Week after week, we preview and predict who will find success on the LPGA Tour, but many of the events on the schedule have a storied history. Even Palos Verdes Golf Club gives us multiple years’ worth of leaderboards and strokes-gained data to mull over. And every once in a while, we get to celebrate the expansion of the Tour as they tackle a new venue. This week’s Ford Championship presented by KCC is one of those brand-new tournaments hosted at an exciting golf course.
Seville Golf and Country Club has never hosted the LPGA. Designed in 2001, the par-72 scorecard measures 6,615 yards for the 144-player field, who are all essentially rookies at this week’s venue. When this happens, the most common question asked is, how do you handicap a new course? Believe it or not, it actually happens more often than you think.
Three of the LPGA’s major championships move annually. The U.S. Women’s Open, KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and AIG Women’s Open all are played on different courses every year. There are plenty of successful strategies for previewing courses we haven’t seen before or not in some length of time, and we will implement that approach as we look at the Ford Championship.
Let’s start with the fact we are three weeks away from the season’s first major: The Chevron Championship. Our visit to Gilbert, Ariz., also marks the second week in a row the Tour is back in the United States. The elite players know what events are upcoming and are working to prepare accordingly. Fresh off her second win of the season, Nelly Korda appears to be ready for any course the LPGA Tour will visit this year.
Who else is playing well? Lydia Ko leads the field in scoring average, followed closely by Korda, Sei Young Kim, Ayaka Furue and Brooke Henderson. Seville Golf and Country Club has 32 bunkers and seven holes where water comes into play, so accuracy will matter if a player wants to create scoring opportunities. Korda leads the field in greens in regulation ahead of Megan Khang, Nasa Hataoka and Henderson.
But once they find the green, who records the most sub-par scores?
Hye-Jin Choi, Kim and Yuka Saso are the leading birdie-or-better players in the field, and Seville’s playability indicates that this field should go low here. The weather looks fantastic this week in the desert, and with an average par-4 length of 381 yards, the longer hitters are going to have an advantage. A shorter course doesn’t necessarily hurt the medium-length players, but overall, the four par 5s and 10 4s are below the Tour average in length.
Now, you can start to see a blueprint for success at Seville Golf and Country Club, a roadmap to picking the top 65 and ties who will make the cut and compete for a share of $2.25 million over the weekend. A careful blend of driving length and accuracy combined with an opportunistic scoring ability is what you should be focused on. When you combine strokes gained off the tee and putts per green in regulation, the best in this field are Korda, Saso, and Kim, as they currently possess that complementary skill set.
If you break down the golf course design and recent results, not only do the above names make sense, but they provide a nice balanced betting card. Korda is no doubt the favorite, while Kim sits in the lower middle of the odds board and Saso provides a nice opportunity in the higher range to collect a sizeable cash ticket.
New events aren’t difficult to break down. Just pay attention to the course skillset alongside recent form, and there’s little doubt that you, too, can pick a contender at this week’s Ford Championship presented by KCC.
Keith Stewart is an award-winning PGA Professional. He covers the LPGA and PGA TOUR for Golf Digest, The Sporting News, LPGA, and PGA of America. If you are looking to raise your golf acumen and love inside information about the game, check out his weekly newsletter called Read The Line.
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