Sanderson Farms

The Meat of the Swing Season Starts in Mississippi

Author

Andy Molitor
October 02, 2024

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From the PGA: “ The 2024 Sanderson Farms Championship is the second event of the FedExCup Fall, a group of eight tournaments played after the TOUR Championship that finalizes eligibility for the 2025 PGA TOUR Season.”

It’s all a bit confusing an convoluted but, the top 50 in the FedEx points standings at the end of the season found themselves locked into all the signature events for next year. After that, this fall swing will help determine who else gets added to the field. Finishing in the “Aon Next 10” (51-60 in the standings) after the RSM November will get you into Pebble Beach and the Genesis. So, outside of just the prize money and status you can get for winning, there are some bonuses for playing a bunch of these events and placing high for those sitting on the outside of the good events for next spring.

A look at the course, via Ron Klos’ preview article:

Country Club of Jackson

Located in a rural setting in the Deep South, the Country Club of Jackson is a long par-72 course that plays just under 7,500 yards. The course meanders through 400 acres of lowland property with very few elevation changes. It features narrow fairways, non-penal 2″ rough and speedy Bermuda greens. There isn’t much danger on the course in the form of water hazards and bunkers. With water danger on only five holes and the ninth fewest bunkers on Tour courses, it ranks as the 12th easiest course at -1.35 strokes under par per round.

Looking at agronomy for the week, golfers will see bermudagrass fairways and greens. The Bermuda/zoysia rough mixture sits at just two inches and has not proven to be difficult to hit from compared to other courses with pure Bermuda rough. The greens are Tour average at 6,200 square feet and run quite speedy at upwards of 12.5 on the stimpmeter. Golfers from the South who have grown up playing on Bermuda grass will have an advantage here in Jackson. During past interviews, players who have finished high on the leaderboard tend to bring up their comfort on Bermuda greens. And that has played out in this event as a majority of past winners have ties to the southern United States.

The Sanderson Farms Championship layout is a composite course that combines the nine holes from the Dogwood course with the nine from the Azalea. Every year since 2015, scoring has been between 18-under and 22-under. Overall, it is a bland course without much strategic value and an almost complete lack of risk/reward holes.

Along with its speedy greens, the course’s biggest defense might be its lengthy and tougher-than-average par 5s. Even with four par-5s in play, with three of them stretching beyond 580 yards, only the longest hitters will be able to make it to the green in two shots. Additionally, the par-5 11th hole which only measures 554 yards has water down the entire right side of the fairway. Because of this, these par-5s have one of the lowest par-5 eagle rates on Tour at an average of only 1.3%.

There is a good mixture of holes with three par-4s that play over 475 yards and five other par-4s that are under 425 yards. Three of the par-3s rank among the seven toughest holes on the course and will also provide a minor challenge.

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Model

It’s a tough one to nail down and most of what I’ll be doing this week will be price based. This isn’t a course where one particular style of golf has dominated and there really isn’t anything (outside of just being bad at golf) that eliminates you from being able to compete to win here.

I made a very simple model this week just looking at form (SG:TOT over the last 12 months, leaving out difficult fields), Driving Distance, and putting. I know we’ver seen shorter hitters win this thing but if you look at how I weighted it, you will see plenty of red in that center row (driving distance).

Outright Card for the Week

Ben Griffin +3300
Beau Hossler +6500
Chris Gotterup +6500
Chesson Hadley +12500

Weather

Warm because it’s Mississippi. But not too warm, because it’s October.

Some chances of rain on Friday, but it seems unlikely to affect much. There have been times where the greens can get baked out in the afternoon, but with the temps and winds where they’re at, I don’t know that we’ll see that this year. Perhaps a bit of an advantage for the AM/PM group if it does indeed rain Friday and they’ll get the nice Thursday morning conditions and then have softer conditions heading into the Friday afternoon session.

News and Notes

As always, bet responsibly, have fun, and we’ll see you next week for 100 gorgeous shots of rock formations.