Zachary Turcotte | Fantasy Golf Insider: Recent Episodes
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The Daily Spin – Travelers Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – Travelers Championship
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The Daily Spin – US Open
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FGI Betting Picks – US Open
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The Daily Spin – Canadian Open
RECAP
I did not like my chances of getting into the money on Thursday afternoon and going into the weekend, it looked like a 50/50 proposition on if I would get paid, but by late on Sunday afternoon, there was little sweat as Scottie guided me into the money after winning for the third time in for starts, putting on a clinic over the weekend in making just a single bogey over the final two rounds. Ben Griffin made a valiant effort right down to the end, but it only took a couple of small mistakes to give Scottie some breathing room to close out the tournament. We are witnessing greatness every time Scottie tees it up. Nobody plays better under pressure and I cannot remember the last time he had the lead in the final group where he gave it up. In fact, he almost always ends up increasing his margin of victory and most of those have come on really tough courses. It feels like he is on a path towards becoming one of the all-time greats after recording his 16th career win and yet, by age 28, Tiger Woods had already won 46 times which really puts things into perspective.
I was surprised that Scottie was ‘only’ 50% in cash games last week. It did not make a lot of sense to drop down to start your cash game roster last week, especially in a smaller field with a limited cut. Without Rory around, Scottie was the only real ‘lock’ near the top that was going to be in contention. He has seven straight Top-10 finishes so even when he is not at his best, he is still in contention. I cannot say the same for any other golfer that teed it up last week. Xander was the next closest to Scottie in terms of DK fantasy points of the golfers in the field over $9k and he was still outscored by 29.5 points. Plus, with Scottie being so heavily owned, if you fade him on a week where he wins, a massive number of people are getting those extra points, leaving them with room for error in the construction of their lineups while you likely need to be perfect and get a 6/6 to have any shot at getting into the money.
Once I decided to lock in Scottie, I went to the bottom portion of the board and worked my way back up. I knew that Bud Cauley was going to make my roster at his price so he got locked down immediately. He was fine before the weekend, but could not muster much over the final two rounds and finished 39th. I thought I would take my chances with CBez, one of the better cut makers on tougher courses over the last few years and a decent golfer at Muirfield, but like many other weeks this year, he faltered and missed the cut after blowing up badly on the first nine holes on Friday after a decent start on Thursday. He has six missed cuts already this year which is more than he had all of last year for the entire season. The other bargain bin golfer I selected was Max Greyserman. He is playing the way CBez used to play for us back in his glory days as a cash game staple. Max got off to a terrible start on Thursday in shooting a 76, but fought back to make the cut and worked his way back up to a 25th place finish which was very respectable. He is now 15/17 making the cut this season and though he rarely finishes anywhere near the Top-10, he is usually inexpensive and gets us four full rounds of scoring making him invaluable when we end up paying up for a high dollar golfer.
I had enough funds left over to afford two of my core value plays for the week in Keegan Bradley and Si Woo Kim. Keegan keeps on trekking this year and although he is running out of time to get himself into the Top-12 of the Ryder Cup standings (top six auto qualify, next six are captain picks), it does seem to be a helpful motivating factor as his results have been steady all year. He will likely need a win over the next couple of months to get the burst of points he needs to break into a spot where he could choose himself without being criticized, but he is posting solid results at tough courses and finished 7th over the weekend. Si Woo started off strong, had a poor round on Friday and never got back on track over the weekend and though he finished 31st, he managed only 11 birdies for the entire tournament so his point total was not too impressive.
the Memorial Cash Game Roster – 357 DK Points
- Scottie Scheffler – 1st – 103.5
- Si Woo Kim – T31 – 50.5
- Keegan Bradley – T7 – 74.5
- CBez – mc – 17
- Bud Cauley – T39 – 53
- Max Greyserman – T25 – 58.5
Course
- TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley (North)
- Par 70
- 7,389 yard
- Bentgrass Greens w Poa Annua
The North Course at TPC Toronto hosts the Canadian Open this week. The course underwent renovations in 2023. It hosted the PGA Tour Americas’ Fortinet Cup Championship in September 2024. For that event, the course played as a 7,445-yard, Par 70, but will play at 7,389 yards this weekend. This course features tree-lined holes but offers a spacious feel, avoiding a tight design.
The Par 70 configuration is distinctive, with only two par-5s—the first and 18th holes. Players starting on the 1st face a birdie opportunity early but won’t see another par-5 until the final hole, while those beginning on the 10th play them back-to-back as their 9th and 10th holes.
The course presents significant challenges, particularly with its par-4s. The course features six par-4 holes between 481 to 530 yards which will favor those golfers that excel from mid to long range precision iron play. Additionally, two lengthy par-3s—the 7th (237 yards) and 11th (225 yards)—should make this a much sterner test than what we have witnessed at this event over the years where scoring is usually not terribly difficult.
The course features sweeping doglegs leading to elevated greens, with fairways playing wider than what we have seen in recent months. Missing the fairway brings bunkers and short fescue into play, compounded by rough that is expected to be nearly four inches. The greens are about average in size (6500 sq ft) and are bentgrass with poa annua and not expected to play especially fast.
Course Comps
- Hamilton
- Memorial Park
- Muirfield Village
- Oak Hill
- Tahoe
- TPC Deere Run
- TPC River Highlands
- TPC Twin Cities
Field
For a tournament that is the week prior to the US Open, this field could be much worse. Rory skipped out on Jack last week to participate in this tournament and he joins Ludvig Aberg as the only two Top-10 players in the world to start this week. Eight of the Top-25, sixteen of the Top-50 and 43 of the Top-100 golfers in the world are in the field. The event is top heavy as the stars far outshine the value range so anyone daring enough to work with a balanced lineup should end up looking contrarian to most other rosters.
The one factor that comes into play for an event like this is how much motivation golfers will have to stick around if they start off slowly on Thursday. We have seen plenty of golfers hit the eject button the week prior to a major, enjoying a couple of rounds to stay sharp before getting out of town early in order to get an extra day or two in place at the venue for the following week at a major. While I would have a hard time thinking this would be the case for Rory given him skipping a signature event last week to be here, it is something to keep in mind when gauging the field in the leadup to a major tournament.
Weather
- Caledon Forecast – Wind & weather forecast Caledon – Windfinder
Nothing of note in my first look at the weather this week. There might be some light rain on Thursday, but nothing substantial. Winds look light on Thursday and Friday. I will look for a wind advantage over the next couple of days, but so far it does not look like anything will develop to give us an edge one way or another.
Canadians
- Nick Taylor
- Mackenzie Hughes
- Corey Conners
- Adam Hadwin
- Adam Svensson
- Taylor Pendrith
- Ben Silverman
- Matthew Anderson
- Roger Sloan
- Mike Weir
- Cougar Collins
- Ashton McCulloch
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green – 30%
- Strokes Gained Putting – 20%
- Birdie or Better Percentage – 20%
- Scrambling – 10%
- Proximity – 10%
- Prox 175-200 – 5%
- Over 200+ – 5%
Cash Game Plays
Top Tier
Rory McIlroy – This feels a lot like last week where Scottie was the obvious play for cash games. It is different in that there is a full cut this week so a little more risk, but that is offset by the much weaker field and the much cheaper salary for Rory at $11.9k vs $13.4k for Scottie. Rory obviously values this event as he skipped out on a signature event to be here. He is a two time winner at this event and even though it shifts courses, I think that a longer, tougher Par 70 layout should definitely favor him in this weaker field. He ranks at the top of every meaningful tool or rolling SG model and the golfers below him at the high end of the salary tier are not consistent enough with top finishes to deviate off of Rory for your cash game lineups in my opinion.
Corey Conners – There are other options besides Rory if you do decide to go a different direction. Corey Conners is in the middle of one of his better seasons on tour. He has Top-25 finishes in nine of his last ten starts with four Top-10s. He is Canadian so likely will not overlook this tournament and finished 6th, 20th and 6th over his last three starts at the Canadian Open. His rolling stats look sharp as he ranks 8th in SGTG and 5th in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds. His consistent play springs from his improvement on the greens this year as he is on the positive side of SGP, something that has not always been the case throughout his career. You get an $1800 discount from Rory if you drop to Conners, but does he finish near the top often enough to make this worth the trade off in cash games?
Shane Lowry – We like Lowry on long, tough courses. If you look back at where he has had some of his finest performance, you see a win at the 2019 Open Championship, 2015 at Firestone, 2nd at Oakmont in 2016 and a number of excellent finishes in Florida in challenging conditions. His irons play has led the way for him and he ranks first in the field over the last 24 rounds in SGAPP. If you look closer at his stats, much of this stems from his play between 175-225 yards, key metrics for what is in store for players this week. He ranks 2nd to Rory in my comp course model and I suspect that this being a more difficult iteration than previous years will play to his advantage.
Sam Burns – It is beginning to feel like Sam Burns is back on track after a slow start to 2025. He was not too competitive through his first ten starts or so this year, but has turned it on in his last five starts with four Top-20 finishes. I am nervous about Sam in that almost all of his success has been driven by his putter, but he is the top ranked putter on tour for all of 2025 so it is looking like more of something that we can depend on rather than a short term trend. He has two top-10 finishes in his last three starts in Canada. Despite the less than stellar rolling numbers relating to his iron play, he has improved in that area of late which is really all that he needed given how well he has been hitting his putts.
Keith Mitchell – Mitchell just barely missed the cut at the PGA Championship, but bounced back reasonably well at Colonial the following week. His form prior to that had been strong with five straight finished of 18th or better. He has played well in Canada in recent years with Top-10 finishes in two of his last three starts. His rolling numbers look good and the only area where he has struggled at all has been around the greens. His putter has been an asset as he ranks 17th in SGP over the last sixteen rounds. He ranks 15th on tour this season in Total Driving so this type of setup should be ideal for him as he can gain a lot of ground off the tee without finding a lot of trouble.
Middle Tier
Chris Gotterup – Is Gotterup a thing again? It feels like it, but for how long? Consistency has never been his thing so it does not feel great to put a lot of trust in him, but he is striking ball as well as anyone in the field over the last couple of months. After a very slow start to 2025, he has made the cut in 6/7 starts with five Top-20 finishes. He ranks first in the field in SGTG over the last sixteen rounds and 5th in SGTOT. He is a bomber that has started to hit more fairways during his recent turnaround and it has led to a ton of birdies giving him a great uptick in DK scoring. He tends to be at his best on courses that allow for more scoring so this could be another shot for a Top-20 finish.
Eric Cole – Cole is back to doing what he does best; playing every single week and making cuts. He has made nine straight cuts in singles play with six of those resulting in finishes of 28th or better. It is a longer course this week, but Cole has leveraged improved iron play to keep himself in front of the cut line and playing into the weekend. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks 6th in SGAPP and 20th in SGP. Even with some of these holes pushing him on distance, his short game should keep afloat.
Ryan Fox – Ryan Fox has been on a nice run in recent weeks, winning at Myrtle Beach and following it up with a 28th place finish at the PGA Championship and 20th last week at the Memorial. He ranks 6th in SGTG and 7th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds among the field. He finished 7th in this event last year and he rates as one of the highest value plays on our Odds vs Pricing tool this week.
Ryo Hisatsune – Ryo was inconsistent to start the year, but has since found his form making the cut in eight of his last nine starts with five Top-20 finishes. While he can be a little wild off the tee, he has really picked up his play in all other aspects and ranks 17th in SGTG and 12th in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds, a huge improvement over the first couple of months of 2025.
Lower Tier
Vince Whaley – Whaley has crawled his way back into being relevant this year over his last five start in making the cut in each event and finishing 26th or better in four of those starts. He is a bomber who suffered from severe accuracy issues at the start of the season, but has started to hit more fairways in recent weeks which has totally turned his game around. That is one of the keys that I think will make him successful on a longer course with more forgiving fairways. He is 3/3 making the cut at this tournament and although the data is limited, he has been very good on the bentgrass/poa green combo in his career.
Mark Hubbard – I love that I keep getting to write up the ultimate good guy, Mark Hubbard each week while he is on his cut making run. Each year, he finds the groove for a long stretch of time where he might go a couple of months without missing a cut or only one over several months. It feels like we may be embarking on such a stretch right now after a 12th place finish at Puntacana, 5th at the CJ Cup, 7th at Myrtle Beach and 28th at Colonial. I would not put a lot of stock into it, but he has also made the cut at this event in his last five starts with a 6th place finish two years ago as the highlight. He ranks 22nd in SGTG and 6th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds to go with decent comp course numbers in his career.
Emiliano Grillo – Say it with me: GREE-lo! It feels like the Emiliano we have gotten to know over the years is back. His tee to green game was broken early in the year, but his irons are heating up and he ranks 1st in SGAPP over the last sixteen rounds. I also like that his putter is on the plus side of SGP as this is an area that has tended to hurt him over the years. After a terrible first six starts of the year, he has looked good the last few months making the cut in seven of his last eight starts including four Top-25 finishes. In limited starts, he is 3/3 making the cut in Canada and his comp course numbers are strong as he has gained .685 strokes per round in 30 career starts.
Antoine Rozner – He has not been all that exciting to watch this year, but Rozner is getting the job done when it comes to making the cut. After missing the cut in his first start of the year back in January, he has gone on to make the cut in his next ten starts though he has only a single Top-25 to show for his efforts. I like how this course sets up for him. He is long off the tee and his accuracy issues should be muted by the more generous fairways. He is one of the best golfers on tour for long iron play, ranking 2nd between 175-200 yards and 16th for approach shots beyond 200 yards. If his short game is anything better than terrible, this should be a good chance for him to test the upside once making it to the weekend.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Rory McIlroy | 11900 | | Corey Conners | 10100 | | Shane Lowry | 9900 | | Sam Burns | 9300 | | Keith Mitchell | 9100 | | Christopher Gotterup | 8300 | | Eric Cole | 8100 | | Ryan Fox | 7700 | | Ryo Hisatsune | 7600 | | Vince Whaley | 7400 | | Mark Hubbard | 7400 | | Emiliano Grillo | 7100 | | Antoine Rozner | 6900 |
Secondary
| Robert Macintyre | 9800 | | Matt Wallace | 8000 | | Alex Smalley | 7600 | | Cameron Young | 7500 | | Tom Kim | 7300 | | Patrick Rodgers | 7200 | | Ricky Castillo | 7200 | | Matt Kuchar | 7100 |
Tertiary
| Kevin Yu | 7800 | | John Keefer | 7800 | | Victor Perez | 7000 | | Steven Fisk | 7000 | | Kristoffer Ventura | 6700 | | Brandt Snedeker | 6700 |
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FGI Betting Picks – Canadian Open
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The Daily Spin – the Memorial
RECAP
Ben Griffin took home his first title as a solo player just weeks after winning the team event with Andrew Novak in Louisiana. It was a great win for Griffin who had previously had a couple of close calls and come up short. In fact, he was the bubble boy this year for The Masters, moving just outside of the rankings the week it was solidified. He no longer needs to worry about 2026 after his win at Colonial and is no looking at a likely deep playoff run in the FedEx Cup to end his summer.
Sadly, I did not land on Griffin last week as I paid up for Scottie and had nowhere near enough funds to get back up into the $8k range for any of my other golfers. It was quite frustrating to see Scottie start out so poorly, nearly blowing the cut before rallying back to finish in 4th place. It is amazing to me that even when Scottie does not have his ‘A’ game, he still routinely finishes near the top of the leaderboard. His short game was a disaster on Friday, costing him over four strokes and that was all it took as he lost by, you guess it, four strokes.
The risk of using Scottie in a weaker field like last week is that if he does not get the win, you really have to hope that the rest of your team can hold it together. Unfortunately, you have to take on a lot more risk than normal with your roster construction when you pay $13700 for Scottie so nothing is assured. I did my level best to try to find some cut makers or golfers that were in decent form, but I never really loved the look of my team.
Ryan Gerard did make the cut, but after a nice first round, he was terrible the final three rounds and finished T73. Matt Kuchar gave me what I needed at $6800. He got through the cut and did just enough with his irons in the first two rounds to get to the weekend and pick up those extra key points. Good guy Mark Hubbard was the best of my value plays, sliding in at T28, playing pretty steady golf throughout the weekend.
I got nothing out of Alex Smalley or Sami Valimaki. I liked the rolling numbers that Smalley had going in and his experience at Colonial was promising. Valimaki was the last golfer to get into my lineup. He had missed the cut at Quail Hollow the week prior, but before that, he had a really nice run, making nine straight cuts with four Top-25 finishes in his last six starts. A poor start of 74 on Thursday doomed him as he did play better on Friday, but was way too far back to make a meaningful run.
This is the dilemma when it comes to using Scottie in these weak fields. It is not easy to find golfers you can trust to play around him. Fortunately, this will likely only be an issue for the Dallas/Ft Worth tournaments each year so we have another year before he is in another tournament where the field is so soft.
Course
- Muirfield Village Golf Club (Renovated in 2021)
- Par 72
- 7,569 yards
- Bentgrass greens
Muirfield Golf Course is located in Dublin, Ohio and is our lone stop in the Buckeye state this year. It’s a 7,569 yard course and plays as a Par 72. There have been a ton of renovations to the course over the last couple of years so we have a pretty good idea of how it will play now that we have seen it for a few years. Even in back to back weeks in 2020 the folks running the course managed to make it play radically different so keep an eye on how it sets up this year. It may not be a perfect comp course to Augusta, but I find that the similarities work well for me when looking at the field each year to choose my players. The fairways are wide, though Augusta is more open overall and a little more forgiving. The rough at Muirfield tends to be pretty thick so though the fairways are wider than normal, players will want to stay in the short grass or they will face trouble with their approach shots.
Muirfield includes many doglegs, water hazards and strategically placed fairway bunkers in the range where most bombers would land their tee shots with driver so it tends to be much more of a second shot course than at first glance which means that you will see some players club down to 3 Wood and work a longer iron shot into the green. The greens themselves are small, bentgrass and play very fast and with a good deal of undulation. Precision iron play will be the key to success or players that can scramble well to get up and down. In looking at some recent winners, you can see that mid range iron play really made the difference for Jason Dufner, William McGirt and David Lingmerth, but the bombers have had more success of late with Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay winning in four years out of five before another ball striker in Billy Horschel won it in 2022. Viktor won it in 2023 as a more established top level player and then Scottie took it home last year as a player who can simply win anywhere at anytime. Par 5 Scoring will be important this week. Like Augusta, all four Par 5 holes this week are reachable in two shots for most players, though 20-30 yards were added to each in the recent renovation. Those are going to be the best scoring opportunities that golfers will have this week as the Par 3s play very tough here and seven of the Par 4 holes are longer than 455 yards.
Course Comps
- Augusta
- Liberty National
- Riviera
- Torrey Pines
- Quail Hollow
- Summit
Field
This is an elevated field this week, but with a lot of changes from last season. This is a 72 man field and there is in fact a cut this week. Riviera, API and Memorial all have a cut as elevated events. The Top-50 players and ties will make it to the weekend which sounds like an easy 6/6 week, but that has not been the case over the last couple of seasons as many notable golfers have managed to miss the cut to cripple fantasy owners. I have not seen any noteworthy withdrawals this week. Cash games again will be a challenge. With Scottie being priced up at $13,300, there are some tricky decisions to be made for the lower dollar value names to pair with him. With Rory inexplicably taking off this week (I thought the whole point of the signature events was to have ALL the top pros here), Scottie will carry even more ownership than he would have otherwise. You could get cute and fade Scottie, but in cash games, he is likely to be 60% owned. On the GPP side, it probably does make sense to fade him and take a shot at a balanced lineup with the hopes that an 8-10k golfer can pull out a win, thus isolating most Scottie owners from carrying the winning golfer on their rosters.
If you do build a Scottie roster on the GPP side, you should definitely try to get contrarian with your deeper value plays. I have a feeling a lot of Scottie lineups will start with him and Cauley and then play around in the lower $7k range for the other golfer. Find a couple of lower owned names down there and give yourself some room to differentiate the rest of the way so that your lineup is not mirrored by so many other owners.
Weather
- Dublin Forecast – https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/shawnee_hills_o_shaughnessy
So far, I am not seeing too much on the Thursday weather report that requires our attention. Tee times are not out yet, but with a smaller field, they are generally tighter together so weather waves are not something to focus on. Friday could see rain in the morning with moderate gusty winds that tail off in the afternoon. Once I get a good check on the hourly numbers, I will provide a more thorough update.
