Surrounded by the golden hills of the Napa Valley, the 2022-2023 PGA Tour begins out west with the Fortinet Championship. One of the rising stars on Tour, California native, Max Homa returns to defend his title from last season. Played on the North course at the 1,200-acre property known as the Silverado Resort and Spa, this will be the ninth consecutive year for the resort to host this event.
The North course at Silverado is one of the shortest on Tour and features narrow tree-lined fairways, few hazards, non-penal rough, and tricky sloping greens. It is a very straightforward and scoreable course with a winning score that has averaged 17-under par since 2014.
This opening event also signals the beginning of another FedExCup season. Thankfully, this will be the last ever start to a PGA Tour season in the month of September. After a long stretch of incorporating a wraparound calendar schedule, the Tour will implement a January-to-August season starting in 2024. This first event features a full 156-player field with the typical cut-line after Friday’s round.
For casual observers, there will be plenty of unfamiliar names that will be competing in this event. Many Korn Ferry Tour graduates will be making their debut as full PGA Tour members. Among the new members, Justin Suh is the most familiar name as he topped the combined Points List and will be fully exempt this season. While the field lacks star power, these fall events are an important week for everyone who is trying to rack up FedExCup points as only the top 70 golfers (instead of the typical 130) will earn their way into next year’s FedExCup Playoffs.
Only eight of the top 70 players in the world will tee it up at Silverado starting on Thursday. Along with Homa, the field is headlined by Hideki Matsuyama, Corey Conners, Tom Hoge, Sahith Theegala, Cameron Davis, Davis Riley, and Alex Noren. With the Presidents Cup taking place next week, the International team will be well-represented with Matsuyama, Conners, Davis, and Taylor Pendrith all playing this week.
Course History
Having been a large Napa Valley ranch in the post-Second World War years, the original Silverado Country Club opened in 1955. 11 years later in 1966, famed golf architect Robert Trent Jones was called in to modernize the original course and also build a second one. By 1967, the “new” South course opened alongside the renovated North course.
From 1968 to 1976 the North course hosted a full-fledged PGA Tour event called the Kaiser International Open. And then from 1977 to 1980, it played host to a Champions Tour event. Fast forward to 2010 when two-time major winner, Johnny Miller bought the entire resort. In 2011, he redesigned both courses with the goal of landing a U.S. Open or PGA Championship, but he ended up settling for a new PGA Tour event called the Frys.com Open which began play in 2014. In 2016, it was changed to the Safeway Open. And then last year, the tournament began its new sponsorship with Fortinet.
The Course
Located in the heart of California’s Napa Valley wine country, Silverado is a classical, tree-lined resort-style course with a setup that is quite scoreable. The birdie to bogey ratio of 1.44 is one the highest on Tour. And over the past five events here, the course ranks as the 17th easiest annual course playing an average of 0.93 strokes under par.
Although there is some rolling terrain and a couple of holes with elevation changes, it is predominately a flat course. With only two holes with water hazards in play (7th fewest) and only 50 bunkers (6th fewest) on the course, there just aren’t that many ways for golfers to score bogey or worse. The narrow tree-lined fairways along with some severe undulations on several of the greens are about the only defense that Silverado can mount.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bThe shortness of the course also contributes to its ease. Measuring in at under 7,200 from the tips, the par-72 course ranks as the 9th shortest annual course on Tour. Looking at the winners’ circle, both bombers and shorter hitters have seen success here. Longer hitters like Cameron Champ and Stewart Cink have raised the trophy while plodders like Chez Reavie and Emiliano Grillo have also played well here over the years.
For agronomy, this week presents an interesting mixture of grass types. The fairways are a mix of Bermuda, Poa annua and ryegrass while the rough is a bluegrass/ryegrass combination that is cut to around three inches. The greens also have some bentgrass mixed in but are a majority of west coast “bumpy” Poa annua.
