This post describes a planned APBA replay of the 2022 Women’s KPMG PGA Championship on the Blue Course at the Congressional Country Club (par 72) in Bethesda, Maryland. The actual event took place June 23-26, 2022 and is one of five major tournaments on the LPGA tour. The other four are the Chevron Championship, the U.S. Women’s Open, the Evian Championship (in France) and the Women’s Open (in the U.K.).
While the 2022 event was Congressional’s first LPGA major championship, the Congressional Country Club has been the site of four PGA major events previously:
- 1964 – U.S. Open
- 1976 – PGA Championship
- 1997 – U.S. Open
- 2011 – U.S. Open
It also hosted the 1995 U.S. Senior Open.
Actual Event
In-gee Chun led in each of the first 3 rounds and held off Minjee Lee and Lexi Thompson in the final round to win the tournament by one stroke. At 8-under par in round 1, Chun jumped out to a 5-stroke lead. She increased her lead to 6 strokes after round 2 at 11-under. Yet she struggled in the final two rounds with scores of 75-75 on the weekend.
In the final round, Chun went out with a 40 and opened the door for a challenge coming in. CBS Sports recounts the short-game woes of Lexi Thompson who had overtaken Chun in the closing holes of the final round:
“Thompson led Chun by a pair and at 6-under was clear of the rest of the field as well. That’s when Thompson’s demons disclosed themselves. She bogeyed three of her last five holes with a handful of strokes that looked like they were manufactured under the duress of an earthquake. Thompson made two horrific stabs at putts from short distance and made bogey at the par-5 16th. She was greenside in two, but hit a panicked-looking chip over the green and motored a putt 15 feet past the hole coming back the other way to give herself 15 feet for par. It was, exceedingly on every hole, quite difficult to watch.”
With a final round score of 73, Thompson ended 1-over par for the day and one back. Coming from 6 back to start the day, Lee’s final round score of 70 just wasn’t enough to overtake Chun, yet was good enough to tie Thompson for second place.
Sources of Information
Statistical information about the event can be found at the Wikipedia entry for 2022 Women’s PGA Championship, LPGA’s own site, and at ESPN. The 2022 tournament’s primary sponsor, KPMG, provides selected performance insights (such as the shots-gained metric) on its site as well. These links serve as the primary data sources for statistical comparisons that will be made in subsequent posts comparing actual to replay results.
The replay tournament will be assisted by an upgrade to version 6.0 of the Game Caddie that calculates average driving distances. The LPGA reports average driving distance based on all par 4 and par 5 holes. This future release of the Game Caddie will give the user the option to report this statistic for all par 4 and par 5 holes or just user-selected holes. The LPGA site does not provide the public with data for Longest Drive, Longest Putt, or the Total Distance of Putts Made, which are available on the PGA site for men.
Course Setup
In order to more accurately match the course length for the replay with that of the actual tournament, some hole distance adjustments will be made. Here are some yardage distances for Metro D.C. and Congressional:
APBA renders Metro D.C. at 7271 yards with a par of 72. The Scorecard for Congressional lists the Blue Tees on the Blue Course at 7278 yards with a par of 72. For the men’s 2011 U.S. Open, the Blue Course was set up at 7574 yards from the Black tees and played as a par 71.
The Blue Course’s Gold Tees are listed at 6727 yards. The USGA rating for women for the Blue Course from the Gold Tees is 80.1 with a slope of 154 and a par of 72—a very challenging test for female golfers. The actual tournament was played at a course length of 6894 yards, which is, on average, about 10 yards longer per hole than the Gold Tees and 20 yards shorter per hole than the Blue Tees.
APBA rules for reducing hole lengths for LPGA cards, as described in their 2014 rulebook, are based on par and hole lengths. Were those rules strictly applied here, the resulting course would be shorter than the Gold Tees. Thus, to best match the actual course length, the replay will adhere to a reduction on average of 20 yards per hole (as measured from the from the Blue Tees) and be applied as follows:
- 10-yard reduction on the four Par 3’s
- 20-yard reduction on the ten par 4’s
- 30-yard reduction on the four par 5’s
Since these adjustments differ from those made by the Game Caddie in “LPGA” mode, the “Original” setting for Alt Hole and Club Distances will be used and hole distance adjustments will be applied manually when loading each hole. Shot distance reductions will conform to APBA’s rules for LPGA shot distances. For more on using LPGA cards with the Game Caddie, see this video.
The Field and Qualifiers
The actual field consisted of 156 players. Lauren Stephenson withdrew after round 1, and Hinako Shibuno withdrew after round 2. Seventy-one players (at less than 4-over par) after 36 holes made the cut. The average score for the field in rounds 1 and 2 was 75.4 and 72.9 strokes, respectively, which makes Chun’s opening round score of 8-under par that much more impressive. Even though the eventual qualifiers would manage to break par in round 2 (70.9), they failed to do so in rounds 3 (73.6) and 4 (75.3).
APBA carded 45 LPGA golfers in the 2022 set. Of these, forty-two played in the actual event. Thus, to get a representative sample size for comparing actual and replay statistics, all 42 carded players will make the “cut” in the replay. Notable carded players that did not play in the actual tournament, and thus will sit out the replay as well, are Danielle Kang (WR #15), Linn Grant (WR #24), and Maja Stark (no WR, with 1 LPGA win in 8 events and wins on other tours).
The Weather
The wind and course conditions in Bethesda, Maryland for the dates indicated below were reasonably good for scoring. Yet, we know from the actual results that the scores on average were relatively high. Only nine players would finish under par for the tournament with Chun at 5-under as the winner. Higher scores can sometimes be attributed to blustery conditions, but the wind during this tournament was benign. Weather conditions were not responsible for the relatively high scores.
The APBA wind rating for Metro D.C. is “C.” That means 2/3 of the time the wind is Calm, 1/4 of the time Moderate, and 1/12 of the time Blustery. The actual wind intensity for the tournament and the typical APBA course setup for Metro D.C. aligned well in this case. The replay will use the “Standard” wind mode in the Game Caddie Configuration Settings. Metro D.C. does not make use of any prevailing winds. The replay event will be played under the Wind and Course Roll conditions shown below.
Putting & Pin Placements
The average number of putts for the actual tournament qualifiers was 31.2 putts. Only 12 of the 71 qualifiers averaged less that 30 putts for the four rounds, and no qualifier averaged fewer than 29 putts for this event. Metro D.C. has no special rules that make putting more difficult. Therefore, in an attempt to match the putting challenge faced by the actual players, the Major Tournament Putting Boards will be used in the replay, and the four most difficult pin placements will be selected.
The method for making a determination of pin placement difficultly follows the simple rules outlined below. The method assigns more points for a pin being located farther away from the centerline of the green. When a pin is less than one full square from the edge of the green, the assumption is that the player will play more often to the center of the green (e.g., to avoid hazards or rough). Other methods are certainly possible.
For Metro D.C., this method produced the results shown below, with Pin 3 being the easiest (and not used for the replay) and Pin 5 being the hardest (and chosen for the final round).
Thus, pin placements for the replay will be as shown below. The most challenging locations are left for the final two rounds.
The replay begins this week and the results of round 1 will be posted here upon completion.