Local Connections
- None that I could find. Let me know if I missed anyone
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
- Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
- Birdie or Better Percentage: 15%
- Proximity: 15%
- Driving Accuracy: 10%
- Scrambling: 10%
- Par 5 Scoring: 5%
Cash Game Plays
Top Tier
Scottie Scheffler – He is the defending champ and finished 3rd in the two starts here prior to that. He has two wins in his last three starts overall and just took down the PGA Championship. I already wrote at length about him above so there is not much more to say. He is at the top of my model, the top of my comp course model, the top of the rolling stats tool in SGTG and SGTOT over the last 16 and 24 rounds. He is the best player in the world and will likely be 50-60% owned in cash games this week. Fade him at your own risk.
Xander Schauffele – Without Rory in the field, Xander is the next man up in pricing at $2400 less than Scottie. He plays well at Muirfield, but for whatever reason, he has not been able to breakthrough and truly contend here. However, Xander is always a threat to win in these smaller field events among the elites of the world as he has had tremendous success throughout his career in similar events, be it the major, other signature event, the former WGC tournaments, FedEx Cup playoffs or Olympics. He finished 8th here a year ago and though the results have not been up to the standards he set a year ago, his game over the last couple of months has not been far off. It is just a matter of time before he is back in the winner’s circle.
Patrick Cantlay – I went back and forth on this spot between Tommy and Cantlay. Tommy is playing better overall than Cantlay this year, but in the end, the upside just is not there compared to a proven winner on tour like Cantlay. While inconsistent this year, Cantlay does have six Top-15 finishes and is a two time champion at this tournament. His short game stinks, but his tee to green game is just fine. He is Corey Conners, but with a little better ball striking and a far superior pedigree and yet Conners will likely have more ownership.
Corey Conners – Speaking of Conners, I do not mind using him this week. He has three Top-25 finishes here in his last five starts and seven Top-20 finishes in his last eight starts this year. He has always excelled off the tee and from mid to long approach range shots. His short game usually keeps him outside of the Top-10, but he does have five this year and most of them were on tough courses in loaded fields. He has not been as terrible as normal this year with his putter which is usually the trend when he is at his best on tour. Whether or not that can hold up for the summer is anyone’s guess, but I love what he brings to the table in terms of tackling a long and difficult course.
Middle Tier
Sepp Straka – Straka is having the best season of his career in 2025 though I feel like his three missed cuts this year have all come during weeks when he was a core play for me. Missed cuts aside, he has enjoyed wild success this year with two wins and ten Top-25 finishes. In fact, his worst finish when making the cut this year is 30th. His irons should be the reason he contends again this week. He ranks 2nd on tour in SGAPP, 1st in GIR% and 2nd in PROX play. He is accurate off the tee, is able to avoid trouble on approach and is one of the better putters on tour this year. He finished 16th here two years ago and 5th last season so he has plenty to build on coming into the week.
Si Woo Kim – Si Woooooo is likely to be one of the more popular value plays of the week. He has made the cut here in 8/9 starts with only a 2017 WD showing up as a blemish on his record at Jack’s tournament. His finishes have been strong as well with his last five starts resulting in Top-20 finishes. He enters the week in good form having made the cut in five of his last six starts with four Top-25 finishes, including an 8th place finish two weeks ago at the PGA Championship.
Keegan Bradley – Keegan is my “safe” play in the low $8k range this week. I know that Fitz is getting a lot of steam, but I am not sure I can totally trust that he has turned his game around when Keegan is right here and has played well consistently all season. Bradley is 11/12 making the cut this year with seven Top-25 finish including an 8th place finish two weeks ago at the PGA Championship. This has not been his strongest course in recent years, but I think he is much less of a liability to miss the cut than some of the other flashy plays in this range. I trust his tee to green play as the only thing holding him back at all this year is that pesky putter.
Lower Tier
Denny McCarthy – While we are on the subject of putters, why don’t we go 180 degrees in the other direction and use a little Denny McPutts this week? Are you tired of watching Keegan/Conners/Cantlay blow four footers? That will not happen all that often with Denny. Of course, the tradeoff with Denny is that nearly all of those short putts are for par, but when you putt as well as Denny, it can paper over a lot of other mistakes along the way to the green. He has been perfect this season going 13/13 making the cut with seven Top-25s and even a couple of Top-10s for good measure. He also had Top-5 finishes here in 2022 and 2023. Like Keegan and Kim, he also tied for 8th place at the PGA Championship two weeks ago.
Andrew Novak – This might be a little ambitious for cash games, but Novak’s recent form is impressive. He finished 17th or better in five of his last six starts which includes a win at the team event a 3rd place finish at Valero and a 2nd place finish at the RBC Heritage. Outside of a miserable 2nd round at the PGA Championship, he has been playing really well the last couple of months. Among the low $7k range, he stands out in the rolling stat numbers, ranking 9th in SGTG and 12th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds.
Bud Cauley – Cauley seems way too cheap this week. He has made 10/11 cuts this season with four Top-10 finishes including a third place finish at Colonial last weekend. Over the last 24 rounds he ranks 15th in SGTG and 5th in SGTOT, not bad for a player in the $6k range of a signature event. He does have some experience here over the years, going 4/5 making the cut from 2016-2020 with two Top-25s, one of which resulted in a 9th place finish in 2019. Cauley is one of the best stories in golf this year and he still has all summer to improve upon his excellent start.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Scottie Scheffler | 13300 | | Xander Schauffele | 10900 | | Patrick Cantlay | 9500 | | Corey Conners | 9100 | | Sepp Straka | 8800 | | Si Woo Kim | 8300 | | Keegan Bradley | 8000 | | Denny McCarthy | 7900 | | Andrew Novak | 7100 | | Bud Cauley | 6800 |
Secondary
| Tony Finau | 8200 | | Sungjae Im | 8100 | | Sam Burns | 7900 | | JT Poston | 7600 | | J.J. Spaun | 7500 | | Alexander Noren | 7400 | | Adam Scott | 7200 | | Rickie Fowler | 7000 | | Christiaan Bezuidenhout | 6900 | | Matthias Schmid | 6400 |
Tertiary
| Ben Griffin | 7800 | | Harris English | 7800 | | Robert Macintyre | 7700 | | Taylor Pendrith | 7300 | | Max Greyserman | 6700 | | Sam Stevens | 6600 |
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The Daily Spin – Bermuda Butterfield Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – Bermuda Butterfield Championship 2024
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DP World Tour Preview – Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship
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The Daily Spin – World Wide Technology Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – WWT Championship
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The Daily Spin – ZOZO Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – ZOZO Championship
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The Daily Spin – Shriners Children’s Open
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The Daily Spin – Sanderson Farms Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – Sanderson Farms Championship
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The Daily Spin – Procore Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – Procor Championship
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The Daily Spin – Tour Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – Tour Championship
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The Daily Spin – BMW Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – BMW Championship
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The Daily Spin – FedEx St Jude Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – FedEx St Jude Championship
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The Daily Spin – Wyndham Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – Wyndham Championship
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The Daily Spin – Olympics
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FGI Betting Picks – Olympics
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The Daily Spin – 3M Open
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FGI Betting Picks – 3M Open
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The Daily Spin – The Open Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – The Open Championship
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The Daily Spin – Genesis Scottish Open
RECAP
In my analysis, I really liked three golfers near the top last week: Sungjae, Aaron Rai and Davis Thompson. I wrote of Thompson that he was likely to win this year and that it would probably happen at one of these lesser events at an easy course with a diminished field. Naturally, I ended up stacking Sungjae and Aaron Rai. While both of them finished well (12th and 7th respectively), it was Thompson who dominated the tournament in a runaway win that was never in doubt on Sunday as he cleared the field by four strokes enroute to his first win on tour, rounding out what has been a tremendous run over the last few months. His game continues to blossom as he took a couple of seasons to hit his stride but is now living up to the hype from when he came onto the tour in 2022 as a bright, young prospect from the University of Georgia. I was able to capitalize on Thompson as a 25-1 outright bet last week so I did manage to get some exposure to all three of my top rated golfers for the tournament.
I could have salvaged my DFS week without Davis had Daniel Berger not knifed me in the back on Friday afternoon. With four holes left on Friday, Berger was sitting pretty at -6 and looked like a lock to make the cut (-5) when he made back to back bogeys to fall to -4. I looked to see which holes he had left, hoping that it was 17 and 18 to at least give him an easier shot at a birdie on the Par 5, 17th hole, but it was 8 and 9 which left me needing some luck. Berger then proceeded to make the sweat especially painful by making a birdie on the 8th hole to climb back to -5 and needed just a par on 9 to get to the weekend and save my team. Shot one went 310 yards to the fairway and I felt a little better, but that did not last long as he managed to come up short and into the bunker on his approach shot and then left himself a 30 foot par putt to make the cut which he just barely missed to seal my fate. Excruciating. I dodged him in my main lineup the previous week and thought the price was right to jump back in at a course where he should play well if he is on his game. Yikes. I guess I should have just bitten the bullet and gone with old man reliable ZJ at his favorite event of the year.
I did get a nice performance out of Andrew Novak who finished in 7th place for the week and outscored Im and Rai by about 10 DK points. I was a little surprised that he was not more heavily owned in cash games as he was one of my favorite lower tier plays for the week given his form entering the tournament. Outside of some sketchy around the green play, he was locked in all week, shot all rounds below 70 and had two bogey free rounds. What makes his performance even more noteworthy was that he started off on Thursday with a bogey on the Par 5, tenth hole and followed it up with a triple bogey on eleven to go to +4 two holes into the tournament! Most golfers would have been demoralized, especially knowing that the cut line would be among the lowest of the season. However, he battled back to shoot 67 and then had only two more bogeys the rest of the weekend.
I wrote a little bit last week about how this is a great time of year to take some chances on the younger prospects that get a chance to shine during the doldrums of the season in lesser tier events. Neal Shipley and Luke Clanton were names that stood out to me after seeing both guys play well at the US Open and then follow it up with strong performances in Detroit two weeks later. I could not fit Clanton onto my team after stacking Rai and Im, but Shipley was still affordable at $7500 and when he started off -4 through the first five holes of the tournament it looked like he was on his way to another impressive performance. Unfortunately, Shipley was the anti-Novak last week. After starting off on fire early, he faded for the next 31 holes, shooting +6 the rest of the way to finish +2 for the tournament and missed the cut. Clanton, on the other hand, continued to play amazing golf and finished tied for 2nd for the week. Sadly, he is still an amateur so he has now likely missed out on close to a million dollars in prize money, but he has a bright future ahead of him.
Finally, my other value pick was Joel Dahman. He provided a very Joel Dahman performance for me with a 46th place finish. He had a couple of Top-25 finishes in recent events and has been on a nice cut making run the last few months, but is going to need more Top-25 finishes the rest of the way in order to crack the Top-100 and make the playoffs. He is going to have to get his short game under control again if he wants to make any serious runs this year. Go back and look at his putts in the second round of the JDC. His iron game was absolutely on point all day, but he could not take advantage at all as he missed one good look at birdie after another. His tee to green efforts should have had him in line to shoot at 64, but he blew too many makeable putts and could only muster a 69. I like that he is back to making cuts and with his finishes as middling as they have been, his salary is not likely to jump, but we certainly will need more if we want to consider him as a future GPP option.
Course
- Renaissance Club
- Par 70 (Three Par 5 and Five Par 3 holes)
- 7,237 yards
- Red Fescue Greens
While I have not written up this course that often, it is far from the first time that we have dealt with a links style course so take what you know into consideration. The course is on the coast in Scotland which means that the winds and weather events will largely determine how the course will play for the weekend. While courses featured in The Open Championship might seem the most natural comparison for this week, Renaissance is a relatively new course, designed back in 2008. The fairways are generally pretty open off the tee, but defended with plenty of deep bunkers and thick rough. Given what we have seen over the years, this is usually an event where the setup is not too difficult the week prior to The Open. As is often the case for a links style course, the greens are large and the undulation and unevenness will make precision iron play the key to success. The grass is red fescue which we never see over in the U.S., but it does not play especially fast and as the recent winning scores would indicate, does not pose a particularly difficult challenge.
If you want an especially strong breakdown of the course this week, Nikolai did a wonderful job. He’s been a real stalwart for us covering the DP World Tour the last two seasons. He’s been a fantastic addition to the FGI team and those who are Pro Pack subscribers can attest to the detail and work that he puts into his columns every week. I bring it up this week specifically as this is really when his work is a huge asset for us going into these next two weeks. He knows the players on this tour better than anyone else so if you have not been following along up until now, he is the man when it comes to breaking down those names in the $6k and $7k range that are less familiar to DFS owners that are focused solely on the PGA Tour.
Course Comps
- Courses that have hosted The Open Championship
- Courses that have traditionally hosted the Irish Open
- Alfred Dunhill Links courses
Field
Strong field this week even though this is not considered a signature event. Most of the better players in the world took the last two weeks off after the Travelers to rest up after three straight weeks of big tournaments, but now want to cross the Atlantic early enough to get acclimated and tuned in to links style courses, using Scotland as a nice warmup to get ready for the final major of the season next week. Rory returns to the field after a few dark weeks where he was able to stew on his ignominious defeat at the US Open. Six of the Top-10 golfers in the world are in the field along with fifteen of the Top-25 and thirty-three of the Top-50. There are 156 golfers in the field for the week and a cut after the second round so this should end up being one of the better events of the season as I prefer this size of field and format much more than the newly adopted structure for the signature events this season.
One thing to note this week is that there are a lot of names that are not going to be as familiar to you if you do not follow the DP World Tour. This is a co-sponsored tournament between the PGA and DP World Tour so there are a lot of stars from the European side that are priced in the value range that you really should be considering for your player pool this week. Be sure to check out the season long standings for the DP World Tour as there are likely a few names that even savvy DFS veterans might overlook. It provides a great starting point in your mass entry, GPP contests to gain a little diversification and lock in on some lower owned golfers with high potential upside.
Weather
- Forecast – Wind, waves, weather & tide Superforecast Dirleton – Windfinder
This time of year the weather can be quite difficult to navigate, but the forecast does not look that challenging considering what we have endured in previous editions. There could be some light rain going through Thursday morning, but nothing too torrential. Winds will be highest in the early morning at 15mph with gusts up to 20 mph, but then slowly dropping to 14mph with gusts to 17mph around lunch. The rest of the day should see a steady decline in winds until the end of the day to being near calm by 6pm. Temperatures will be brisk throughout the day and for the entire weekend, peaking in the low to mid 50s in the first two rounds and potentially reaching 60 for a high over the weekend. We will see a little sun on Friday and maybe peaking through the clouds again on Sunday, but clouds will be prevalent with grey skies being the order of the day. The winds flip on Friday and should be calmest in the morning. At 7am, winds are expected to be 8-10 mph and dropping down to 3-7mph by 11am and picking up to 8-14mph the rest of the day. My initial prediction is that the PM/AM golfers will have a scoring edge based upon my first look at the winds. Obviously, the course is right on the coast so wind forecasts can shift rapidly. If you can stay up late enough on Wednesday night to wait for lineup lock, getting a final weather check could give you a nice edge if winds pick up dramatically for one wave or the other.
Local Connections
- Ewen Ferguson
- Callum Hill
- Connor Syme
- Grant Forrest
- Robert Macintyre
- Scott Jamieson
- Richie Ramsay
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green – 30%
- Strokes Gained Putting – 20%
- Birdie or Better Percentage – 20%
- Scrambling – 10%
- Proximity – 10%
- Par 5 Scoring – 10%
Cash Game Plays
Top Tier
Rory McIlroy – It will be interesting to hear what Rory has to say this week after disappearing into the ether following his epic meltdown at Pinehurst three weeks ago. The pressure to win a major built up to a boiling point, but it seemed like it was his moment at the US Open before two careless missed putts near the end daggered his hopes for breaking a ten year drought. Now he needs to rebound in the worst way in order to get his mind right for The Open Championship next week where his play is always heavily scrutinized and expectations are higher than ever. He won here a year ago and has shown a propensity for bouncing back in these types of events. Afterall, he has won a lot of tournaments over the last decade, just no majors. Despite that recent choke, Rory is playing fantastic golf this year and had back to back wins not too long ago. Over the last 24 rounds he ranks 1st in SGTG and SGTOT. The only question is where his head will be at after such a crushing defeat, but my guess is that he will be at his best and ready to go.
Xander Schauffele – Xander just keep plugging along this year. After a win at the PGA Championship, he posted back to back Top-10 finishes at a 13th place finish so there was not much of a letdown after his career defining moment. He is 16/16 making the cut this season and eleven of those have ended up a Top-10 finish. He ranks second on tour this season in SGTOT and every part of his game is squared away which is what we have come to expect from him as one of the most well rounded players on tour. He won this tournament two years ago and generally elevates his play in stronger fields. If you are the least bit worried about a letdown from Rory, Xander is a great pick due his consistency throughout this season.
Tommy Fleetwood – If Tommy is ever going to win on the PGA Tour, it might as well come overseas in a DP World Tour co-sponsored event. He’s been a very good links course player during his career with a slew of recent Top-10s at The Open and three Top-10s in four starts at this course in Scotland. I get a little nervous anytime I pay up for Tommy (see RBC Heritage – 49th place), but he is playing very well this year, has missed just one cut and has only finished worse than 26th one time in his last nine starts (see RBC Heritage – 49th place…did I mention that I rostered him that week? I think the course fit justifies the price bump this week, though I would be hesitant to roster him at the top over Rory or Xander unless you are willing to get really aggressive with the lower end of your team.
Tom Kim – Kim has back to back Top-10 finishes at this event the last two years and though he did miss the cut in Detroit, it feels forgivable after an excruciating playoff loss the prior week at the Travelers where he went toe to toe with Scottie Scheffler. It ended a run of nine straight weeks on tour so he was due for a little rest though he did manage to play his way out of a slump along the way. His iron play is looking sharp again and that is what keyed his early success on tour back in 2022.
Min Woo Lee – Lee won here three years ago which gives you plenty of winners to pick from in the top tier this week. He’s missed just one cut this year and has six straight Top-26 finishes including a 2nd place finish in Detroit two weeks ago. He is really good in all areas this season except for his approach game which has languished. Still, he enters the week ranked 18th in SGTG and 7th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds. His tee shot placement and adept short game should be enough to keep him in contention at this links style course where he is more than comfortable.
Middle Tier
Brian Harman – Early in Harman’s career, he did not play that well in Open Championships, but that changed with a 19th place finish in 2021, a 6th place finish in 2022 and then a dominating win last year. He also finished 12th in Scotland last year the week prior to his win so he had a lot of momentum that was building for him. A win like that would have been a relief for many players, but Harman did not downshift at all and continued to play at a high level this season. He’s missed just two cuts this year in seventeen starts, has nine Top-25 finishes and finished runner-up at The Players Championship in March. He is never one to gain a lot of ground off the tee, but he is accurate, plays well from short to mid range with his irons and is known for having an above average short game. That is a good mix of skills to be successful for links style golf courses.
Aaron Rai – Rai won this event four years ago and if you read a little lower you will get to Bernd Wiesberger who won here five years ago. I am not sure I have ever written up the last five winners of any particular event, but all of them stood out this week as very strong plays in most metrics I considered. Rai is the strongest value play for me this week. He is in the middle of an incredible run and is putting together his best season on the PGA Tour. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks 6th in SGTG and 6th in SGTOT among this field. He’s made eight straight cuts, six of which resulted in Top-25 finishes and has back to back Top-10s.
Davis Thompson – I feel like DK is just daring us to roster Thompson this week after winning at Deere Run. He’s played so well, but we have seen this play out poorly in the past where a golfer gets a breakthrough first win on tour and then proceeds to fall off of a cliff over the next couple of months. Something tells me it will be different for Davis as he was building towards that win over the last few months and doing it with all around great play. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks 4th in SGTG and 4th in SGTOT and there is no single area of his game that is carrying him right now. It is a quick turn for him this week, but it was also a very low pressure win at the JDC as the tournament was never in doubt near the end so he may not be quite as depleted as he otherwise might have been in a more stressful contest.
Lower Tier
Thomas Detry – As soon as I saw this price for Detry I knew he would make my lineup. He is 5/5 making the cut at this event and finished in the Top-10 in two of the last three years. Outside of two disastrous rounds in back to back events early in the year, Detry has been a decent DFS option. He had ten Top-25 finishes last season and is on pace to equal or exceed that this year with seven so far. The rolling stats are not pretty, but his putter is looking sharp, ranked 4th in SGP over the last 24 rounds.
