Good ball-strikers rule at PODS Championship

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The PGA TOUR will head to Florida's Gulf Coast next week for the PODS Championship and will encounter a course that is unlike any other they will see in the state this season.

Innisbrook's Copperhead Course offers the usual Florida challenge of water but adds a twist with tree-lined fairways and rolling -- you could even say hilly -- terrain. In short, it's a ball-strikers' course, and a look at the past winners of this event will bear that out.

The seven previous PODS Championship winners all had one of their five best ball-striking weeks of the season. We define ball-striking as a combination of Total Driving and Greens In Regulation and the chart below will indicate how well each past champion fared.

The Copperhead course played as the 15th-toughest course on the PGA TOUR last year (out of 55), and Calcavecchia's winning score of 10-under par was one of the higher winning totals of the season.

One other thing they all had in common?they made a lot of short-range putts. With the exception of Huston's 2000 victory, which came before ShotLink offered detailed analysis of each player's shots, the other six winners combined to make 266 of 270 putts from 5 feet and in. That's a 98.5% clip.