Even with it being one of the shorter courses on Tour, there is shockingly not a single par 4 that is over 460 yards. Eight of the par-4s are between 375 and 435 yards. With an average driving distance that has increasingly crept higher over the years (291.7 last year), players will have plenty of short irons and wedges opportunities on these holes. Each of the four par-5s is reachable in two shots and they have an average Birdie or Better rate of 39%. The par-3s present the biggest challenge on the course as three are among the four toughest holes on the property and have a bogey or worse rate of 21%.
Strokes Gained Analysis
Off the Tee
According to DataGolf, Silverado is the 16th most difficult course to gain strokes off the tee. With extremely narrow and tree-lined fairways, Driving Accuracy is almost 11% tougher than the average Tour course. Yet, when you dig a little deeper there is so much to uncover.
First of all, with most of the holes being fairly straight with only a couple of doglegs, and an almost complete lack of hazards, golfers can pick their line off the tee and bomb away if they choose. Unlike other shorter courses like Waialae or Harbour Town, there are not many holes with forced layups. Though the rough is three inches, it is very playable as evidenced by the Greens in Regulation (GIR) rate from missed fairways being 9% easier than the Tour average. Taking it even further, the Birdie or Better rate from the rough is almost 5% higher than the average course. With the rough not being much of a factor, those with increased Driving Distance have a clear path to success.
Looking more closely at the bomber angle, when Cameron Champ won here two years ago he highlighted this was actually part of his strategy by saying “Sometimes I don’t even care if I’m in the rough, it doesn’t really matter. I’ll just try to position it off the tee. I’ll take it in the rough being way up there and hitting driver. That’s kind of how I look at it this week.” When Champ won this back in 2019, his Driving Accuracy was only 53.6% but he still hit 73.6% of GIR. One year later in 2020, winner, Stewart Cink’s numbers were even more pronounced with a Fairway rate of 55.4% and a GIR of 84.7%.
Additionally, course renovator, Johnny Miller was always very aggressive off the tee himself and did not want to penalize players for using driver. None of the par 4s or par 5s have water hazards to contend with and there are very few fairway bunkers that can’t be carried by almost everyone.
Approach
This might be the most overused cliched in golf, but because of the lack of penalty off the tee combined with sloping greens make Silverado a genuine second-shot course that will allow players with strong iron play to separate themselves from the field. When players are asked about this course they often mention the difficult pin locations and how it is paramount to position the approach shot on the right level of the green. Most of the greens slope from back to front and have some severe undulations that lead to closely mown run-off areas for inaccurate approaches.
One of the main reasons for the GIR% being so high, even from the rough, is that 44% of approach shots come from the 75-150 yard range. That is 11% above the Tour average of 33%. On measured courses with ShotLink data, Silverado is the 14th toughest course on which to gain strokes on approach from that range. Martin Laird spoke of how high ball flights with shorter irons are an advantage by saying, “There’s some tight pins on the front of the greens that some guys just can’t get to if you don’t hit it high. So coming in with mid-irons, coming in landing soft is definitely a big advantage as opposed to maybe hitting a slightly longer club and coming in a little flatter.”
With Silverado being a resort course, greens are also typically quite soft and inviting. Other than some tricky tiered areas on the greens, strategically placed oak and redwood trees that can block approach shot angles are about the only other challenge that players will face when attacking the greens on their second shot.
Around the Green and Putting
Silverado ranks slightly easier than average in the two main “Around the Green” categories of Sand Saves and Scrambling. From a strokes gained perspective, however, it is ranked as the 10th most difficult course around the green. This is mostly due to the aforementioned run-off areas that can create some tricky chips for the small percentage of golfers who do miss the green on certain holes. While few in number overall, some of the deepest bunkers on Tour surround these greens and swallow up wayward approaches.
It’s fair to say that putting on these greens is the most challenging area of this course. While 3-putt avoidance is easier, each of the putting ranges is slightly tougher than average. And when digging into it from a strokes gained angle, Silverado has the fifth toughest greens on Tour when putting from inside five feet. As for speed, they are right around average, measuring somewhere between 11.5 and 12 on the stimp meter. As is typical with west coast Poa annua, players have commented on how putting is much more difficult in the afternoon when the putts do not roll as smooth because of the surface becoming much bumpier.
Photo courtesy of Golf Pass