Tom McKibbin – Tom McKibbin is a name you are going to be very familiar with over the next few years. He is only 21 years-old and already holds a win on the DP World Tour. He turned professional at age 18 and has been steadily moving up the ranks since then. He’s missed only one cut in 2024, has eleven Top-25 finishes in thirteen starts and six Top-10s. He played here a year ago and finished 35th. He ranks 8th in the DP World Tour Race to Dubai standings this season and also finished 41st at the US Open recently.
Ewen Ferguson – Ferguson is coming in this week off of a win at the BMW International, but that is not going to stop me from including him here as he has played well all year and as a Scotsman, this should be an event he is motivated for each year, especially with all of the extra attention it receives now. He has made the cut in all three starts here and finished a career best 12th place last year. He’s missed only one cut all season and ranks 16th in the DP World Tour Race to Dubai standings.
Bernd Wiesberger – We finish off our top cash game plays this week with an old and familiar name. Bernd never really panned out on the PGA Tour, but has enjoyed a very successful run on the European Tour over the years, including a win at this course in this event five years ago where he has made the cut in all three career starts. In twelve starts this year, he’s missed just one cut and has nine Top-25 finishes. While he never did much with his opportunities in major tournaments during his career (two Top-20s in 30 career majors), he does have eight wins on the European Tour throughout his career so these are the types of events where you want to target Bernd, especially at such a low salary.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Rory McIlroy | 11900 | | Xander Schauffele | 11700 | | Tommy Fleetwood | 9900 | | Tom Kim | 9500 | | Min Woo Lee | 9200 | | Brian Harman | 8600 | | Aaron Rai | 8300 | | Davis Thompson | 7900 | | Robert Macintyre | 7800 | | Thomas Detry | 7200 | | Tom McKibbin | 7000 |
Secondary
| Wyndham Clark | 8100 | | Christiaan Bezuidenhout | 7500 | | Tom Hoge | 7100 | | Ryan Fox | 7100 | | Erik van Rooyen | 7000 | | Ewen Ferguson | 6700 | | Ben Griffin | 6600 | | Bernd Wiesberger | 6600 | | Jordan L Smith | 6600 |
Tertiary
| Rasmus Hojgaard | 6800 | | Nicolai Hojgaard | 6800 | | Matt Wallace | 6700 | | Sebastian Soderberg | 6400 | | Guido Migliozzi | 6000 | | Calum Hill | 5900 | | Adrian Otaegui | 5800 | | Matteo Manassero | 5700 | | Alexander Bjork | 5600 | | Sean Crocker | 5500 |
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FGI Betting Picks – Genesis Scottish Open
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The Daily Spin – John Deere Classic
RECAP
Great week for my picks overall with my top two betting picks dueling to the finish before both folding and allowing another core play (but not outright bet…ugh) to slither into a big win. Cam Davis is someone that I have largely avoided this season, but in talking to Jeff last week prior to the podcast, I took a second look and realized that this is a pattern for him. He does not play his best golf at the tougher courses, but has crushed the events later in the season and into the fall to elevate him each season. Sure enough, the tour gets to Detroit, a very driver friendly type of course with plenty of scoring opportunities, and he is at the top of his game. He helped to propel my main lineup to a nice finish, easily cashing despite only getting four of six through the cut. As I wrote of Davis, Even with as lousy as he has played at times, he has still missed just four cuts this season and three were at challenging courses so this feels like a decent floor play for cash games with some upside potential if he can channel his strengths to the course again.
Two of my other golfers that made the cut for my team played really well. Davis Thompson and Akshay Bhatia both continue to ascend towards becoming star players on tour, though it was heartbreaking to see Akshay blow it on the final hole after a terrible birdie putt that he left about 4-5 feet short of the cup and then proceeded to bogey the last hole, allowing Cam Davis to win without having to go to a playoff. Bhatia had escaped the 16th hole after a similarly poor birdie putt that forced him to make a five foot par putt. Thompson had his chances as well on Sunday. His tee to green game was excellent all weekend, but he needed just a little more on the greens on Sunday to get him over the top. Still, everything is moving in the right direction for Thompson right now and if he continues to play in these lesser field events, he is going to get that first win before the end of the year.
Taylor Pendrith was the other golfer on my team that made the cut, but then drifted into the twilight zone over the weekend. As one golfer after another posted a low score on Saturday, Pendrith shot a 74 and then a 72 on Sunday, falling to the bottom of the leaderboard and picking up very few extra fantasy points for my team. He was terrible from tee to green on Saturday and then awful with his putter on Sunday so there was no single area where he struggled. It was uncharacteristic for Pendrith after a solid run of quality finishes over the last few months.
There were a couple of landmines that hurt me that kept my team from winning any of my leagues or bigger contests last week in the value range. Everything lined up for Matt Wallace in my research last week. His salary was low relative to his odds, his form was reasonable and he had played well in Detroit in recent years with a couple of Top-15 finishes. He even started off well on Thursday in shooting a 69. On Friday, he was two under through the first seven holes and cruising towards making the cut and maybe even working his way into contention, but a double bogey on the 8th hole sent him into a tailspin and he finished the round with a 75 and was not even close to making the cut. In an event where you need to keep making birdies, one terrible hole might be all it takes to throw away your entire tournament and I think that is what happened with Wallace as he was not able to regain his focus.
Svensson was a different story than Wallace. He also entered the week playing decent, cut making golf. He has been nowhere near winning anything this year, but he had not missed a cut since the Florida swing and had been okay in Detroit. He was poor in all areas outside of off the tee. There was never a moment where it even looked like he might make a run to get through to the weekend so I never held out much hope. He shot a 72 in the first round and I hoped that maybe he could get off to a fast start on Friday, but he was quickly two over par and at that point, I unstarred him in the app and closed it out for the day. I was a little nervous about the weekend with a 4/6 team as I have been on the wrong side of the cash line in that situation far too often this season, but getting a win and two second place finishes made it a low stress weekend.
Course
- TPC Deere Run
- 7258 yards
- Par 71
- Bentgrass Greens
TPC Deere Run is probably the easiest course on tour all season. The Par 71 course plays out at around 7,250 yards on bentgrass greens. The fairways are not normally too challenging to hit, but wild players can get into trouble as there are trees around them so the bombers can get into trouble, but it’s not easy to do. The winning score will probably be lower than -20 so making birdies is going to be very important this week. There are several short Par 4 holes below 400 yards and only a handful above 450 so the wedge and mid range iron specialists are going to be the ones to focus on this week. The three Par 5 holes are all on the easier side and not so long as to put them out of scoring range for most players. Bombers will have no extra advantage here and a quick scan of leaderboards tends to reveal that players who are accurate off the tee, have a solid approach game and can putt well enough to keep up with all of the scoring of others are the players who will have success. Hitting greens in regulation has been a huge factor for players that have been able to have success here throughout their careers. The common thread among most of those names is that during their years of great play at TPC Deere Run, those players tended to be among the best in GIR percentage. If you are looking to throw a few dart this week among those players who are teeing it up here for the first time, be sure to isolate GIR% in the model and take a look at the names that pop near the top.
Course Comps
- TPC Summerlin
- TPC Twin Cities
- Detroit
- Keene Trace
- Summit Golf Club
- TPC Craig Ranch
Field
This is always going to be one of the weaker fields of the year and it got a little weaker this morning after Patrick Cantlay and Cam Davis withdrew from the field. That leaves Jordan Spieth at the top who seems wildly mispriced considering his poor recent form in recent months and uncharacteristically poor short game play. Beyond that, it is not a terrible field, all things considered. There are a handful of really promising young stars in the field that I think are going to do big things on tour in the seasons ahead, but before they are well known, we get to see them tee it up in some of these smaller events. Names like Luke Clanton and Neil Shipley should be fun to watch after impressive performances in limited play this year. Sepp Straka, the defending champ, is the only golfer in the Top-25 OWGR in the field this week. There are only seven golfers in the Top-50 and 32 in the Top-100 in the field so there are going to be some opportunities to bet on some longshots this week that have a much better chance than normal of coming away with a win. Most of the better golfers on tour are taking this week to rest before heading overseas next week to prepare for The Open Championship in a couple of weeks. One other note, with the withdrawal of Cantlay, Spieth is the top priced golfer at $10,500 and the lowest golfers are at $6k which makes for a much flatter structure this week. You will have a lot of flexibility with your player pool so make sure that in designing your core, you are overweight the field on your favorites up top as I expect many of those golfers to be owned at 20% or above even in a full field tournament.
Weather
- Wind & weather Superforecast Colona – Windfinder
Thursday looks very quiet in the forecast with winds at 7-9 mph for the entire round. Right now, I do not see any rain expected in the first round. On Friday, I have yet to see the hourly numbers, but the winds look to be gustier than Thursday, hitting over 20 mph in the early morning and then again in the afternoon. Temperatures look moderate all weekend with highs in the low to mid 70s in the opening two rounds. I will have more to offer on a potential wave advantage as I get a better look at the data on Wednesday.
Local Connections
- Zach Johnson
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Putting: 30%
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 20%
- Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
- Proximity: 10%
- Scrambling: 10%
- Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 5%
- Driving Accuracy: 5%
Cash Game Plays
Top Tier
Sungjae Im – Sungjae has endured an uneven season in 2024. However, if you cut out the tougher courses on his schedule it has not been so bad and for what it is worth, he has definitely broken out of his slump over the last couple of months with five Top-12 finishes in his last seven starts. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks 6th in SGTG and 3rd in SGTOT. He has really turned around his short game in recent starts as his putter was terrible over the first few months of the year, but is now back to being a strength again. As far as comp course play, he ranks only behind Jordan Spieth, gaining over 1.7 strokes per round in fourteen career starts. He has not done much at Deere Run during his career, but did make the cut in two starts.
Aaron Rai – The two gloved wonder had plenty of chances to win the tournament last weekend, but settled for a second place finish after missing out on several opportunities late in the round on Sunday afternoon. Still, he is playing fantastic golf and leads the field in SGTG and SGTOT over the last 24 rounds. He has been dominant in all areas outside of his putter and he has played particularly well on the easier courses over the last couple of months. He’s made seven straight cuts with five of those finishes resulting in a Top-25 finish. He has not played here before, but in nine career starts on comp courses, he’s gained over 1.4 strokes per round.
Davis Thompson – I feel like Davis is going to get a win sometime before the end of the year and it seems likely that it will come at one of these easier courses where the field is soft and Davis is one of the few standout golfers in the field. He charts out about as well as Aaron Rai, dominating in all categories outside of his putter, though even on the greens, he is not a total disaster. He ranks 2nd in SGTG and 2nd in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds. He finished 22nd here last year in his first start at Deere Run and he’s gained just under .9 strokes per round in ten starts on comp courses.
Middle Tier
Luke Clanton – I joked last week when Clanton and Berger were both priced at $7k that Berger seemed like a bargain in comparison to the kid we had only seen once at the US Open where he played well in coming up just short for best amateur, losing out to Neal Shipley who he happened to be paired with in the final round. It turns out, this 20 year-old kid from Florida State might be pretty good. He finished 10th last week in Detroit and was in contention going into the final round before slipping back slightly in shooting a 72. If he can handle Pinehurst and then play well at Detroit, there is not reason to believe that Deere Run will slow him down. His ball striking is solid and he is putting it well. Shipley is probably a better value at $7500, but I do not mind taking a chance on a younger player in a weaker field like this.
Mark Hubbard – Good Guy Mark Hubbard has been a far different player than last season. He played prolifically last season with 39 starts and while he ended up with twelve Top-25 finishes and six Top-10s, he also missed the cut seventeen times making him one of the more difficult golfers to handicap. When you got him right, he had the potential to pay off big, but he also ruined a lot of good lineups with his erratic performances. This season, Hubbs is 18/18 making the cut so for cash games, he is usually the guy you can count on in the $7k range to help fill out your roster. He has only four Top-25 finishes and two Top-10s (one of which was the team event) so the fantasy points are not great on the GPP side, but when sorting through fields like this for cash games, getting to the weekend is usually all owners are looking for him to do. As a bonus, he has back to back Top-15 finishes at Deere Run the last two years.
Seamus Power – Famous Seamus has been a mixed bag in recent months. He has five Top-27 finishes over his last nine starts, but has also missed the cut the other four starts in that timeframe. Deere Run has been one of his favorite stops on tour during his career. He’s made the cut in all five starts with four Top-25 finishes, the most recent two turning into Top-10s. He’s gained .928 strokes per round in 21 career starts on comp courses. Shorter courses with generous scoring opportunities is generally where he plays his best golf in looking back at where he has enjoyed the most success throughout his career.
Lower Tier
Neal Shipley – We have seen Shipley three times this season and I have been impressed with him each time out. He was the top amateur at Augusta and then the top amateur at Pinehurst before making his professional debut last week in Detroit where he finished 20th. Clanton finished 10th and is now $1100 more than Shipley. That seems like too big of a difference when looking at these two players. Outside of one really poor putting round last week in Detroit, his all around game looks like it will translate well for the PGA Tour.
Andrew Novak – Novak missed the cut in his first three starts this year, but since then is 11/13 and has seven Top-25 finishes. He ranks 23rd in SGTG and 19th in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds among this field and has a balanced game where no one area drives his entire performance. He is 2/2 making the cut here finishing 30th two years ago and 42nd last year.
Joel Dahman – The Full Swing hero seems to be hitting his stride after a long year of struggles where he failed to maintain any level of consistent play, leading to some serious mental struggles that were famously documented on the Netflix series this past season. It has not been an easy season, but he has now made the cut in seven straight starts and finally had a couple of nice finishes in recent starts with a 10th place finish in Canada and 25th last weekend in Detroit. He has missed the cut more often than not at Deere Run, but did finish 2nd here back in 2018. With his tee to green game returning to form and his putter looking better than what we are used to seeing from him, this could be the start of a nice run for the bucket hat as he’s had his best moments on these easier types of courses.
Jacob Bridgeman – Here is a new name for the column this week, but that is nothing new when it comes to finding talent in these weaker fields. Like most rookies, he got off to a slow start through four tournaments, but has since played well, though he has not been in contention so he remains a little off the radar of most analysts. He is a little wild off the tee, but that could be mitigated by the wide fairways this week. The rest of his game is in good form as he ranks 24th in SGAPP and 7th in SG:Short over the last 24 rounds. His best finishes this season have all been on easier courses and this is the time of year where golfers like Bridgeman make a name for themself and lock up their tour card as Bridgeman has some work to do in the months ahead.
Patton Kizzire – Since ending a streak of six missed cuts at the end of March, Kizzire has turned things around by making the cut in five of his last six starts with all five made cuts resulting in finishes of 28th or better. His iron play has been dynamite during these recent starts as he ranks 1st among this field in SGAPP. He’s also played very well at Deere Run during his career making the cut in four of five starts with three Top-25 finishes.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Sungjae Im | 10300 | | Aaron Rai | 10000 | | Maverick McNealy | 9800 | | Davis Thompson | 9600 | | Denny McCarthy | 9500 | | JT Poston | 9100 | | Luke Clanton | 8600 | | Seamus Power | 8300 | | Neal Shipley | 7500 | | Andrew Novak | 7500 |
Secondary
| Lucas Glover | 8700 | | Mark Hubbard | 8400 | | Adam Svensson | 8200 | | Ben Griffin | 7900 | | Daniel Berger | 7400 | | Joel Dahmen | 7300 | | Justin Lower | 7200 | | Jhonattan Vegas | 7200 | | Patton Kizzire | 6900 | | David Skinns | 6900 | | Troy Merritt | 6800 |
Tertiary
| Michael Kim | 7400 | | Jacob Bridgeman | 7300 | | Greyson Sigg | 7200 | | Benjamin Silverman | 7100 | | Jake Knapp | 7100 | | Zach Johnson | 7000 | | Alex Smalley | 6900 | | Max Greyserman | 6900 | | Patrick Fishburn | 6700 | | Ben Kohles | 6600 |
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FGI Betting Picks – John Deere Classic
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https://fantasygolfinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2024-07-02-03-46-36-usg4m6cw6rr-final-mix.mp3The post John Deere Classic Podcast Preview first appeared on Fantasy Golf Insider.
The Daily Spin – Rocket Mortgage Classic
RECAP
Scottie did it again last week, winning for the sixth time this year and before the end of June, an incredibly rare feat that not even Tiger Woods equaled in his career. It was an expected week for him to bounce back so I do not think too many people were surprised, but he really is at another level from the rest of the field this year. Once he started to putt even close to average it was over for everyone else on tour. Now it is just a matter of whether or not he can start to do it year after year or if this is just another brilliant season followed by a flameout as we have seen others do over the last decade in their pursuit to be the next Tiger Woods.
For me, I did not get too fancy with my lineup. It was a very rare week where I went for the balanced roster. I loved Scottie, but did not want to have to use five scrubs to balance out the salary cap issues. I instead started my team with Hideki, but only went down to Cbez. With this strategy in place, I did end up with Tom Kim on my team which scored me a huge number of points. The rest of my team was not bad, but could have been even better had they shown up and not dumped off a lot of points on Friday.
Russell Henley was the biggest letdown of the week for me. He’s been excellent all season and was on a course where his game fits well and he has enjoyed a fair amount of success. Unfortunately, he played miserably on Friday and could never crawl back to being close the rest of the weekend. He could not even get the bogey free round on Saturday after blowing it on the final hole of the day. It was a weird week for Henley who is usually so sharp on the short, Par 70 tracks.
Hideki was okay for the week even though he only finished 23rd. He managed an eagle, two birdie streaks and all four rounds under 70. He just never really made his big charge as he has done for most of the season so that was slightly disappointing.
Brian Harman played well for me. That was no surprise as nobody is more prolific in Top-10 finishes at TPC River Highlands than Harman. He was not really in the mix during the first two rounds, but came to life on the back nine on Saturday which carried over into him shooting a 62 on Sunday and taking him to 105 DK points.
CBez and Corey Conners rounded out my team and each hurt me with a 70 on Friday which killed their five point bonus opportunity for the tournament. CBez did have two bogey free rounds and Conners had an eagle so it was not a bad effort from either guy, but each left some points behind which you hate to see in weeks where everyone seems to get the bonus points.
Course
- Detroit Golf Club
- Par 72
- 7,370 yards
- Bentgrass/Poa
Detroit Golf Club is a Par 72 and will play at around 7,350 yards this week. It is a Donald Ross design. There are four Par 5 holes this week and outside of one behemoth which is over 630 yards, the others should be reachable in two shots for most of the field and I expect a lot of scoring this week on these holes which means a shift towards focusing more on players Off the Tee game this week as opposed to approach play. The fairways are wide and not difficult to hit. The rough has not proven to be much of a problem for players over the last two years as the bomb and gouge approach has largely worked to perfection in helping players post some silly low score. Expect a lot of driver off the tee this week with short irons and wedges on the approach. If for some reason, it is more of a struggle to work from, you could see more 3 wood like the last couple of weeks. The greens are smaller and are mostly poa with a small amount of bentgrass with a good amount of undulation, but they are not going to play overly difficult. With the additional Par 5 scoring opportunities, this will be more of a birdie-fest with scores approaching the -20 range. When looking for players this week, be sure to bump up SGOTT, Par 5 Scoring and BoB%.
Course Comps
- Sedgefield
- TPC Twin Cities
- Summerlin
- Keane Trace
- Stadium Course
- Silverado
- Deere Run
Field
The field is soft this week which is no surprise given that the US Open was two weeks ago and another elevated event took place. While it is weak, it is not as bad as it could be as there are a handful of golfers from the top of the rankings that made the trip. Two of the Top-25 golfers in the world, ten of the Top-50 and 42 of the Top-100 golfers made the trip to Detroit this week. With the tour headed overseas in two weeks, it marks a good time to rest up before making the long trip to prepare for The Open Championship. These are the types of events that are up for grabs compared to most of the recent stops on tour. The midsummer, filler events are often a good chance for a younger player to breakthrough to get their first tour win. Then again, Rickie Fowler won this event a year ago after so if some of the studs show up ready to play, they should be unstoppable on such an easy course as we have had more stars (Bryson, Finau, Fowler) than scrubs (Nate Lashley) win with Cam Davis being somewhere in the middle depending on how hot or cold he is running.
