major airport, good winter weather and private clubs that will cater to their every need and basically leave them alone.

TPC Summerlin is a fair track and doesn't beat up their ego too much and since it's Vegas, there's a lot of big moneyed people with a lot of power and influence along with the high rollers.  It's also endorsed by Justin Timberlake so it has the celebrity vibe going on as well.

As a course, it's very much about iron play, particularly from 150-175 yards.  Players typically will hit 70%+ of the greens.  And it's a good thing because it's one of the top-3 most difficult courses to get up-and-down from 10+ yards.  It yields a lot of birdies, but a mistake by missing a green puts the player at high risk of making bogey or worse.

Having said all of that, in recent years it has favored some of the more 'all-around' players on Tour like Webb Simpson and Martin Laird.  The data leads to the winner being an all around player who has the best week on Tour from 150-200 yards.

3JACK'S FAVORITES

Viktor Hovland +2,000

Abraham Ancer +2,200

Brooks Koepka +2,200

Hideki Matsuyama +2,500

Paul Casey +3,300

3JACK'S DARK HORSE PICKS

Joaquin Niemann +4,000

Russell Henley +6,600

Emiliano Grillo +10,000

Joel Dahmen +15,000

Doug Ghim +15,000

Since there are so many tournament matchups for this event, I put them into Google Sheets.  You can access them by following this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Glt6U96PNQCXaIFMAdm7-PMStJ3kHfIUpJcWwn2BbMs/edit?usp=sharing

3JACK