Kapalua: These 10 have the hybrid game to win there
By Bill Felber
4. Viktor Hovland
Hovland’s game was among the Tour’s most seamless, if not spectacular, last season. It helped him produce a pair of fall season victories – a repeat at Mayakoba plus the Hero World Challenge.
Off the tee, Hovland was good for +0.656 Strokes Gained during 2020-21, the Tour’s fifth best performance. His approach game was equally strong, producing another +0.648 stroke advantage per round. That ranked 15th.
At the fall season’s Shriners, Hovland replicated that combination of skills. He was good for better than a full stroke advantage per round over the field in both areas. Like Thomas at the CJ Cup, Hovland’s march toward contention that week was only undermined by a balky putter.
But since putting does not appear to be a statistically decisive skill at Kapalua, he still emerges as a serious contender.
3. Bryson DeChambeau
As the Tour’s most dominant player off the tee, DeChambeau has to be viewed as a threat any place he keeps the ball reasonably close to the fairway. At the wide open spaces of Kapalua, that’s virtually a given.
During the 2020-21 season, DeChambeau averaged an intimidating +1.162 Strokes Gained Off The Tee. That not only made him the game’s alpha dog on the teeing ground for the second straight season, it was also the second straight season when he was the only player to pick up more than a full stroke on the field via that skill set.
Since his emergence as a phenomenon in 2020, the problem with DeChambeau has always been the fact that his approach game comes and goes from week to week. During 2020-21, that aspect of his play averaged +0.291.
But in four of his starts last season, DeChambeau’s irons actually cost him strokes against the field, the worst of those showings leading to his only missed cut that season, at the Rocket Mortgage, where he was defending champion.
In the no-cut Sentry field at Kapalua, DeChambeau need not fear that outcome. And since he did not play a data-supported fall event, we have to accept the combined 1.453 stroke advantage he generated off the tee and approaching greens during 2020-21 as real until proven otherwise.