Weather
- Forecast – https://www.windfinder.com/weatherforecast/crescent-sail-yacht-club_grosse-pointe-f
The weather looks beautiful this week. The winds are expected to be light on Thursday, with maybe some gusts in the very first hour or so, but that is about it. The winds are not expected to be much more than around 8-10 mph the rest of the day. Friday the winds are forecast to be a little gustier, but only around 10-15 mph. There is no precipitation in the forecast for either Thursday or Friday with sun all the way through Thursday before the clouds come Friday afternoon. Temperatures should be in the mid 70s so the players will be comfortable all weekend. I likely will not build many rosters weighted towards one wave or the other. If you build 100+ teams, it is always smart to have a few fully weighted wave teams just in case the forecast is completely off, but it does not need to be an emphasis item this week.
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
- Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
- Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
- Scrambling: 10%
- Proximity: 10%
- Par 5 Scoring: 5%
- Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 5%
Cash Game Picks
Top Tier
Tom Kim – Kim played great for me last week with a 2nd place finish, losing in a dramatic playoff to Scottie Scheffler. He had been playing better coming into the week and it felt like it was only a matter of time before he put four complete rounds together to get himself back into contention again. His iron play has really turned around from early in the season and he again looks like the kid who won three times on tour in just over a year to start his career. I am a little concerned by his price this week and that he has played in eight straight events and eleven of the last twelve, but he is 22 so that makes it less of a worry than if it were an aging veteran though losing the playoff could be a bit of a letdown.
Alex Noren – It has been a great season for Noren who started out the year by making the cut in his first twelve starts before missing it in two of the last three. Still, I am highly encouraged by the improvement in his tee to green play this year, which added to an already solid short game has helped him to ten Top-25 finishes. He is never going to win on a bomber course, but on a course like this where his short game can really shine, I like his chances. He has two straight Top-10 finishes in Detroit and has played well throughout his career on comp courses, gaining just under .9 strokes per round in sixteen starts.
Akshay Bhatia – The PGA Tour website has Akshay listed at 6’1″ and 130 pounds. Imagine how he will hit the ball when he actually fills out his frame even a little bit more than where he is at today. He’s been excellent throughout his short career at carving up the easier courses where birdie opportunities abound. This is another spot where his elite game off the tee and a strong putter should get him deep into minus double digit scoring territory.
Taylor Pendrith – Pendrith is showing up everywhere this week for me in my research as a top play. He can be streaky, but this run over the last few months has been really impressive. He’s made the cut in eight of his last nine starts with seven Top-25 finishes and a win at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, another event where he went wild with his putter. He’s gained just over a stroke per round in seventeen career comp course starts. He ranks 3rd in SGTOT among this field over the last 24 rounds and in two starts in Detroit has finishes of 2nd and 14th.
Middle Tier
Maverick McNealy – Mav has been off the last three weeks, but prior to that had a string of three straight Top-25 finishes to give him a little momentum heading into the summer. He has only missed one cut this year in singles play and has six Top-25s along with three Top-10s in 2024. All areas of his game are in good shape right now after an injury plagued 2023 took its toll on him. He ranks 9th in SGTG and 7th in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds. The tee to green game has seen a big upgrade this year from previous seasons when he was getting by on short game play alone. He has two Top-25 finishes at Detroit in three career starts.
Aaron Rai – Rai is quietly having a very nice season with seven Top-25 finishes and has made the cut in eight of his last nine starts with five Top-25s. Over the last 24 rounds among this field, he ranks 1st in SGTG and has been exceptional in all areas save for his putting which is usually what hold him back. He finished 9th here a year ago in his first start and is likely to be in contention again this week.
Robert MacIntyre – It has been boom or bust for Bobby Mac, but there has been a lot more boom of late with a win in Canada and five Top-16 finishes in his last eight starts. He’s played his best golf this year on easier courses that offer plenty of birdie opportunities – Mexico, TPC Louisiana, Myrtle Beach, Valhalla (a joke of a PGA Championship course), Canada and TPC River Highlands last week. He can bang it off the tee and his putter is red hot, ranking 2nd among this field over the last 24 rounds. He should be a great fit for Detroit.
Davis Thompson – Davis is in good form over the last few months, making the cut in eight of his last ten starts with six Top-25 finishes. He ranks 5th in SGTG and 8th in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds and he is 2/2 making the cut in Detroit with a 24th place finish last year. In 13 career comp course starts, he’s gained over .94 strokes per round.
Lower Tier
Adam Svensson – It has not always looked great this season for Svensson, but the one thing we have been able to count on the last three months is that he will make the cut as he has played the weekend in eleven straight starts and is coming off of a strong 16th place finish last weekend at The Travelers Championship. He ranks 10th among this field in SGTG over the last sixteen rounds and it has only been his putter that has slowed him down. He’s made the cut here the last two years and finished 24th two years ago.
Matt Wallace – Wallace was quite to start the season, but has looked a lot better over the last 3 months. He finished 15th last week at the KLM Open on the DP World Tour and prior to that had made six of seven cuts on the PGA Tour with four finishes of 27th or better. His comp course numbers are above average, gaining over .75 strokes per round in fourteen career starts. He has made the cut in all three starts at this course with two Top-12 finishes. He ranks 5th in SGTG and 4th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds among this field.
Cam Davis – The numbers are not pretty for Cam right now, but if you look at where he was last season at this time (79th in the FedEx Cup Standings), he had a lot of ups downs until exactly this part of the schedule when suddenly the easier courses arrived and he took off like a…..Rocket! He played well in Detroit, Minnesota, Sedgefield, Silverado and TPC Summerlin, all easy comp courses where he regained his confidence. He has three straight Top-20 finishes at this course including a win back in 2021. Even with as lousy as he has played at times, he has still missed just four cuts this season and three were at challenging courses so this feels like a decent floor play for cash games with some upside potential if he can channel his strengths to the course again.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Tom Kim | 11000 | | Alexander Noren | 10200 | | Akshay Bhatia | 9800 | | Taylor Pendrith | 9600 | | Maverick McNealy | 8900 | | Aaron Rai | 8800 | | Robert Macintyre | 8700 | | Davis Thompson | 8300 | | Matt Wallace | 7400 |
Secondary
| Ryan Fox | 8200 | | Chris Kirk | 8100 | | Ben Griffin | 7900 | | Adam Svensson | 7600 | | Nicolai Hojgaard | 7300 | | Cameron Davis | 7200 | | Sam Stevens | 7200 | | Daniel Berger | 7000 | | Thorbjorn Olesen | 6900 | | Andrew Novak | 6700 | | Justin Lower | 6500 | | Troy Merritt | 6300 |
Tertiary
| Erik van Rooyen | 7800 | | Mark Hubbard | 7700 | | Lee Hodges | 7100 | | Ryo Hisatsune | 6900 | | Chandler Phillips | 6700 | | Mac Meissner | 6400 | | Neal Shipley | 6300 | | Jacob Bridgeman | 6300 | | Jorge Campillo | 6000 | | Kevin Tway | 6000 | | Henrik Norlander | 5600 |
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FGI Betting Picks – Rocket Mortgage Classic
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The Daily Spin – Travelers Championship
RECAP
We finally had some drama at a major championship this past weekend at Pinehurst. It looked as if Rory might finally break his stretch of ten years without winning a major championship, but managed to miss two putts inside of four feet on his way to bogeying three of the final four holes. Meanwhile, Bryson DeChambeau managed to work his way out of a very difficult situation after an errant tee shot left him in the native area where he then had to punch out to get into a bunker 55 yards from the hole. He then delivered the shot of a lifetime out of the bunker, nestling his third shot up to about four feet from the cup and then drained the winning putt to set off an incredible celebration that lasted long into the night as Bryson enjoyed the moment with fans and took it all in after winning his second US Open in what has been an amazing couple of years for him since leaving the PGA for the LIV Tour. While most players that left have endured their share of struggles, Bryson has truly blossomed into an elite player and seems more comfortable than ever before with the expectations around him as well as a fanbase that seems much warmer towards him than when he was feuding with Brooks Koepka just a few years ago.
It was also a winning week for me in DFS which always makes watching the final round on Sunday that much more fun. The only real worry was on Friday afternoon as many of us had what was about the most unlikely cut sweat imaginable as Scottie Scheffler shot a birdie free 74 and slipped back to +5 after the second round. While +5 was a favorite to make the cut for most of the day, just the fact that we were even a little nervous about Scottie was astounding. Once he fell back, I thought he would likely make a charge over the weekend the way we have seen him do so often, but that never happened either. In fact, on Sunday, he went birdie free again! Over the entire tournament, Scottie managed just four birdie enroute to a 41st place finish. It was painful, but in cash games he was 60-70% owned so it did not hurt me that much. Now, if you went ahead and played hero ball and faded him last week…bravo! It has been hard to get contrarian against him this season in GPP contests with his incredibly consistent results near the top, but if you pulled it off, well played. There is a payoff to fading the chalk, but you have to be consistent in doing it or you will drive yourself mad from one week to the next.
The rest of my lineup was also chalk city. It seemed like the easiest lineup to land on all season and I did not change it after Tuesday once I had my favorite plays all figured out. Scottie was obvious for cash games, but then I needed so deeper value plays to round it out. There were some obvious discrepancies between odds and prices last week so I took advantage of that with a trio of golfers below $7k in Russell Henley, Sepp Straka and CBez. Henley constantly gets dropped down into the cheap range at majors so he is always a nice high floor cash game play, especially with how well he has been playing this season. He did not disappoint and finished -1 for the week in a tie for 7th place. CBez gave me about what I expected with a 32nd place finish. It was not flashy, but his salary was only $6200 so making the cut was my only real goal for him as I did not think he could replicate his performance from the previous week at the Memorial. Finally, there was Sepp Straka who delivered the ultimate gift for us on Friday with a hole in one on the 9th hole. Picking up all of those extra bonus points between an eagle and a five point bonus on top of that was so massive, especially at the US Open where DK points come at a premium. He had a rough weekend as he shot a 78 on Saturday, but by making the cut and the hole in one, he had more than exceeded his value for the weekend.
In the middle range, Hideki was my favorite value play option of the week at $8k. Any chance we get to lock him in at $8k and we are going to take it every single time. He is so good and so consistent with the majors on US Soil. He has only missed the cut once at Augusta, once at the US Open and never at the PGA Championship. He is built for long, rugged, tough courses and he is unflappable when it comes to his focus, never letting bad situations snowball out of control the way other temperamental golfers fold. He continued his very solid run of golf this year with a 6th place finish.
With all of the value I was able to unlock in the $6k range, I was able to afford Collin Morikawa at $9400, another salary that I felt like was a little too low for how well he has played in recent months. He did not get off to the best start on Thursday, but was locked in on Friday with a 66 and battled all weekend to a 14th place finish. I marked his 8th straight Top-20 with only one of those finishes being worse than 16th. His short game has been much improved which makes him a threat to win, especially at tougher courses where his long iron play gives him an edge over the rest of the field.
Course
- TPC River Highlands
- Par 70
- 6,835 yards
- Bentgrass/Poa Blend
- Pete Dye Design (see also Harbour Town, TPC Sawgrass, Stadium Course, Kiawah Island, TPC Louisiana)
TPC River Highlands is an interesting course. Last week , it was not too surprising that strong players off the tee dominated the tournament. At Pinehurst, the length of the course forces everyone to play driver for the most part. There are always a couple of players that are not long off the tee that find a way to compete, but year after year, unless there is a major issue with the weather, the bombers are in charge at the US Open. That is not necessarily the case this week as there are two distinct paths to victory for this tournament. In recent years, we’ve seen the bomb and gouge approach work well for players like Xander, Bubba Watson, DJ and Marc Leishman who all have wins here. However, we’ve also had winner like Chez Reavie, Russell Knox and Kevin Streelman, players that are very accurate off the tee and who are proximity wizards from mid range in their approach play. Last year, it was Keegan Bradley who triumphed with his excellent total driving play followed up with his killer precision approach play. When you have a course that plays at just over 6,800 yards, it opens things up for everyone in the field as there are only two Par 4 holes that are over 450 yards. Sure, the bombers may have an advantage, but there is a big difference on a course like Pinehurst where those extra 30-50 yards might mean an approach shot from outside of 200 yards as opposed to 150 this week. The greens are smaller than normal this week and considered fast. They are bentgrass, but overseeded with poa.
Course Comps
- Pebble Beach
- Harbour Town
- TPC Louisiana
- Sea Island
- Stadium Course
- TPC Sawgrass
- Sedgefield
Field
We have another Signature event this week so our hangover after the US Open is mitigated to a large degree. This marks the third major in a row where we have enjoyed a solid field the following week. If only we could find a way to make that happen after The Open Championship….
Here is a quick breakdown of the field based on OWGR:
- Top-10 – 7
- Top-25 – 21
- Top-50 – 43
Rory is moping at home this week and elected to withdraw from the event so he could take a solid month thinking about that three footer on 18 that cost him a shot at breaking his major tournament drought. Beyond that there are only a few omissions since it is an elevated event. There is NO CUT this week. Keep in mind that only Genesis, API and Memorial have a cut for the elevated events which means that your builds can get a little more creative than normal without fear of players missing the weekend. Also of note, the PGA is extending Tiger a lifetime exemption to these Signature events beginning in 2025. I actually made sure to look at multiple sources just to be certain it was not a joke.
Weather
- Weather Forecast – https://www.windfinder.com/weatherforecast/hartford-brainard_airport
Nothing doing for the weather this week that is worthy of our attention so far. Winds are expected to be 10-12 mph on Thursday and light throughout most of Friday. There may be some slight precipitation in the forecast on Friday, but not enough to make much of a difference. The tee times are a little weird this week. They are playing in groups of two right from the jump and rather than the tee times flipping so that the earliest golfers on Thursday would be last on Friday, it is set up more like The Masters where the earliest tee time on Thursday starts right in the middle on Friday.
Local Connections
- Keegan Bradley
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
- Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
- Birdie or Better Percentage: 15%
- Scrambling: 10%
- Par 4 Scoring: 10%
- Proximity: 10%
- Strokes Gained Off the Tee: 5%
Cash Game Plays
Top Tier
Scottie Scheffler – It is disappointing that Rory WD this week as we might have seen Scottie fall below 20% ownership, but with his departure from the field, Scottie likely balloons back up closer to 25%. Pinehurst was a rough course for Scottie, but that is not going to happen to him all that often. I think we will likely see him bounce back this week. He is #1 on my comp course model by a wide margin and with wins at TPC Sawgrass and Harbour Town, it is not hard to see why. It will be very interesting to see how much recency bias creeps into Scottie’s ownership numbers for the week.
Xander Schauffele – We barely saw Xander during the TV coverage over the weekend, but by the end of the day on Sunday, he had worked his way up the leaderboard for a 7th place finish for his fourth Top-10 in a row. Xander is right behind Scottie in my comp course model and picked up a win here two years ago. He is strong from tee to green and his putter is always a strength as well. He tends to come up big in the smaller field, no cut events so there was never a chance I was leaving him out of my core this week.
Patrick Cantlay – Was last week a return to the normal Cantlay that has been so good over the years or will he have an adrenaline dump this week and go back to sleep the way he has been for much of 2024? He plays this tournament every and has not finished worse than 16th in his last since starts here. Him and Xander are about tied in my comp course model this week and he has not been terrible at the comp courses this season with an 11th place finish at Pebble Beach and a 3rd place finish at Harbour Town, two courses with smaller greens than average on tour.
Hideki Matsuyama – There is no reason to get away from Hideki now. I was a little worried that perhaps his neck/back issue was flaring up given the amount of time off around the PGA Championship and Augusta, but with back to back Top-10 finishes at the Memorial and US Open, those fears were put to rest. His tee to green game, especially his iron play is excellent, he ranks first among this field in SGARG and his putting has been about average. When you put that all together, you have Hideki at the top of his game. He finished 13th here last season in his lone career start and he ranks 7th in my comp course model having gained over 1.2 strokes per round in 23 career starts.
Middle Tier
Keegan Bradley – The defending champion returns to defend his title and as usual, he will have the backing of the New England crowd as he grew up in the northeast. I will take any narrative I can get this week after the US Open, but that one means a little more since this is not Florida where half the players on tour live for most of the year. He has not been quite as good as last season when he won two events, but he does have two second place finishes this season and his game seems to have turned the corner since a rough stretch during the Florida tournaments. He ranks 13th among the field in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds and I am encouraged in that his putting has been a strength rather than a weakness during recent events. If his irons get back to where we know they can be, Keegan can make it interesting for the rest of the summer.
Russell Henley – This type of course just screams Russell Henley. It is on the short side so it sets up great for someone as accurate as Henley off the tee, who is locked in with his irons inside of 150 yards. He’s played well here with four Top-20 finishes in six starts and he ranks 10th in my comp course model. Round that out with his dependable short game play and you have a golfer that should be in contention this week.
Brian Harman – Harman stands out as our Course History Play of the Week. Outside of 2020 when the schedule went haywire due to COVID, Harman has been a machine at TPC River Highlands with five Top-10 finishes in his last six start and six in his last nine going back to 2015. He has not reached the heights of his play from last year when he won The Open, but he’s been the golfer we have come to expect. He’s accurate off the tee, decent iron play and strong short game. Not surprisingly, he is just ahead of Russell Henley in my comp course model for the week.
Tom Kim – This will mark the 8th week in a row that Kim has teed it up and the 11th time in the last twelve weeks. Is he getting tired? He is 21 years-old so that is unlikely. More likely is that he is playing his way through some early season struggles. He’s been respectable since Augusta where he finished 30th and then followed that up with an 18th place finish at Harbour Town. He has not missed a cut since Valero and has four Top-26 finishes in his last five starts. He ranks 9th among the field in SGTG and 14th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds. He has been well positioned to make a run the last two weeks before getting chewed up in a couple of rounds, but he does seem to be returning to his normal form.
Lower Tier
Sungjae Im – Sungjae took a small step back last week, but I am more focused on the four Top-12 finishes in his previous five starts. He ranks fourth on my comp course model this week behind only Scottie, Xander and Cantlay. His rolling numbers look great over the last sixteen rounds and his short game seems to be returning to form. The majors have killed him this spring, but on a shorter course where his game right now is a better fit, I think we see a similar result to what we’ve seen the last couple of months in other PGA events.
CBez – He is about as steady as it gets and though he did not crush it last week, he’s given us plenty of upside even on some courses where we might not expect it. As for comp courses, he’s gained just under a stroke per round in 18 career starts. On comp courses this season, CBez finished 2nd at the AMEX, 20th at Pebble Beach, 13th at TPC Sawgrass and 28th at Harbour Town. He’s an excellent iron player from close range and ranks 2nd on tour between 50-125 yards. He is one of the best short game players on tour and on a course that only plays around 6800 yards, this is one of those rare stops where he actually has the tools to win.
Taylor Pendrith – Taylor runs hot and cold. He finished 2023 with a run of six Top-15 finishes over the last few months and then had a couple of Top-10s to start 2024, before struggling over the next few months. Since mid April, he has found his stroke again with six Top-25 finishes in his last eight starts including a win in Dallas at the CJ Cup/Byron Nelson. He has done it on the strength of his putter where he ranks 5th in SGP for the entire season. This should be another stop where that comes in handy for him and should give the parts of his game a break that have been hurting him.
Mackenzie Hughes – Hughes plays in this event each year and has three Top-25 finishes in seven starts. He WD last year, but that was the only time he missed out on playing the weekend over the years. His game has been a little rough of late with missed cuts at the Memorial, US Open and PGA Championship, but mixed in around those were a couple of Top-10 finishes up in Canada and at Quail Hollow. He is another short game wizard that excels around and on the greens. I was a little nervous about him coming into the week, but with no cut, his skillset is just good enough, along with his price, to make him a viable option this week.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Scottie Scheffler | 12500 | | Xander Schauffele | 11200 | | Ludvig Aberg | 10200 | | Patrick Cantlay | 9600 | | Hideki Matsuyama | 9200 | | Keegan Bradley | 8700 | | Russell Henley | 8600 | | Brian Harman | 8300 | | Sungjae Im | 7900 | | Christiaan Bezuidenhout | 7400 | | Taylor Pendrith | 7200 |
Secondary
| Corey Conners | 8400 | | Tom Kim | 8100 | | Adam Scott | 7700 | | Denny McCarthy | 7500 | | Si Woo Kim | 7500 | | Billy Horschel | 7300 | | Akshay Bhatia | 7200 | | Chris Kirk | 6900 | | Mackenzie Hughes | 6900 | | Ben Griffin | 6800 | | Austin Eckroat | 6800 |
Tertiary
| Thomas Detry | 7100 | | Robert Macintyre | 7000 | | Matthieu Pavon | 6800 | | Seamus Power | 6500 | | Lee Hodges | 6400 | | Brendon Todd | 6000 |
The post The Daily Spin – Travelers Championship first appeared on Fantasy Golf Insider.
