Course Profiles / Keene Trace Golf Club
Course Profile

Keene Trace Golf Club:
what wins here.

ISCO Championship, Barbasol Championship · 5 editions, 2019–2024 · 2,182 rounds analyzed

Course-fit weights
OTT 26% · rewarded
APP 26% · rewarded
ARG 23% · less decisive
PUTT 25% · neutral
Derived by regressing finishing position on strokes gained at this course, measured against the tour-wide baseline, then tested on seasons the model had never seen. Based on 315 player-events.

How it plays

Not what the scorecard says — what this course does to the same players, measured against everywhere else they play. Built from 2,182 rounds across 5 editions, and ranked against every course in the archive.

MeasureVersus elsewhereWhich meansAcross the archive
Driving distance +4.5 yds longer off the tee here 25th longest of 89
Fairways hit −0.3 pp harder to find middle of the pack
Greens in regulation +5.6 pp easier to hit 10th easiest to hit of 88
Scrambling +5.9 pp easier to save par 2nd easiest to save from of 81

Scoring. These players average 2.18 shots fewer per round here than they do elsewhere.

Plays most like. TPC Craig Ranch, The Summit Club, TPC Twin Cities — the closest courses in the archive on those four measures together.

A record of what happened, not a forecast. Estimates are shrunk toward the tour mean by how much evidence each course has, and every baseline leaves the course itself out, so a venue cannot define the average it is measured against. Split-half reliability 0.888. Weather is not controlled for.

What it has taken

The numbers the week has actually demanded, edition by edition, counted from the scores rather than from anyone’s summary of them. The cut line is the worst halfway score that still saw a Saturday.

-22
typical winning score
Range -26 to -21 across 5 editions.
-19
to reach the top ten
The tenth-place score, median of 5 editions.
-4
to see the weekend
Where the cut fell, median of 5 editions.
YearFieldCutTop 10Won with
2024 154 -8 -19 -22
2023 155 -4 -17 -22
2022 149 -5 -17 -25
2021 127 -4 -19 -21
2019 131 -4 -20 -26

The week, round by round

Scoring average for each round of the tournament, drawn against this course’s own four-round average. Round 2 has played 1.82 of a shot easier than round 4, the widest gap in the week.

hardereasier
ROUND 1
-3.85 avg
ROUND 2
-3.97 avg
ROUND 3
-2.57 avg
ROUND 4
-2.15 avg
Longer to the right is easier scoring than a typical round here; longer to the left is harder. Built from 1,460 rounds — every player who completed an edition at this course, counted in all 4 of his rounds. Only finishers are in it, because Thursday is played by the whole field and Sunday by the half of it that survived the cut: compare those as they fall and every course on tour looks like it eases off for the weekend. Weather is not controlled for, so a single storm-hit afternoon is in these numbers along with everything else.

Who has played above themselves here

Strokes gained per round at this course against the same player’s own average everywhere else. Being a good player is not enough to appear on this list — the comparison is with himself, so what is left is the part that belongs to the course.

PlayerRounds hereHereElsewhereGap
Bo Van Pelt 12 +0.87 -1.27 +0.71
Jason Dufner 18 +1.15 -0.48 +0.70
Taylor Pendrith 12 +2.37 +0.44 +0.64
Cody Gribble 12 +0.87 -1.01 +0.63
Kramer Hickok 12 +1.51 -0.24 +0.58
Josh Teater 16 +1.08 -0.33 +0.56
The gap is pulled toward zero by how few rounds sit behind it, so a player seen four times here does not outrank one seen twenty. Read it as a record, not a projection: players who keep coming back to a course are partly the ones it has already suited, and that selection is inside these numbers.

What the data says

Across 5 editions (2019–2024), off the tee is the category that most separates players who contend here from those who do not — 26% of the model's weighting, against 23% for around the green.

The spread is narrow, which is itself the finding: this course does not strongly favour one kind of player. Weights this close to even mean the field sorts mostly on overall quality, and any course-fit edge here is small.

The winners tell a partly separate story: in 3 of the last 4, the champion's best category for the week was approach play. That differs from what the model weights, and the gap is instructive — winning weeks are outlier weeks, usually powered by one skill running hot on top of the baseline the course demands.

How the winners won

Strokes gained per round for every champion here since 2019. The highlighted figure is that winner's best category for the week. A dash means the category split is not published for that event — only the total is.

YearWinnerTo ParOTTAPPARGPUTTTotal
2024Harry Hall-22-0.45+1.89+1.06+0.53+3.03
2023Vincent Norrman-22+1.28+0.07+0.93+1.30+3.58
2022Trey Mullinax-25+0.98+2.17+0.27+0.78+4.20
2021Seamus Power-21+0.77+0.85+0.64+0.83+3.08
Method. Weights come from regressing top-20 finishes on players' strokes gained in each category, using only rounds played before each event, and comparing each course against the tour-wide baseline — so a weight measures what this course rewards more than golf generally does, not simply which skills help. Weights are kept only where they predicted results out of sample; where they did not, we say so. We tested our previous method, found it did not predict, and published that too: how the model works.

The field, ranked before they play.

Every tournament week we score the field on course fit and player quality. Lab Notes lands every Tuesday with what the numbers say, free.

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