FGI Betting Picks – Travelers Championship
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The Daily Spin – US Open
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FGI Betting Picks – US Open
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The Daily Spin – The Memorial
RECAP
Scottie was not in the field last week, but Rory was and given his history in Canada and recent run of solid play, he was extremely popular in cash games. It was the obvious starting point for your cash game lineup with no other big names up at the top that you could truly count on for a big finish. While a couple golfers at the upper end played pretty well, there were plenty of busts including Sahith, Noren and Cam Young. Even guys like Lowry and Fleetwood did not live up to their salaries. Rory managed a 4th place finish for the week and while it would have been great to get a win from him, you can never complain about a Top-5 finish…well, maybe if it were Scottie.
The rest of my team was a mixed bag. I ended up with 5/6 getting through the cut. Davis Thompson started off well with a 69 on Thursday, but forgot how to putt on Friday, missing one short putt after another. Every time I looked at him on shot tracker he was blowing a 5 footer to sink him into oblivion, ending the round losing over 4.6 strokes putting in a single round. It is frustrating as he was just fine from tee to green. He is still playing well this spring going into the summer so I will continue to roster him from time to time as I think the second round was an outlier on the greens.
To offset the salary for Rory, I needed to find a couple of golfers at the lower end of the spectrum to balance out my team. I felt like a genius early on as Mac Meissner was -4 after nine holes in the first round and Kevin Tway was -3 going to the weekend. Unfortunately, Tway only had three birdies left in him over the final two rounds and dubiously had zero in the third round. He went from a potential Top-10 finish to a smooth 68th. Meissner slipped back a bit after a hot start and finished 57th, but at least made it interesting with 16 birdies and a birdie streak. He outscored players that finished inside the Top-40 and he was only $6500 so it was not a total loss, even if there was a lot of potential on Thursday.
My other two golfers were selected for their cut making ability in Mark Hubbard and Adam Scott. Hubbard went without a birdie in the 3rd round to match Tway, though he at least made an eagle to score a few points. He had only ten birdies for the week so his 42nd place finish actually generated 3.5 less that Meissner in 57th place. Adam Scott made all of three birdies through the first two rounds, but managed to make the cut. He was a little better over the weekend, but like Hubbs, he had only ten birdies for the week and zero eagles. It was not ideal to land on Scott for the week, but he was there for my last pick and he has not been bad this season so a 42nd place finish was disappointing.
Course
- Muirfield Village Golf Club (Renovated in 2021)
- Par 72
- 7,569 yards
- Bentgrass greens
Muirfield Golf Course is located in Dublin, Ohio and is our lone stop in the Buckeye state this year. It’s a 7,569 yard course and plays as a Par 72. There have been a ton of renovations to the course over the last couple of years so we have a pretty good idea of how it will play now that we have seen it for a few years. Even in back to back weeks in 2020 the folks running the course managed to make it play radically different so keep an eye on how it sets up this year. It may not be a perfect comp course to Augusta, but I find that the similarities work well for me when looking at the field each year to choose my players. The fairways are wide, though Augusta is more open overall and a little more forgiving. The rough at Muirfield tends to be pretty thick so though the fairways are wider than normal, players will want to stay in the short grass or they will face trouble with their approach shots.
Muirfield includes many doglegs, water hazards and strategically placed fairway bunkers in the range where most bombers would land their tee shots with driver so it tends to be much more of a second shot course than at first glance which means that you will see some players club down to 3 Wood and work a longer iron shot into the green. The greens themselves are small, bentgrass and play very fast and with a good deal of undulation. Precision iron play will be the key to success or players that can scramble well to get up and down. In looking at some recent winners, you can see that mid range iron play really made the difference for Jason Dufner, William McGirt and David Lingmerth, but the bombers have had more success of late with Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay winning in four years out of five before another ball striker in Billy Horschel won it in 2022 before Viktor won it last year as a more established top level player. Par 5 Scoring will also be important this week. Like Augusta, all four Par 5 holes this week are reachable in two shots for most players, though 20-30 yards were added to each in the recent renovation. Those are going to be the best scoring opportunities that golfers will have this week as the Par 3s play very tough here and seven of the Par 4 holes are longer than 455 yards.
Course Comps
- Augusta
- TPC Boston
- Liberty National
- Riviera
- Torrey Pines
- Quail Hollow
- Summit
Field
This is an elevated field this week, but with a lot of changes from last season. This is a 73 man field and there is in fact a cut this week. Riviera, API and Memorial all have a cut as elevated events. The Top-50 players and ties will make it to the weekend which sounds like an easy 6/6 week, but that has not been the case in the first two events as many notable golfers have managed to miss the cut to cripple fantasy owners. I have not seen any noteworthy withdrawals this week. Cash games again will be a challenge. Whether it is Rory McIlroy last week or Scottie Scheffler most other weeks, the strategy remains similar for most tournaments. With such a small cut in play, it makes it incentives the stars/scrubs lineup that much more, though if you get greedy and miss in the $6k range, it could end your chances of cashing by Friday afternoon.
What this means is that when you are building your GPP rosters and even Single Entry teams, you should make a conscious effort to be at least a little bit contrarian in at least on roster spot or two. First of all, it’s never fun to be in a single entry contest and to see that you’ve built an ultra chalk team that is duplicated 8 times. Also, you want to find at least one lower owned player that can help vault you up the leaderboard if they payoff. This does not mean that you need to get reckless and completely dump any golfers that are owned by more than 20% of the field, but finding one on your team that is in the 5% range should give you enough wiggle room to work with without compromising on the overall skill of your team. Pricing is really reasonable this week. There are so many good golfers in the field that the middle range is full of incredible options.
Weather
- Dublin Forecast – https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/shawnee_hills_o_shaughnessy
Gusty winds will be in play throughout Thursday and Friday. With a smaller field, there are no waves this week and at this time, I do not see any windows where any golfers would have any advantage. On Thursday, sunshine will be the order of the day with winds around 15 mph with gusts into the low 20 mph range during the day. At this time, the winds look a little worse on Friday with winds around 15-20 mph and gusts in the mid 20s during the time the players will be on the course.
Local Connections
- Jason Day
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
- Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
- Birdie or Better Percentage: 15%
- Proximity: 15%
- Driving Accuracy: 10%
- Scrambling: 10%
- Par 5 Scoring: 5%
Cash Game Plays
Top Tier
Scottie Scheffler – The charges were dropped for Scottie this past week and while he was never going to face serious trouble from the incident, it would have been an irritating distraction to have hanging over his head all summer. With that behind him, he can get back to crushing everyone on tour each week that he shows up in the field. Prior to the PGA Championship, he had won four of five starts and even the last couple of starts where he was not at his best, he still managed an 8th and 2nd place finish. He has finished 3rd here at Muirfield in his past two starts and considering the similarities to Augusta where he has two wins, it likely will not be long before he wins a couple of times at Jack’s tournament.
Rory McIlroy – Rory is on the verge of an ugly divorce, but considering that it was likely hanging over his head for months until it was announced, maybe now that it is out there, he can relax and enjoy being on the golf course again. The last four starts have seen him win twice, finish 12th at Valhalla and 4th last week in Canada. He ranks 2nd in SGTG and 3rd in SGTOT over the last 16 rounds and his short game is back in solid form. He ranks 1st in my comp course model and he has a lot of quality finishes at this tournament including a 7th place finish last season. It is not a major so there is also some extra possible upside for the week.
Collin Morikawa – Morikawa finally looks like the guy we expected him to be a couple of years ago after winning his second major. While he has been awful with his putter in the final group at The Masters and PGA Championship, his short game has actually been really good in recent starts. He has six straight Top-25 finishes including four Top-10s. He ranks 7th in SGTG and 4th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds and ranks 3rd in my comp course model. He won here back in 2020, finished 2nd in 2021 and withdrew last year before the final round when he was only two shots off the lead.
Middle Tier
Corey Conners – Conners is back to his classic self after flirting with being elite at moments in recent years. His tee to green game is rock solid and his short game is dreadful. It keeps him from winning, but he has not missed a cut in 15 starts this season and does have seven Top-25s. He finally cracked the Top-10 last week for the first time in 2024 with a 6th place finish up in Canada last week. He has a couple of Top-25 finishes here in his career and his tee to green game on comp courses puts him near the top of the field.
Russell Henley – Henley ranks at the top of the Odds vs Pricing tool this week. He has missed just one cut this season in twelve starts and has five Top-25 finishes in his last seven starts. He has two Top-20 finishes in his last three starts at Muirfield and his tee to green play at comp courses has been very good throughout his career. Henley keeps it in the fairway, is excellent from short to midrange with his irons and has an excellent short game.
Tony Finau – We love Tony on longer courses like this one. He has four Top-15 finishes here in seven starts during his career and he’s enjoyed plenty of success at Augusta and other major courses throughout his career that tend to be on the longer side. He ranks 5th on tour this season in SGAPP and is really good from beyond 150 yards. He ranks 11th in GIR% and 17th in proximity play. He’s missed only one cut in fourteen starts this season and though he has been a little up and down this season, he has four Top-20 finishes in his last six starts. If he can get his putter going, he can contend, but either way, he is a fantastic value play at this salary.
Lower Tier
Tom Kim – Kim seems to be playing his way through an early season slump. He has back to back Top-25 finishes and cracked the Top-10 for the first time in 2024 last weekend with a 4th place finish in Canada. Since The Masters, he has made seven straight cuts with five Top-30 finishes. His tee to green game is steadily improving and even though he has played five straight weeks, he is only 21 so it seems like the more he plays, the better he gets, reminiscent of Sungjae’s rookie season or Eric Cole last season.
Sepp Straka – Sepp is one of the more streaky golfers on tour, looking incredible for stretches and then missing the cut for weeks on end. Since finishing 16th at The Players Championship, he has been on a nice run finished 16th at Augusta, 5th at Harbor Town, 8th at Quail Hollow and 5th two weeks ago at Colonial. He has made the cut in 4/5 starts at Muirfield with two Top-20 finishes. His approach game is sharp right now and he is putting the ball well, ranking 13th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds among the field. It could all blow up on Straka at any moment, but the cut will not hit a lot of golfers this week so it is a great risk versus reward situation.
Lee Hodges – Here is the likely chalk explosion of the week, but we need some reasonable low dollar plays and Hodges is a compelling case. He has some nice finishes this season at longer courses with a 24th place finish at Riviera, 12th at Bay Hill, 24th at Quail Hollow and 12th at Valhalla. He has three straight Top-25 finishes and finished 12th here last season. He has gained over .56 strokes per round in ten starts on comp courses during his career. He ranks 6th in SGAPP and 14th in SGP over the last twelve rounds.
Taylor Pendrith – Pendrith had some nice finishes in the fall and a couple of Top-10 finishes to start 2024 before stumbling over his next six starts. Since then, he has rallied nicely with five Top-25 finishes in his last six starts including a win at the Byron Nelson. He ranks 11th in the field in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds. He is also dramatically better with his putter on bentgrass over other surfaces by nearly .35 strokes per round.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Scottie Scheffler | 12500 | | Rory McIlroy | 11100 | | Collin Morikawa | 9800 | | Justin Thomas | 9200 | | Corey Conners | 8500 | | Russell Henley | 8000 | | Tony Finau | 7900 | | Shane Lowry | 7900 | | Si Woo Kim | 7700 | | Sepp Straka | 7500 | | Lee Hodges | 6500 |
Secondary
| Byeong Hun An | 8400 | | Tom Kim | 7800 | | Denny McCarthy | 7600 | | Will Zalatoris | 7500 | | Billy Horschel | 7400 | | Brian Harman | 7300 | | Christiaan Bezuidenhout | 7300 | | Kurt Kitayama | 7000 | | Taylor Pendrith | 6700 | | Adam Schenk | 6600 |
Tertiary
| Keegan Bradley | 7700 | | Ben Griffin | 7200 | | Stephan Jaeger | 7100 | | Mackenzie Hughes | 7100 | | Thomas Detry | 6800 | | Andrew Putnam | 6500 | | Brendon Todd | 6200 |
The post The Daily Spin – The Memorial first appeared on Fantasy Golf Insider.
FGI Betting Picks – The Memorial
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The Daily Spin – RBC Canadian Open
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FGI Betting Picks – RBC Canadian Open
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FGI Betting Picks – Charles Schwab Challenge
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The Daily Spin – Charles Schwab Challenge
RECAP
It was a fun, but strange week for the PGA Championship. Rory McIlroy announced that he is getting a divorce. Scottie Scheffler was arrested for felony assault and reckless driving among other loaded up charges and Xander Schauffele broke the seal and notched his first major championship win with a birdie on the final hole to edge out Bryson DeChambeau and preventing the LIV Tour from picking up its second PGA Championship in a row.
I went a little unconventional with my lineup build for the week. My top three plays above $10k were Scottie, Rory and Xander. With the way that the pricing was laid out, I was regrettably able to squeeze Scottie and Rory into my main lineup, leaving off Xander. My team did okay, but was pretty middle of the road for how it finished, cashing in some contests and missing the line by a few points in other contests. I never would have anticipated Scottie getting derailed from a driving arrest in the early hours prior to the second round on Friday. Rory simply went back to his normal major championship self, playing largely inconsequential golf over the weekend and finishing up with very little TV time on Sunday after winning in his previous two starts.
The rest of my team was a creative effort as I looked for a way to save cap space. I found enough golfers in the low $6k range so that I felt like it was not unreasonable to pick four of the better players in that range and take my chances. Two of those plays worked out nicely, one fought hard, but missed the cut and one of the players did not show up at all.
I liked Tom Hoge as a nice fit for Valhalla. His iron play has been among the best on tour over the last two seasons and he has been a good cut maker for us during that time. He stumbled a bit in the second round with a 73, but shot 66, 68 and 67 the other three rounds and managed a 23rd place finish, exceeding expectations based on his salary. He ended up being my best value play of the week at $6400. He is the type of golfer who sees massive swings in his salary throughout the year and this week he bounced back up to $9300. I think that is an interesting number to keep an eye on when evaluating value plays each week. I am not sure exactly how that would be quantified, but clearly last week Hoge was way too cheap even given the strength of the field.
Lucas Glover did what I needed him to do, even if his 43rd place finish did not gain us much extra ground. Getting back to what I mentioned with Hoge, Glover was $6100 last week and this week only moved back up to $7500. With him and Hoge nearly priced the same last week, but wildly different this week, you really get a good idea of just how cheap Hoge was relative to his actual ability to perform. Glover was fine, not great last week. His game was balanced in unexpected ways as his putter was not a problem, but his tee to green game was not nearly as dynamic as we have seen during the last year which led to a middling result where he made the cut, but could not sustain any momentum.
Denny McCarthy was the most popular of my punt plays last week by a wide margin, but was never competitive in trying to make the cut. The problem with McCarthy is that he does not have much margin for error. Since he is not a good tee to green player, if his short game breaks down even a little bit, he will be in trouble. If his short game is merely average, he likely will miss the cut badly as he did last Friday. On a course like Valhalla, where players are scoring at a steady clip compared to other major course venues, this is a death blow for Denny’s game. We have seen Denny play well at longer courses this season as he finished in 6th place the previous week at Quail Hollow so he does have the ability to handle a lengthier track, but there was also a lot less scoring there so his weaknesses were not quite as amplified.
Is the Taylor Pendrith moment over or just did it just take a momentary hiatus last week? After four straight finishes of 11th or better, Pendrith fought hard, but fell short of making the cut last week at Valhalla. His putter killed him. I followed him on shot tracker and there were so many times where it looked like he had makeable birdie putts, but could not convert on Friday when it would have just taken a couple of putts to drop to get to the weekend.
Course
- Colonial Country Club
- Par 70
- 7,209 Yards
- Bentgrass Greens
Colonial Country Club in Forth Worth has been home to this tournament for many years. If you are confused about the name and think this is a new event, I am sure you are not alone. Two years ago, this was the Fort Worth Invitational. Prior to that, it was the Dean & DeLuca Invitational and from 2007 to 2015, it was known as the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial. While there have been many changes in the name over the years, Colonial is actually one of the longer tenured stops on tour as it has hosted a tournament every year going back to 1946. It is a classically designed course that plays at just over 7,200 yards and at a par of 70. There are two Par 5 holes, one of which is a scoring hole at 565 yards while the other is on the lengthy side at 635 yards meaning that there are not many easy birdie opportunities on the course. There are a good mix of Par 4 holes with six playing above 440 yards, but also four that play at 408 yards or less meaning that players will have to possess a well rounded approach game from both short to intermediate distances in order to contend which is evident when you look at recent winners over the years from Emiliano Grillo, Justin Rose, Kevin Kisner, Adam Scott, ZJ and Phil Mickelson and see that most of those names are excellent with their middle range irons. The fairways are narrow and tree lined so driver can be left in the bag much more often allowing players to focus on hitting the fairway in order to be well positioned for an approach shot as the bentgrass greens are on the small side making them more challenging than normal to hit and hold.
Course Comps
- Harbour Town
- PGA National
- East Lake
- Oak Hill
- Innisbrook
- Olympia Fields
- TPC Potomac
Field
For the week following a major tournament, the field is surprisingly strong. Much of that probably has to do with the rich history of Colonial as it has been host to this event for decades and is a very popular course among the players. Though many of the Top-10 players in the world have opted to take the week off to prepare for the Memorial next week up in Ohio, we still have a lot of really talented ball strikers here this week and I am finding myself struggling to decide which players near the top that I want to include as there are so many that check the boxes that I am looking for at this event. Even the $7k and $8k range are loaded up with great value plays this week so that I am not having a difficult time in many of my initial lineup builds. The pricing structure drops all the way down to $5k again this week so you can get creative with your builds and you will need to do so with Scottie up at $13,300.
Weather
- Fort Worth – https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/fort_worth
The winds are forecast to be gusty on Thursday and Friday this week. There does appear to be a weather edge this week though that is still developing and likely to continue to shift. On Thursday morning, the winds are forecast to be 8-12 mph in the morning with gusts in the 20-25 mph range. On Thursday afternoon, the winds pick up closer to 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph by 3pm. On Friday, the winds are expected to be worse in the morning than afternoon. The early look shows gusts above 35 mph at 7am, 31 mph at 10am and then tapering off throughout the rest of the day. My initial take would be that the AM/PM wave would have a distinct advantage this week.
Local Connections
- Jordan Spieth
- Ryan Palmer
- Beau Hossler
- Scottie Scheffler
- Austin Smotherman
- Tom Hoge
- Pierceson Coody
- Parker Coody
- Mac Meissner
- Ben Kohles
- Jimmy Walker
- Michael Kim
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
- Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
- Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
- Scrambling: 15%
- Proximity: 10%
- Driving Accuracy: 5%
Cash Game Plays
Top Tier
Scottie Scheffler – The summer just became a little more interesting for Scottie. Will this driving incident rattle him over the next few months or will Louisville simply decide that it is not worth the effort and drop the charges entirely? Scottie did seem a little shaken on Saturday, but all in all, pulled it together pretty well outside of the first four holes of the third round. He is at the top of any and all models this week and he loves playing near home down in Texas. It seems like a great spot for him to rally back to play the sort of golf we have come to expect out of him. He has finished 2nd and 3rd at this tournament the last two years.
Collin Morikawa – Morikawa crushed it from tee to green last weekend and was in position to make a run on Sunday, but for the second major in a row, his putter betrayed him in the final round, losing over 3.5 strokes, missing one easy putt after another to keep him out of contention. On the positive side, his tee to green game has been fantastic of late. He has five straight Top-25 finishes, three of which resulted in Top-10 finishes. He is a great fit for a course like Colonial as he leads the tour in driving accuracy which will keep him out of trouble. If he can turn his putter around even a little bit, he can get back to his winning ways again.
Brian Harman – Harman is a veteran of Colonial and plays this event every year. He has made the cut in nine of his last ten starts here with six Top-25 finishes going back to 2015. He is accurate off the tee, a solid iron player and has always been strong with his short game play. He got tripped up at The Masters, but that was not unexpected as he does not generally have the length to keep up on a course like that. However, he is right at home playing at Colonial and a threat to contend in any week. he has gained nearly .7 strokes per round over 53 career starts on comp courses.
Harris English – English is the perfect combination of length and accuracy for a course like Colonial. This is a far cry from where he was just a few seasons ago when he could not hit a fairway. He has missed only one cut in thirteen starts this season and he has eight Top-25 finishes along the way. He had made the cut in five of six starts over the last decade, finished 12th last year and 2nd back in 2016. His ability to avoid trouble off the tee and strong short game play should line up for him to post another Top-25 finish.
Middle Tier
Christian Bezhuidenhout – CBez has finished 21st and 15th here the last two seasons and ranks 6th in my comp course model in his thirteen career starts. He is not great off the tee, but he is a good short iron player and his short game is always strong. He ranks 2nd among the field in SG:Short over the last 24 rounds. He’s made the cut in 10/13 starts this season with seven Top-25 finishes. Outside of courses on the longer side, he is in play most weeks.
Keegan Bradley – This feels like a Keegan Bradley course even though he does not play here often. He finished 32nd here back in 2020, but otherwise, it has not been a regular stop for him on his tour schedule each season. He is well balanced for length and accuracy off the tee, his iron play is always a strength of his game and his putter is…well…errr….still terrible. He missed 3/4 cuts back in February/March, but has since recovered well, making four straight cuts with three Top-25 finishes. Of note, he is considerably better when putting on bentgrass over other surfaces so that should help his recent dreadful green play.
Thomas Detry – Detry had a rough three tournament stretch in Mexico and Florida, but has since rallied nicely. Over his last six starts, he has four Top-20 finishes (three Top-10s in his last five starts) and had the quietest 4th place finish imaginable last weekend at the PGA Championship. He ranks 28th in SGTG over the last sixteen rounds, but an electric short game has him up to 3rd in SGTOT during that same time frame. Detry finished 21st here last year in his only start at Colonial.
Lower Tier
Aaron Rai – Rai has missed a handful of cuts this season, but has shown an incredible amount of talent in his play this year. He ranks 5th in SGTG and 5th in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds. He ranks 10th in Driving Accuracy and 10th in SGAPP this season, 8th in GIR% and 15th in proximity play. His short game has been just average, but he should be in good shape navigating a tight course. He has made the cut in both starts at Colonial and finished 12th here a year ago.
Mark Hubbard – Good Guy Mark Hubbard keeps making cuts and is now 14/14 in 2024. He lives in Texas now, though I am not factoring that much into my recommendation for the week. Hubbs is 5/5 making the cut at Colonial and finished 9th last year. He is playing well in most areas and there are not any real holes in his game. He ranks 28th in SGTG and 26th in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds. He is accurate off the tee and a good mid range iron player. He is also better on bentgrass over other surfaces.
Lucas Glover – It is not the Lucas Glover of the end of the 2023 season and playoffs, but he has not been bad either. He has made the cut in 11/13 starts this season and his tee to green play is still phenomenal, ranking 4th in SGTG over the last 24 rounds. He has made the cut here in his last three starts with two Top-25 finishes and he’s gained nearly a half stroke per round in 79 career starts. His putter is back to being awful, but he ranks 6th in driving accuracy and is amazing from short range with his irons. He is one of the better values on the board this board this week and his price did not rise nearly as much as others in his range from a week ago.
Austin Eckroat – Eckroat seems like a steal this week. He has missed only two cuts in fourteen starts this season and has missed just one since his win at the Cognizant Classic in March. He has five Top-25 finishes and is coming in off of an impressive 18th place finish last weekend in Valhalla. He recently finished 17th at Harbour Town, one of our comp courses this week and has been excellent in five comp course starts gaining over 1.2 strokes per round. Over the last 24 rounds, his tee to green game has been top notch, it has only been his short game play holding him back. He ranks 13th on tour in driving accuracy and he’s a good short iron player so this course should be a nice fit. He finished 16th here a year ago.
Deep Dives
Sam Stevens – Stevens has made seven straight cuts and has four Top-25 finishes in his last nine starts. He was born in Fort Worth so this is a homecoming of sorts this week for Stevens who finished 29th here last year in his first start at Colonial. His short game has been excellent in recent starts and he ranks 6th in SG:Short over the last sixteen rounds.
Andrew Novak – Novak has been a steady cash game option over the last few months. He’s hitting over 68% of GIR and ranks 19th in proximity play this season. He ranks 27th among the field over the last sixteen rounds in SGTG. He was red hot a couple months ago when he had three straight Top-10 finishes and four Top-20s in five starts. While the big finishes have not been there lately, he has still made the cut in nine of his last ten starts overall and did finish 40th here last year in his first start at Colonial.
Mac Meissner – I hope Meissner stays under the radar this week. He feels like the type of play necessary in order to free up the funds to pay up for Scottie. He went to school at SMU and lives in Dallas now. He’s been playing really well the last couple of months, but has not gotten much attention for it. He has finished 26th or better in five of his last eight starts. Over the last sixteen rounds, he ranks 24th in SGTG and 9th in SGTOT. Even his two most recent missed cuts were not that bad as he shot -3 and -4 respectively.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Scottie Scheffler | 13300 | | Collin Morikawa | 11000 | | Brian Harman | 9500 | | Harris English | 9000 | | Christiaan Bezuidenhout | 8900 | | Keegan Bradley | 8100 | | Thomas Detry | 8000 | | Aaron Rai | 7800 | | Mark Hubbard | 7700 | | Lucas Glover | 7500 | | Austin Eckroat | 7500 |
Secondary
| Billy Horschel | 8800 | | Chris Kirk | 8400 | | Sepp Straka | 8300 | | Tom Kim | 8200 | | Taylor Moore | 7900 | | Davis Thompson | 7600 | | Andrew Putnam | 7400 | | Brendon Todd | 7000 | | Robert Macintyre | 7000 | | Sam Stevens | 6800 | | Mac Meissner | 5900 |
Tertiary
| Lee Hodges | 7200 | | Emiliano Grillo | 7100 | | Christopher Gotterup | 6900 | | Charley Hoffman | 6600 | | Justin Lower | 6400 | | Adam Svensson | 6400 | | Andrew Novak | 6300 | | Jorge Campillo | 6200 | | Dylan Wu | 6100 | | Kevin Tway | 6100 |
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The Daily Spin – PGA Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – PGA Championship
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The Daily Spin – Wells Fargo Championship
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FGI Betting Picks – Wells Fargo Championship
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The Daily Spin – CJ Cup Byron Nelson
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FGI Betting Picks – CJ Cup Byron Nelson
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The Daily Spin – Zurich Classic
RECAP
The refrain remains the same. Play Scottie or lose. I cannot remember the last time a golfer won The Masters and then went on to Harbour Town and played well, let alone won the tournament. At this point, we are in the Scottie Era. What is scary is that I think he has the potential to make it last for many years to come. His tee to green game is on another level from any other player in the world. We talked about his struggles with his putter and how his results would turn around if he could even manage to get his SGP numbers up to zero. Last weekend, his short game was just into the positive range and he managed to win with ease. He will now be able to go home and rest for a couple of weeks as his wife managed to hold off on having their first child until he won two more huge golf tournaments. Scottie’s caddie has now earned more money than Rory McIlroy this season.
I should not laugh at Rory. My stubbornness killed me again last weekend. With the pregnancy of his wife looming and the potential for a letdown after winning The Masters, I felt like maybe I could get away from him, have an extra high dollar player at the top and not have to dig into the $6k range for players. In the back of my head as I wrote my column last week, I thought, just play Scottie. He’s not leaving. He is not going to withdraw. But by then I was so far down the road in not rostering him that all I could muster was writing that I do not blame you if you do play him. With the no-cut event in place, the only real worry was the WD and while that certainly should have been considered, I could have done a better job of balancing that risk against the risk of others underperforming.
Speaking of underperforming, hello Tommy Fleetwood. I hate paying up for Tommy, but he feels appropriately priced given his history and recent form. Famous last words. He had the classic Tommy finish at Augusta. He was nowhere near contending, but a nice Sunday helped him run up the board to a third place finish. Tommy was a mess the first two days and only slightly better over the weekend. His putting was poor, but it was his irons that were really awful. He lost over five strokes in his approach play, continuing a negative trend that has hurt him all season. I got what deserved for paying up for Tommy.
The other high dollar golfer I paid up for was Xander. He is a Top-10 machine, especially in events like this one. All facets of his game are looking strong right now, but he just is not able to get that to translate into wins. He started slow on Thursday and that killed him. A strong performance on Friday and a decent round Saturday put him back into position for a potential Top-5 finish, but the final round was terrible from tee to green again and he slipped back to 18th place. With X and Tommy up top both underperforming, I was drawing dead immediately.
About the only play that worked out for me was Brian Harman. He was not great at Augusta, but Harbour Town is a natural fit for him. He finished with a flourish in the final round, shooting a 64 which moved him up to 12th place, exactly what I needed from him at $7800. I thought I had good balance with my other three value plays, but the all more or less flopped. Cam Davis was in great form and had strong history at the course so naturally he folded up and finished 49th. Taylor Moore has played well all season and has not missed a cut. He played well in the first round, but that was about it. Lucas Glover was not a total bust, but blew the bonus in the final round when he was in position for a potential Top-15 finish. None of these finishes would have hurt me if X and Tommy had done their job for me and been at the top of their game, but that did not happen so it was a frustrating week.
Course
- TPC Louisiana
- Par 72
- 7,400 yards
- Bermuda
TPC Louisiana is a 7,425 yard, Par 72 course with four Par 5 and four Par 3 holes. It is a Pete Dye design with wide fairways that are not difficult to hit. The Par 3 holes are on the longer side and will present the biggest obstacle to scoring for the week. It is one of the easier courses of tour in terms of scoring and one that does not tend to punish players for being inaccurate off the tee so long as the are solid from mid range and further out with their irons and can hit greens. It tends to play towards the bombers as there is added emphasis on Par 5 scoring and driving distance in addition to the traditional statistics that we tend to see every week. Over the years, a wide variety of players have done well here, so there is no need to focus specifically on the bombers and since there are not a lot of high caliber bombers in the field (guys who do anything beyond hitting it 300 yards off the tee), you should be looking for a good mix of players.
Course Comps
- TPC Sawgrass
- Stadium Course
- Harbour Town
- TPC Scottsdale
- TPC San Antonio
- Jackson
Field
After The Masters and then the RBC Heritage, we are right on schedule for a couple of lesser field events. While the PGA Tour axed a fan favorite event by getting rid of the Match Play tournament, they kept the team event which has almost no interest among the fanbase and even less among the golfers on tour. Since it is an event played with a partner, there are plenty of stars that will simply choose to sit this one out, though some of these guys play together every year and also in international play so do not discard that as those teams usually gel here quickly, even if one of the players is not in great form at the outset. We also get a 65 year-old golfer that barely even plays on the Champions Tour who is a partner since his son is the caddie of Eric Cole. This field is weaker than normal since the RBC Heritage was an elevated event which means that most of the best players in the world have teed it up in consecutive weeks and are a little spent after such big tournaments and will now look to work in some time off to start preparing for the rest of the season. Again, with the elevated tournaments, we are going to continue to see more loaded fields during the season, but when an event is not elevated, the quality of the fields really suffers.
Weather
- Local Forecast – https://www.windfinder.com/weatherforecast/metairie
The weather looks good this week. The winds are light for much of the day on Thursday at around 6-8 mph in the morning and climbing to 10 mph in the afternoon with temperatures in the mid to high 70s. On Friday, there are more gusts expected in the forecast, but right now, I am not seeing a huge edge either way. The winds are expected to be 10-15 mph with gusts up to 20 mph with cloudy conditions expected. I have not seen the hourly numbers yet, but it does not look like there is going to be a wave advantage yet though it is too close to call on Monday night. Be sure to check our e-mail on Wednesday night where we make our final call on the weather outlook for the week.
Key Stats
- Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 25%
- Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
- Birdie or Better Percentage: 20%
- Scrambling: 10%
- Par 5 Scoring: 10%
- Proximity: 10%
Cash Game Plays
Top Tier
Cantlay/Schauffele – These two have been a team together at this event the last three years with finishes of 11th, 1st and 4th. They are very experience team players and both are regulars at the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup each year, certainly an advantage over most other players in the field who only get experience in this type of event once a year. Cantlay has played this event every year since it became a team event so I think it is very intentional that he schedules this tournament with the specific thought being that it will help him to stay sharp for international competition. Both guys are playing well this season, especially Xander, but Cantlay did turn it up last week with a 3rd place finish at Harbour Town. Both guys are at the top of my comp course model as well. In cash games, this is where my team will start. I am done being stubborn.
Fitzpatrick Bros – Did you catch the new season of Full Swing on Netflix yet? They did a whole episode following Alex and Matt and it was one of the better episodes of the season. Alex has had a front row seat in watching his brother ascend to the elite levels of professional golf. It has left him feeling a little overshadowed which is natural, but he has worked hard to move up the ranks of the Challenge Tour and now onto the DP World Tour. I love a good narrative on weeks like this and there is none better than playing to try to help your brother to achieve his dream of getting his PGA Tour card. They finished 19th here last year and Alex went on to make a bit of a run at The Open Championship last summer before falling back to 17th. This is an event they both have circled on their calendars and finding players with that type of motivation is the key for an event that others might just be playing for fun.
Hoge/McNealy – If Mav can tee off and Hoge can hit the approach and then Mav can play around the green and Hoge can putt, this team should be set based on the rolling numbers over the last sixteen rounds. Hoge is having a really nice season with seven Top-25 finishes along with a couple of Top-10s. He ranks 2nd on tour in SGAPP and his putter has been all season as well. That should work well with the reemergence of Maverick McNealy whose only real weakness is his approach play. Mav has not been great in his last couple of starts, but had three Top-15 finishes in his previous four starts prior to that.
Taylor/Hadwin – Team Canada is another narrative street addition for me this week. This fall is the Presidents Cup and the International side has had their ass handed to them every year except for 1998, their only win in fourteen matches along with a tie in 2003. This year, the event will take place in Canada so the boys are going to want to be at their best this fall and both are currently in the Top-10 for points to qualify for the International side. They paired well together last year for a 2nd place finish. Taylor has two wins on tour over the last year so while he might not always be the most consistent player, he has demonstrated tremendous upside. Conners and Pendrith offer the same narrative at 9500 and were both on the 2022 Presidents Cup team. However, they combined for zero total points so it was not the most inspiring of efforts.
Middle Tier
Horschel/Alexander – Sometimes at this tournament, you pick a team based on one player alone and this would be that exactly. I do not care at all about Tyson Alexander. This is a pure Billy play. I have discussed at length in my columns how Billy got himself refocused in the offseason to get his game back on track and that culminated with a win last weekend at Puntacana. He has had some missed cuts along the way, but he is back to having a lot more success this year with five Top-25s and three Top-10s. Over the last 24 rounds, he ranks 5th in SGTOT, he ranks well on comp courses and he has two wins at this tournament, once as an individual and once as a team. I do not think a win at Puntacana in an alternate field event is going to be a huge distraction compared to a more marquee tournament. He has been too good here the last five years for me to overlook him.
Mitchell/Dahman – Dahman did not inspire much confidence for me in his game when I watched him on Full Swing last season. He seemed like a man that was not totally dedicated to his craft. He is out there playing every week, but he admitted that he was not putting in the extra time and was reluctant to talk to a sports psychiatrist at the urging of his caddie. However, he strikes me as a golfer that will go all out for a playing partner as he has done repeatedly here with three Top-25 finishes in five starts. This is the ‘tee to green’ team of the week. Both of these guys are incredible off the tee and on approach. I am not sure who is going to make a putt, but these guys should be around for the weekend.
Thompson/Novak – This could be a darkhorse team this week. Thompson has four Top-25 finishes in his last eight starts and Novak had a recent run of three straight Top-10 finishes. Both guys rank in the Top-20 in SGTOT over the last 24 rounds. They do not really have any experience playing together, but Novak did finish 13th here last year.
Lower Tier
Moore/NeSmith – Prior to the dud that Moore posted at Harbour Town, he had three straight Top-20 finishes and has not missed a cut all year. He ranks 5th in SGTG and 8th in SGTOT over the last sixteen rounds among this field. On the other hand, NeSmith has not had a very good year with only one Top-40 finish in eleven starts and six missed cuts. All parts of his game look broken. Moore might have to carry this team, but they have had great success together the last two years with back to back 4th place finishes. They are second this week in value based on the Odds vs Pricing tool.
Wu/Lower – There was a lot of buzz on Lower in the fall of 2022, but things quickly fizzled out and 2023 was a struggle until a couple of encouraging finishes in the fall. Fast forward to 2024 and things have steadily improved. He made the cut in his first four starts without any great finishes, but then finished 3rd in Mexico. After a few choppy efforts, he seems to be moving in the right direction again his last three starts, improving each week with a 4th place finish last week. Wu has not been as impressive this season, but these two have played together the last two years and did finish 10th at this event in 2022.
Smalley/Schmid – Here is another team where I am onboard due to one player and the price. Schmid was not playing well to start the season, but has turned it around in recent months with five finishes of 26th or better in his last six starts. He ranks 10th in this field in SGTG over the last sixteen rounds and he finished 26th at this event last year. The only positive thing to say about Alex Smalley is that he finished 6th last week at Puntacana after missing seven straight cuts and nine of twelve this season.
Coody Bros – Both of these guys finished in the Top-20 last week at Puntacana and Parker has a couple of other Top-25 finishes this season. Parker ranks 29th in SGTG among the field over the last 24 rounds and Pierceson ranks 28th in SGP. These two rookies have plenty of talent between them and likely are very comfortable playing together. Brothers playing together does not guarantee success in this tournament, but at least it means that they will not be entirely checked out and they rate as the top value play on the Odds vs Pricing model this week.
GPP Player Pool
Core
| Patrick Cantlay | Xander Schauffele | 11200 | | Matthew Fitzpatrick | Alex Fitzpatrick | 9700 | | Tom Hoge | Maverick McNealy | 9400 | | Nick Taylor | Adam Hadwin | 9200 | | Billy Horschel | Tyson Alexander | 8900 | | Keith Mitchell | Joel Dahmen | 8800 | | Davis Thompson | Andrew Novak | 8100 | | Taylor Moore | Matt NeSmith | 7700 | | Dylan Wu | Justin Lower | 7400 | | Alex Smalley | Matthias Schmid | 7200 | | Parker Coody | Pierceson Coody | 6600 |
Secondary
| Nicolai Hojgaard | Rasmus Hojgaard | 9100 | | Beau Hossler | Sam Ryder | 8600 | | Thomas Detry | Robert Macintyre | 8500 | | Aaron Rai | David Lipsky | 8400 | | Doug Ghim | Chan Kim | 8300 | | Nico Echavarria | Max Greyserman | 7200 | | Ryan Brehm | Mark Hubbard | 7000 | | Peter Malnati | Russell Knox | 6800 | | Charley Hoffman | Nick Watney | 6200 |
Tertiary
| Chandler Phillips | Jacob Bridgeman | 7400 | | Kevin Streelman | Martin Laird | 7300 | | Nate Lashley | Rafael Campos | 7300 | | Vincent Norrman | Jorge Campillo | 7300 | | Justin Suh | Rico Hoey | 6900 |
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FGI Betting Picks – Zurich Classic
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The Daily Spin – RBC Heritage
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FGI Betting Picks – RBC Heritage
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The Daily Spin – The Masters
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FGI Betting Picks – The Masters
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The Daily Spin – Valero Texas Open
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The Daily Spin – Fortinet Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Fortinet Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Tour Championship Jeff Bergerson Tough week for outright betting, so don’t risk much of your Viktor winnings from last week. That was a nice hit
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The Daily Spin – Tour Championship
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The Daily Spin – BMW Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – BMW Championship
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The Daily Spin – FedEx St Jude Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – FedEx St Jude Championship
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The Daily Spin – Wyndham Championship
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The Albatross – FanDuel DFS Golf Preview – Wyndham Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Wyndham Championship
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The Daily Spin – 3M Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – 3M Open
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The Daily Spin – The Open Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – The Open Championship
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The Daily Spin – Genesis Scottish Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Genesis Scottish Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – John Deere Classic
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The Daily Spin – John Deere Classic
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The Daily Spin – Rocket Mortgage Classic
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FGI Betting Picks – Rocket Mortgage Classic
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The Daily Spin – Travelers Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Travelers Championship
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The Travelers Championship Preview
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The Daily Spin – US Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – US Open
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The Daily Spin – RBC Canadian Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – RBC Canadian Open
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The Daily Spin – the Memorial Tournament Charity Having just observed Memorial Day, I thought it would be nice to use this column to do a little bit of outreach
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – the Memorial Tournament
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The Daily Spin – Charles Schwab Challenge
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Charles Schwab
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The Daily Spin – PGA Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – PGA Championship
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The Daily Spin – AT&T Byron Nelson
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – AT&T Byron Nelson
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The Daily Spin – Wells Fargo Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Wells Fargo Championship
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The Daily Spin – Mexico Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Mexico Open
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The Daily Spin – Zurich Classic
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Zurich Classic
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The Daily Spin – RBC Heritage
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – RBC Heritage
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The Daily Spin – The Masters
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – The Masters
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The Daily Spin – Valero Texas Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Valero Texas Open
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The Daily Spin – WGC Dell Technologies Match Play
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Match Play
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The Daily Spin – Valspar Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Valspar Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – The Players Championship
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The Daily Spin – The Players Championship
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The Daily Spin – Arnold Palmer Invitational
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Arnold Palmer Invitational
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The Daily Spin – The Honda Classic
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – The Honda Classic
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The Daily Spin – The Genesis Invitational
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – The Genesis Invitational
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The Daily Spin – Waste Management Phoenix Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Waste Management Phoenix Open
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The Daily Spin – AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – AT&T Pebble Beach
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The Daily Spin – Farmers Insurance Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Farmers Insurance Open
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The Daily Spin – The American Express
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – The American Express
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The Daily Spin – Sony Open
RECAP
Golf is back and the Tournament of Champions delivered our first thrilling finish of the year. For the second time in just over a year, Collin Morikawa completely melted down in the final round of a small field event (see Hero World Challenge, Dec 2021, Round 4 for previous event) and gagged away what looked like an insurmountable lead. A couple of bad shots early sent him into a mental retreat, the likes of which we have seen only a handful of times over the years. On the other end of the spectrum, Jon Rahm turned into a cold-blooded assassin, firing a 63 and closing out the tournament with a dagger on 18 that slammed the door on Morikawa before he had even reached the green.
For my own teams, this worked out well and after yoyoing around for the first two rounds, my cash team finished in the green on Sunday with plenty of room to spare. It is always nice to steal a win in a no-cut event like this one. It is much tougher for our opponents to make mistakes in these sort of events so it becomes extremely important to nail the high dollar golfers in our lineups and avoiding the landmines that plummet to the bottom of the leaderboard on the first day and make little effort to move up the board after that. This was a rare time where I managed to entirely avoid any grenades in my lineup which meant that outside of a catastrophic final round for multiple players, I knew I would be well positioned going into the weekend.
For my cash lineup, my starting point was always going to be Jon Rahm. The combination of his recent form, dominant course history over many starts and the newer, flat pricing structure on DraftKings made him an easy choice to build around. We also knew that going into the tournament, he was likely to be the highest owned golfer in cash games by a large margin. Why is this important? Many of you have heard me talk about this at length on our podcast or in these pages in my columns. The last thing that you want to do with a cash game lineup in a tournament of this type is to turn it into a bet on Jon Rahm playing well or poorly. Rahm ended up being over 60% owned in the $100 double up this past week. When a player like that wins the tournament, if you did not roster him, you are at an immediate disadvantage and need to make up a lot of ground with your team. If he does not win the tournament, but still finishes near the top, you could still be in rough shape. Rahm has never finished outside of the Top-10 at Kapalua so at worst, maybe he ends up T7 and your usage of him neither helped nor hurt you.
In GPP contests, it makes a little more sense to pull the fade if you want to play the ownership game. While Rahm has dominated at Kapalua, you know that at some point in his career he will eventually throw up a dud performance and finish 19th or something along those lines. If you fade him throughout the entire run, you may lose for 4-5 years in GPP contests, but if you are consistent in your approach, you should be pretty live the year when he struggles and hopefully you select the right core to take advantage of the moment. However, in cash games, there is no need to try make these sorts of ‘hero calls’.
The other consideration that we need to think about this year is the way that DK has shaken up its pricing algorithm again. There have been a few different eras of pricing at DK and my feeling is that in 2023, we have entered an era of flatter pricing, much more akin to what we are used to over at FanDuel where you can consistently build stronger lineups from top to bottom. What does this mean for us in cash games? It is likely that going forward it will be considerably easier to roster the top golfers in the field without having to make big sacrifices in other portions of your lineups. At the 2022 TOC, Rahm was $11k, but this year he was only $10k. That does not seem like a huge difference, but when you get down to that last roster spot, it can make a huge impact on the quality of your team. I am not 100% certain that this will continue throughout the year, but I want you to keep an eye on it as this marks the second week in a row where the top priced golfers have not reached the $11k mark. If this trend continues, expect ownership of golfers like Rahm, JT and Scottie Scheffler to skyrocket in cash games this year beyond what we have witnessed over the last few years. Be sure to plan accordingly to adjust your strategy as needed to counter this trend in both cash game and GPP contests.
The rest of my lineup was focused on finding the best value plays in the stack and seeing how much cap space I had at the end to select my final star players. I locked in Tom Hoge almost as quickly as Rahm. His salary was ridiculously low last week for an event without a cut. Hoge’s irons have been about as good as it gets on tour of late which set him up well for Kapalua. I certainly was not expecting a 3rd place finish, but went in believing a Top-10 was within his grasp. He gained over 10 strokes on approach last week and though we know he will go through stretches during the year of uneven play where he will miss a lot of cuts, this was a low risk week to use him even if he was not totally on his game.
My other two value range golfers were Seamus Power and Brian Harman. I loved the form for each player coming into the tournament as Power had a win and two other Top-10 finishes to end the fall and Harman had a pair of 2nd place finishes along with two other Top-25s to start his season. Harman continues to be lights out from tee to green and though he was not great with his putter last week, he is usually a solid player on Bermuda greens. He finished 16th for the week and missed a 7 foot birdie putt on the final hole on Sunday that would have secured the AU70 bonus. Power was not quite as good, but not awful either. He shot 69 the first two rounds and 70 the final two rounds, slowly slipping back to 25th by the end of the tournament. He did manage to be bogey free on Sunday though he did not make a birdie over the final nine holes which was costly in terms of his overall placement. Fortunately, this was my worst performing player and it was not even all that bad.
I had plenty of flexibility on the final two roster spots. Sungjae Im was a player that I circled as soon as I saw the salaries for the week. He had back to back Top-10 finishes at Kapalua and a game that seems tailor made for the course. $8300 seemed $500-700 lower than what I would have expected last week on price so I was never hesitant in getting him into my lineup. He delivered a 13th place finish for the week which is about the floor for what I would have expected. He could have broken into the Top-10 on Sunday, but a bogey and then a double bogey on the back nine proved costly.
My final golfer for the week was Justin Thomas. I love playing JT in these types of events as he seems to turn his game up around the best players in the world. Unfortunately, he was not at his best last week. He ended up with three double bogeys over the weekend, letting a few holes get away from him on a course that usually does not push players all that hard. His 25th place finish was poor for someone that has won at Kapalua previously and been in contention many times. I was lucky that it did not hurt my team, but you can get away with an off week from JT when the rest of your roster holds up well. I’ll take the win to start 2023 and am excited to move onto our first full field event of the year.
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Sony Open
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The Daily Spin – Sentry Tournament of Champions
Welcome to our 9th year of PGA coverage here at Fantasy Golf Insider. It is hard to believe how fast time flies by each year since we began our endeavor, but one thing remains the same and that is the level of excitement that I feel every year in January as the Tour comes back to life and the Hawaiian portion begins. Maybe it is the beautiful scenery, maybe it is the later start times and evening golf or perhaps it is the return of PGA DFS, but I am always especially excited this time of year. The whole west coast swing always feels fresh and new and the fields are always interesting and filled with top level names.
There are going to be a lot of changes on tour this season now that the LIV Tour has ramped up and will compete side by side with the PGA Tour. I am doing my best to reserve judgement, but so far, it seems like the PGA Tour will be implementing a lot of positive changes that should improve the game, even if the fields seem a bit diminished. The key here is that there are so many young, talented players waiting in the wings that I do not think it will be long before many step up to fill the void. Just as there are other MMA leagues around the world besides the UFC, the LIV Tour can exist without destroying the product that we are most focused on. I also see that the Masters will not be excluding LIV members this year and expect the other major tournaments to fall in line. It seems far-fetched that the LIV Tour will not receive OWGR points for its players at some point so in the long term, my own thought is that we will still see four events each year with a loaded field.
Before I jump headfirst into the TOC, I want to mention our NFL DFS website, Football Insider Edge. We are currently finishing up our fourth season over there and it has been another wonderful season. I am currently 59-41-3 on my betting picks and Jeff gave us a very live ticket for Offensive Player of the Year in his Prop bet picks for 2022. I will again finish with a winning record in cash games for the 6th year in a row and we’ve had a number of nice GPP hits from members of our community. If you have not checked it out yet, hit me up and I will give you full access to the site for a significant discount. You can even lock in a discount for next season now if you are new to the site.
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Sentry Tournament of Champions
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Hero World Challenge
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The Daily Spin – Hero World Challenge Welcome to the final event of the year for The Daily Spin for PGA. I have had so much fun covering golf during
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The Daily Spin – RSM Classic
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – RSM Classic
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Stat Boy’s Weekend Warriors – Cadence Bank Houston Open
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The Daily Spin – Cadence Bank Houston Open
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The Daily Spin – Mayakoba
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Mayakoba
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Butterfield Bermuda Championship
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The Daily Spin – Butterfield Bermuda Championship
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The Daily Spin – CJ Cup
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – CJ Cup
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The Daily Spin – ZOZO Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – ZOZO Championship
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The Daily Spin – Shriners Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Shriners Open
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The Daily Spin – Sanderson Farms Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Tour Championship
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NFL As most of you are well aware, the NFL season is right around the corner which means that Jeff and I are preparing to kickoff our fourth season with
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NFL As most of you are well aware, the NFL season is right around the corner which means that Jeff and I are preparing to kickoff our fourth season with
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – BMW Championship
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The Daily Spin – FedEx St Jude Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – FedEx St Jude Championship
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The Daily Spin – Wyndham Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Wyndham Championship
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The Daily Spin – Rocket Mortgage Classic
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Rocket Mortgage Classic
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The Daily Spin – 3M Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – 3M Open
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The Daily Spin – The Open Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – The Open Championship
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The Daily Spin – Scottish Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Scottish Open
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The Daily Spin – John Deere Classic
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – John Deere Classic
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The Daily Spin – Travelers Championship
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Travelers Championship
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The Daily Spin – US Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – US Open
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The Daily Spin – RBC Canadian Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Canadian Open
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The Daily Spin – the Memorial Tournament Charity Having just observed Memorial Day, I thought it would be nice to use this column to do a little bit of outreach
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – the Memorial Tournament
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Charity As we approach Memorial Day, I thought it would be nice to use this column to do a little bit of outreach if you good folks do not mind
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Charles Schwab Challenge
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RECAP
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – PGA Championship
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RECAP Another week, another win. It’s strange how there are seasons where it feels like I have to fight all year to be profitable and yet, other years it feels
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – AT&T Byron Nelson
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Wells Fargo Championship Jeff Bergerson (4 Winners, Luke List 90-1 Farmers, Tom Hoge 66-1 Pebble Beach, Scottie Scheffler 30-1 WMPO, Sam Burns 25-1 Valspar) Tony
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RECAP
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RECAP The Zurich Classic certainly is not at the top of my list of favorite events each year as the field is soft and it is a little gimmicky so
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Mexico Open
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – Zurich Classic
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RECAP
The Masters this season was about as much fun as I have had with that event over the last five years. The tournament itself was not that close for much of the weekend, but being the mercenary golf fan that I am, when my money is doing well, I am happy. I am really pleased with the way everything worked out. During the Match Play event, as I was hedging out of my Keven Kisner ticket to bet on Scottie Scheffler, I perused the odds for The Masters and noticed a number that looked a little off. Most of the odds leading up to the tournament were really tight so seeing 28-1 jumped off the page. I rarely bet on events ahead of time, but I knew that number would not last so I jumped on it along with a Corey Conners ticket at 80-1. Within a day after winning and moving up to being the #1 player in the world, the odds dropped to 14-1 for Scottie and eventually fell to 45/50-1 for Conners. I did my best to share the info and immediately posted in Slack that the number was still available for those that were interested. Typically, making these sorts of calls flames out spectacularly for me and nothing comes of my call, but this time around, everything worked to perfection and Scottie was in charge the last three days of the tournament.
I was once again very fortunate on how to play a hedging situation. Going into Sunday, it was basically a two man race, a rare opportunity to pull off a hedge without having to worry about anyone sneaking in to swipe away a win. Two holes into Sunday, I was regretting my decision not to hedge as Scottie was a mess and Cam Smith birdied his first two holes. When Scottie was unable to get onto the green with his approach shot on the third hole, I swiftly moved to my computer, considering an even money hedge as the wheels for Scottie seemed to be falling off. However, that was when I caught a massive break as Cam also came up short on his approach shot and then Scottie chipped in for an unlikely birdie while Cam could not get up and down, dropping a shot to fall back to the original margin of three strokes. I watched much of the rest of the tournament from my computer, preparing to hedge just in case, firing off a string of reverse jinx messages in slack to try to keep Scottie on track. He had plenty of chances to close it out between the 8th-10th hole, but let Cam hang around. When Cam birdied 11, I started to think we might be in for a tight finish. That was when the 12th hole again played a key role in deciding the tournament. Once Cam made a triple bogey, it helped Scottie to relax and he knocked in a couple of birdies to build a comfortable lead over Rory, who again made a meaningless Sunday charge when he was out of contention. In addition to the Scottie ticket, I also hit Top-10 wins on Corey Conners, Shane Lowry and Willy Z.
On the DFS side, I managed to put together a relatively sweat free roster that went 6/6 for the week and cashed with ease. Though the lineup did not have tremendous upside due to the utter and complete collapse on Sunday by a couple of golfers, the lineup served its purpose. The key to building a winning cash game lineup for The Masters remains the same. Keep it boring. Stop chasing players that struggle at the course and do not chase the rookies at the event. In the $250 double up, Gary Woodland was owned by 26% of the field. What is happening here? Cam Young had a bunch of ownership. Thomas Pieters was 15% owned. People owned Luke List. Weird.
Though Scottie Scheffler was my favorite play last week for GPP contests due to ownership and his amazing form, I knew that there would be high ownership of Jon Rahm and JT with many teams even making the silly decision to stack the two together. I did not want to be out on an island in cash games with Scottie at 3% and then be fearing a big finish from Rahm who I figured would be 30-40% owned so I opted to get defensive and used Rahm as up until this season, he had been a Top-10 machine at Augusta. I figured even if Scottie won, it would not hurt me and since I already held a nice ticket on him, I would be fine either way.
Most of my roster I put together from the value range first before building up. Corey Conners was shamefully priced at 7,600 and Matthew Fitzpatrick was at $7,700. Those were the first two names I chose to build around. The pricing last week was much tighter than normal so getting a couple of solid bargains with upside potential helped to open up a little salary cap space. Conners was great again, putting up another Top-10 finish and Fitz hung around and managed a 14th place finish to get my team off to a good start.
The other two golfers that I used in the $7-8k range were Russell Henley and Si Woo Kim. Russ has been great this season and has been solid at Augusta in a few appearances during his career. Si Woo actually has been very consistent this season and also at Augusta. I hate the idea of using him in cash games, but at $7,100 he was in the right price range. I also considered dropping down to Kevin Na below $7k as he’s plenty experienced at The Masters and looked good at the Match Play, but he’s been a little up and down this season so I ended up using Si Woo instead. Russ played fine. he made a nice charge on Sunday and it looked like he would finish in the Top-15, but then dropped three shots on the back nine to fall back to 30th. Si Woo took a rollercoaster ride. After Paul Casey WD early, I felt like it was only a matter of time before another player dropped out. When Si Woo started slowly in rough conditions, I feared for the worst. However, he roared back on Friday and I thought he might even finished the day inside the Top-10 before he gave back a couple strokes. By Sunday, he was well positioned for a potential Top-10 finish and then the collapse happened where he bogeyed six straight holes to fall back to 39th.
This left me with $9k and I debated between Daniel Berger and Shane Lowry. Of course, I made the wrong call and used Berger. He started off well enough and looked like a great play early on. However, a couple of bad holes on Friday and then a slow start on Saturday, he seemed to give up on his tournament firing a 77 in the 3rd round and a smooth 80 on Sunday to make himself irrelevant in the standings. It was a disappointing result for Berger and kept my team from any meaningful upside in GPP contests, but he got the job done by at least getting to the weekend so it was not a huge loss.
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – RBC Heritage
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RECAP
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FGI Weekly Betting Picks – The Masters
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*Note – On Slack chat, be sure to join each of the channels. When you join, it starts you in the #general. Be sure to join #current-pga-event, #support, #feature-request, #euro-tour, #pga-championship, #nfl, #mma
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Fantasy Golf Insider Weekly Betting Picks – Valspar Championship
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Icon Meals
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It is not easy to find people to work with in our niche space, but we found a food delivery service that took a chance on us so we are going to give it our best shot. The name of the company is ICON Meals. I have been eating meals from them over the last three months while on my new fitness program and it has really helped me to keep my diet in check. They have a signature menu that you can pick meals from or you can customize your meals on the site to hit specific macros (exact numbers of carbs, fat, protein). The calendar is really flexible for delivery and the meals are delivered to your doorstep vacuum sealed and packed in dry ice so they are never frozen. It has saved me a huge amount of preparation time and shopping trips and I’ve been able to lose about 12 pounds since using the service. In addition, if you use our link, we can give you a code for free shipping!! They deliver anywhere in US. In any case, if you have ever considered a meal delivery service, give these guys a try. You’ll enjoy the food and you’ll be helping us out. Even if you might only be a little bit interested, give the link below a click to help us generate a little traffic. Also, if you have any questions about the food, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll be happy to answer them.
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At checkout, use code – SAVETIME (free delivery)
Recap
Did I ever say I hate the Florida swing of the tour? I may have been exaggerating just a tiny bit. Then again, having another winning week when the course played brutally tough over the weekend for the second week in a row is pretty satisfying. On the gambling side, there were about 2 minutes where I truly believed that Chris Kirk had a chance to bring home a win and a five figure payday for my outright wager. Then he remembered that he was Chris Kirk and proceeded to miss a four foot par putt on the following hole and then bogeyed the next hole to wreck his chances at getting another elusive win. Fortunately, I did hit a nice Top-10 bet on him and with Beau Hossler just sliding into a tie for 20th place (paid the full 6.5x on Bet US) along with my cash team hitting again, I picked up a nice profit for the week even if it was disappointing to miss out on a far bigger score.
For the week, every single one of my cash game plays made it to the weekend so at worst, you should have had a trash 6/6 going into the last two rounds. Sadly, the extra rounds did not exactly help everyone out as the wheels really came off the wagon for a lot of players and it seemed like many of them let their frustrations get the better of them as some huge numbers were posted on Saturday and Sunday. It was the second time in the last three years where the course played brutally hard with Tyrell Hatton pulling off the win at just -4 back in 2020. Interestingly enough, he finished 2nd this year so that is a good piece of information to store in your mind when Bay Hill is played under tougher than normal circumstances.
I really liked the field last week so it was not too tough to build a cash game/single entry lineup. Of course, I did make a couple of changes off my original lineup which hurt me as is usually the case, but I would not second guess myself about it too much. Initially, I had a team that included Rory McIlroy and Chris Kirk, but then opted to go with Fitzpatrick and Zalatoris as I felt that they each had plenty of upside and a little less blowup potential than Kirk. Fortunately, Fitz did not blow the cut on Friday or it would have been a total disaster and he did manage to steadily climb up the leaderboard as everyone else fell, earning a 9th place finish while Rory stumbled over the weekend and fell out of the Top-10. Sadly, Will Zalatoris came apart on Sunday and finished 38th otherwise the decision may have been a wash. I still think it was the right decision. I felt like either Fitz or Will had the tools to win last week while Kirk played about as well as possible and would not normally be in the chase. As for Rory, he grew frustrated by the difficult conditions and expressed as much in an interview after the tournament. It always amusing me when players talk about how ‘fair’ the course is as if there is some magic rules for some, but not others. Frankly, I did not mind the setup. It was a great test and one that Arnold Palmer would have been proud of as the rough was incredibly penal and the greens quite fast.
For the rest of my lineup, I worked through the value range and picked up two solid efforts and two not so great efforts to get me to the finish line. Let’s go with the positives first. CBez nearly missed the cut on Friday. His putting was just atrocious as he lost over 3.2 strokes through the first two rounds on the greens, very uncharacteristic of him, especially on Bermuda grass. Fortunately, his tee to green game picked him up over the weekend, especially around the greens and he managed to claw his way back to a 20th place finish. The other positive play was my new favorite cash game player, Keegan Bradley, who I think I have used now at least three times in cash games this season so I have found a way to play with fire and not get burned (though it could happen this week). He killed me on the final hole of the tournament as his bogey on 18 cost him a Top-10 finish and cost me a win on the Top-10 bet I had on him. Sigh. Oh well, getting an 11th place finish from Keegan is never something that you go into the week truly anticipating so no walls were smashed this time around.
On the not so positive side of things, both Paul Casey and Keith Mitchell went into a freefall over the final two rounds. Casey battled back a little bit on Saturday and I had hoped he would come out on Sunday ready to go, but the opposite happed and he fired a smooth 83. He went from being in contention to the bottom of the board. He may have lost fantasy points overall during the weekend considering the number of position points he lit on fire. My only thought is to take a breath and look at it as an opportunity for this week as he hurt a lot of people almost as badly as if he had missed the cut. I am a little nervous though in looking at the weather this week and seeing trouble and wondering if Casey will have the heart to deal with it. The other flop of the weekend was Keith Mitchell who shot +8 over the final two rounds and made just two birdies over the last 36 holes, plummeting to 61st place. He lost 4.3 strokes with his putter on Saturday which is where most of the damage took place. Overall, he is still playing well this season, but this does slow up the momentum he had built in recent starts.
Now we get to move on to one of the biggest events of the year at TPC Sawgrass, home of The Players Championship. It is always an interesting experience as even the best players struggle here from time to time on this Pete Dye track. There are plenty of twists and turns and trouble is everywhere so there are big numbers to be had, especially when the winds pick up going into the weekend as rain and heavy gusts are currently in the forecast. It will be a challenge to keep my Florida winning streak going, but so far, I have been up for the challenge in 2022 and I know you have as well with the number of e-mails that have come my way and all the screenshots posted in the Slack chat with big wins.
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Fantasy Golf Insider Weekly Betting Picks – The Players Championship
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RECAP
Anytime I walk away a winner at the Honda Classic, I will take it. It is usually a sign that we are really on and I am feeling fantastic about how the year has started in 2022. It feels like our DFS picks and outright betting plays have been really strong so far and we keep seeing FGI logos up near the top of a lot of contests and not just from people who buy in for big dollars every week either. Our own Stat Boy was near the top of the board in the $555 last Sunday and seemed to have a stranglehold on it until Daniel Berger inexplicably collapsed and threw away a six shot lead over the last 19 holes. In any event, it was a profitable week overall for most of us. I had Sepp Straka in about 10% of my lineups in GPP, but unfortunately was not able to pull together a 6/6 lineup as names like Sungjae Im and Tommy Fleetwood choked on Friday to miss the cut as players that were priced up near the top last week. Nothing is more frustrating than when you find the diamond in rough like Straka on the week when he hits big only to have some of the names you thought were locks go ahead and miss the damn cut. Fortunately, my cash game team came through with relative ease and I hit a couple of Top-10 bets on Adam Svensson and Same Ryder so I walked away feeling good and more energized for the rest of the Florida swing as my player pool came together really well this week.
I thought there might be some big things in store for my team in single entry contests for the week after a strong start on Thursday, but Tommy Fleetwood completely melted down on Friday afternoon to blow the cut. He started off so well on Thursday and looked like he might be a contender, but then did nothing on Friday, making only one birdie on the 18th hole to miss the cut by a single shot. It has been a couple of tough years on the PGA Tour for Tommy so perhaps seeing his recent results on the Euro Tour and his history at PGA National swayed me too much considering his overall game the last two seasons. Sometimes we do crazy things in thin fields and looking back, it seems like Tommy should have been an easier fade for me at that elevated price.
Billy Horschel was a lock button play for me in cash last week along with about half of the field. He’s played great off the tee and with his putter and now he’s starting to put it together with his irons. He struggled on Friday and just hung on to make the cut, but battled over the weekend and crawled back up to 16th for his fourth Top-25 in five starts this year. He’s building off of a strong 2021 campaign and he’s back in Florida where he typically plays his best golf so this could be another big year for Billy.
After spending up for two players, the rest of my roster was filled with golfers in the value range below $7k where we had some nice options to work with. Denny McCarthy continues to play well this season. Two seasons ago, things were looking promising, but 2021 was a little bit of a step back for Denny. However, he finished the fall portion of the season playing well and has kept it going through the first two months of the year. Though the tee to green game was not very good, his putter carried him, which is fine. Denny is a Bermuda specialist so as long as the part of his game shines that we are looking to for results, I will take it. He finished 30th for the tournament.
KH Lee seems like the new CBEZ this year after posting another made cut, but finishing 48th. He’s made the cut in all six of his starts in 2022, but finished no higher than 26th. The irons are not there for Lee at all right now which is definitely capping his potential for more upside, especially at events like Honda, but he is still making the cut every week which is a big improvement from previous seasons when he tended to run hot and cold making him too tough to project as a usable playing for DFS purposes.
I hate to say it, but for whatever reason, I always seem to come back to Chris Kirk. He’s a talented player that has made me money in his best years and it seems like these last couple of seasons we are starting to see the old Kirk again after getting his life together. He’s a player that can miss the cut even when everything is seemingly lined up perfectly so I always hold my breath when I roster him, but last week, he was in ‘good Kirk’ mode the first two rounds so he helped to carry my team even though he fell back over the weekend as expected. This is the time of year you want to use him so hopefully he can continue to run hot after his 7th place finish.
Finally, Lucas Glover rounded out my roster. I had thoughts of getting a little more adventurous with Sam Ryder or Adam Svensson, but could not pull the trigger as I just wanted a player with more experience to get to the weekend and get home without a problem. Usually, you can count on Glover to do that at PGA National where his accuracy off the tee and precision iron play help to steer him around the many problem areas throughout the course. He performed as projected, finishing 30th for the week. Like McCarthy, the parts of his game that we expected to be strong looked great as he was fine off the tee and on approach. If he could have added anything at all with his short game, he could have easily had a Top-10 finish. Fortunately, I did not need a big finish. Even though only one of my four value players outperformed their salary, a good, solid 5/6 team was never in danger on Sunday and cruised to an easy win. Now we are off to two of my favorite events of the season with the API this week and The Players Championship next week.
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RECAP
As I tearfully leave the west coast swing behind, I have to let out a deep sigh as we move on to the Florida swing as four of the next five events will be in the Sunshine State. I need to prepare myself emotionally for the types of things that will bring me pain on shot tracker in the weeks ahead. Be ready to see: Shot 1 275 yards to water, lots of squares and double squares and rounds that go right off the rails just at the moment when everything starts to seem okay. The Honda Classic is always a tough event with the winner in the mid to low single digits most years and where it is tough to go through a career without having a few blemishes on the course history chart for even the best golfers here.
Before we go all the way to Florida, we should look back one last time at California where we had another great event at Riviera over the week. Sadly, in cash games, things did not go my way, but I did find some profits to make up for it in GPP contests as I had close to 20% Niemann and 13% Cam Young so I had a few teams that showed up well. However, in cash games, I had to make the same mistake that I always promise myself to be done with every year in that I paid up in a marquee event when I did not need to do it.
I thought that there was enough depth to the field last week so that I could get away with paying up for Jon Rahm. He’s been playing so well that even though his putting has not been perfect, I thought he was in line for an easy Top-10 and maybe could even contend again. I came off of my Rory/Hovland pairing and that ultimately buried me as Rahm barely made the cut and waited until Sunday to mount any sort of move. Once again, he was excellent off the tee and on approach, but terrible around and on the greens…ugh, Even playing that badly in his short game, he still managed a 21st place finish so he was not the reason I lost, but he certainly did not do his part to help salvage my roster.
After Rahm, I dropped down to Will Zalatoris at a nice price of 8800. He played okay, but never really made a move and finished 26th, not great, not awful. He dropped three shots over the last seven holes or it could have been a much better result. His putter held him back once again. Had I known that there would have been so much scoring, I may have shied away from Will as Riviera usually plays a little tougher and he’s not likely to win an event where a lot of birdies are required. Once again, he did not lose it for me, but definitely did not provide any extra upside.
Once I had spent up for Rahm and then Zalatoris, I had to work down into the value range and while plenty of my picks below $8k killed it, I landed on a couple that blew up in my face. Talor Gooch caved in quickly on Thursday. Riviera can kill a player quick if they lose focus and over a few holes, it all came apart for Gooch. He was awful in all phases which was frustrating as he’s been so good all season and had missed just two cuts while also having seven Top-25 finishes. He’d been great at Riviera in three previous starts so it just was not his week. He was heavily owned once Fitz WD so all was not lost quite yet, but it put me in a deep hole.
I was always playing Paul Casey at $7,600. That is a silly price for a player of his caliber who has consistently played well at Riviera and other tough courses on tour. He played well and finished in 15th place, a great finish for his salary. With his irons and consistent cut making ability, I will roster him every single time he hits this price point. He was brilliant on approach again, finishing 6th in SGAPP with only his putter holding him back.
Lanto Griffin was next up for me at $7200 and though he started poorly on Thursday, he shot a 66 on Friday to make the cut and gave me enough points to pay off his salary with a 39th place finish. We did not need him to score huge points, but since I was already behind, he did not do anything to help me catch up. He’s been playing well this season and Riviera has been a nice spot for him so he’ll continue to be on my radar in 2022.
Last and least, Adam Hadwin rounded out my roster. He was another golfer that was playing well coming into the event and had a very strong course history at Riviera. He had made nine of ten cuts coming into the tournament and had not missed the cut at Riviera in seven career starts. His putting started out badly and did not improve much on Friday. His irons were downright terrible on Friday as he totally imploded after missing a 16 inch putt and lost five shots over five holes before pulling himself together to go -2 on the back nine. It was the knife in my team that put the official end to my cash game and single entry team. I still like the lineup overall. Gooch and Hadwin still look like reasonable plays so sometimes things just do not work out. Fortunately, Team FGI smoked it this weekend as Nick hit Niemann at 60-1 for an outright win that many of you tailed. Bo Fulton won $100,000 in the $4,444 GPP and David Kotler won $10k in the $888 GPP. Those were just a few of the highlights for the week as I saw and heard about countless green screens and plenty of winning stories.
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RECAP
We are now through the course rotation events for about the next 9 months until the RSM Classic. I hope you enjoyed them and were able to make a few dollars in some Showdown contests. Those fields combined with changing conditions always make for a bit of a headache, but Pebble Beach proved to be profitable for me overall. I was able to sweep my cash games and had a chance for some bigger dollar prizes in GPP contests until one absolutely atrocious hole near the end of the third round by Matthew NeSmith.
Going into the 17th hole on Saturday, NeSmith stood at -7 with a smooth path to making the cut and playing the final round on Sunday. Somehow, against all odds on a short Par 4 hole, he managed to make a triple bogey where there was not even any water in play. In Florida, where wind and water are always an issue, this would be a surprise, but when neither of those are factors like last week, it is almost inconceivable. Unfortunately, I do not have shot tracker to break down every stroke and penalty along the way, but needless to say, this mistake cost me a good chunk of changes as my team hurtled down leaderboards and into the abyss on DK and FD. Though he was not the only player that hurt me last week, his miss certainly hurt the most as he went from having a good shot at a Top-20 finish to crashing and burning outside the cut.
Wyndham Clark also missed the cut right on the line. I did not need him to do that much on Saturday and he still could not find a way to get there. Clark and NeSmith were my two misses over on FanDuel for my big GPP team which could have had legs on Sunday had both of those guys just found one more stroke. Clark’s performance was head scratcher as he’s been masterful with his putter to start the season, but was terrible last week. He’s played well overall this season so I will still be looking to him for potential salary cap relief in weaker fields.
My other miss on DK was a young favorite of mine in Mito Pereira. I am not giving up on him after missing the cut at Pebble Beach, though his performance was concerning. Obviously, not having putted much on Poa greens was a bit concerning, but he had no major issues at Torrey Pines so I would not think too much of it. What was weird was how off his irons were last week. He’s normally pretty dialed in on his approach game, but was not close at all last week and especially on Saturday on Spyglass. It is a small hiccup for him and does give us the opportunity to go right back to him this week at a great price on a course that should suit his game well.
With a 3/6, I am normally dead on DK to get into the money for cash games, but with the three round cut in place, it is really finding the upside from a few players that gets you over the top. I ended up with Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Troy Merritt to round out my squad and I easily made it into the money without much of a sweat on Sunday. I felt like a simpleton building my roster with Spieth and Day up top, but I have been able to trust them at PB over the years regardless of incoming form so I did not want to overthink it or pay the extra dollars for Cantlay and then have to sacrifice one or the other.
As erratic as Spieth can be in his play, there are still some spots on tour where it is not too hard to anticipate a strong performance. Pebble is one of those spots where the shorter courses make it tougher for him to get into trouble and his short game play can carry him. Once again, he got into his own head too much on the final two holes and blew a great opportunity to notch another win, but still, a solid overall performance and a nice comeback after a slow start the first two rounds.
Day played well until Sunday and then could not sustain the momentum. After he played well at Torrey Pines and with his history at PB, I was not about to go against him. He was in line for another Top-10 finish, but shot +2 on Sunday to slip back in the standings. I am happy to take that performance and exit the Jason Day business for the time being. I will monitor him moving forward to see if he can keep the momentum intact or if this will be over after a couple of weeks.
Finally, Troy Merritt gave us a solid finish. It looked like he might have a shot to win the tournament as he stood on the 15th fairway on Sunday with the lead, but did not hit another good shot the rest of his round and put up a miserable double bogey on the 17th hole to end any hopes of a win. It was the type of course where Merritt can have success and he’s done it consistently over the last few years. With his strong form to start the season, it will be interesting to see if he can keep it going as his iron play has been really good compared to what we are used to seeing out of him during his career.
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Fantasy Golf Insider Weekly Betting Picks – Waste Management Phoenix Open
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RECAP
As I sit in my office recapping the tournament last week, I cannot help but to look at the lower right hand corner of my computer screen to see the temperature here in the Twin Cities of -1. The weather last week was absolutely perfect as a fan attending a golf tournament. The temperature reached about 60-65 degrees each day with the sun shining down brightly and a light amount of wind coming off the ocean to keep everyone cool while following their favorite group of players. More than once, I had to stop and look out at the ocean to appreciate just how beautiful the area is and what a perfect place it is for golf.
I spent three days out on the course between Wednesday and Friday and really enjoyed the tournament. The trip out to San Diego in January is always one of the highlights of the year for me. It comes at just the right time of the winter as it gives me a brief reprieve from the endless cold and snow up here and gives me a chance to connect with close friends and family and to really appreciate the time that we get to spend together. After being in the fantasy sports business for over seven years, it is important to take a moment here and there to reflect on some of the really special experiences that I have had in the time that I have been covering the PGA Tour. I have attended probably a dozen events over the years, connected with a lot of our subscribers and built some amazing friendships. Though there are weeks where this can be a bit of a grind as we pick through some weaker than average fields, ultimately, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities that I have every week and for the unique freedom that comes from running a business that I genuinely enjoy so much.
As for the results last week, it was very close to being a perfect success….so close. Typically, most of my efforts go towards my cash game lineup each week and building that one strong lineup to get me to another payday. However, when I go out to San Diego, I always like to throw in a high dollar, singles entry lineup into DK and FD to have a little extra on the line as I follow around my players on the course. It is also fun to wind up Stat Boy when looking at our competing lineups each night.
I used the same lineup for cash games and GPP contests on DK. The big decision again came down to whether or not I wanted to pay all the way up to get Jon Rahm. After going that route at the AMEX and not liking the look of my team (or the result), I opted to take a little more risk at the Farmers and decided to deploy the extra savings to other parts of my roster. I probably should have just played Rahm at Torrey and dealt with the salary cap repercussions. He’s so reliable there every single year and the other top names can be very hit or miss. I used Xander Schauffele as my top player and while he was not terrible, he was nowhere near Rahm and he’s been up and down at best at Torrey Pines so the extra $1,100 of savings was not likely to be that helpful overall in my build. Xander finished T34 for 76.5 DK points while Rahm posted a T3 for 111.5 points, a 35 point difference. Fortunately, I got a little lucky with one particular play last week on DK and FD that helped to spark my squad. Fortunately, over on FanDuel, where pricing is always softer, I was easily able to use Rahm in my lineup without feeling like I needed to sacrifice at other spots so I received the full benefit of his stellar play over there.
Luke List looked like a strong play going into the tournament as he’s carried over strong play from the fall into the winter and with his off the tee and iron play, a longer course like Torrey Pines is a nice fit for him, especially since putting is tougher there for all players which means those 3-4 footers that Luke will miss do not hurt quite as much as usual, though on the back nine on Sunday, it sure did look like two short misses had ended his hopes. But Luke fought really hard throughout that final round and a -6 in the 4th round at the Farmers is commendable under any circumstances. Even in the playoff, there was a chance for him to fail after a mishit tee shot, but after laying up out of the bunker, he hit his third shot to a foot of the pin and Zalatoris again missed a makeable putt to seal the win. I love when players like List finally get over the hump for a win. The emotions are so raw and seeing his wife and two young kids there to share in the moment was really special. Casual fans at home that only tune in a couple of times a year do not realize how important a win like that is to List’s career and the type of security it brings to him over the next few years as well as the opportunities it unlocks.
Here is a quick look at where List has finished on tour over the years and just how close he’s been to falling back to the lower tour. In 2013, his rookie year on tour, he finished 166th and went back down to the lower tour. He returned in 2015/2016 and just barely made the playoffs, finishing 122nd. The following two seasons were a relative success and he recorded finishes of 50th and 45th. However, the next three were really tight with finishes of 92nd, 119th and 102nd. This win buys him three years and gets him into several marquee events this season as well as the TOC in Hawaii next January. This season will almost certainly be his biggest money maker as well. At age 37, he was reaching the point on tour where a bad year or two may have ended his career so this helps to ease some of that pressure and will allow him to focus on his game and not the playoff standings. Of course, stories like this are even better when they are tied to my fantasy rosters
The only player that I missed on last week just happened to end up in both of my lineups on each site. Max Homa started off well enough on the North Course carding a -4 on Wednesday, but then fell back on Friday after an early birdie. He was one under the cut line going to the 17th hole and then missed a 5 foot par putt to end his hopes, though he did birdie 18 to dig the knife in a little deeper. It was disappointing as Max is a California kid and has excelled on these types of courses over the last couple of years. He has up and down moments, but generally, I feel like I have a good read on where to play him and where to avoid him. Sadly, his miss kept my GPP teams from hitting much better paydays, but I still like the play and have no reservations about it.
The other two key contributors for me on DK were Ryan Palmer and Justin Rose. Palmer continues to be good at the Farmers each year and would have finished even better until a couple of late bogeys dropped him back to 16th place. Rose played solid golf again and looks like he may be on his way to a strong comeback this season. He was in the middle of the fairway on his tee shot on the final hole Saturday and inexplicably dunked his approach shot in the water. A birdie there would have gotten him into the playoff, but the eventual bogey knocked him back to 6th. The improvements in his tee to green game are noteworthy as his irons seem to be reemerging which is what catapulted him to being the top player in the world just a few years ago.
Keegan Bradley made both rosters for me last week and though he did nothing over the weekend, he fought his way through the cut, which is really all you can ever ask for when you roll the dice on playing him in your lineups. I trailed him for part of Thursday and Friday and he really is a magician with his irons. On a course as demanding as Torrey South, he navigates his way from tee to green really well. It makes watching him putt that much more painful as he leaves one stroke after another out on the course. Fortunately, I was not on the course on Saturday to watch him lose over 4 strokes putting, but at least he saved it for after the cut.
The final player that I used on FanDuel was Maverick McNealy. Though he melted down over the first 16 holes on Saturday and fell out of contention, he managed to finish with a birdie and an eagle and when you combine that with the hole in one that he posted, his 30th place finish still managed to produce more fantasy points than Ryan Palmer.
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Fantasy Golf Insider Weekly Betting Picks – AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am
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RECAP
As always, I am happy that the AMEX has come and gone. The only real advice that I have to share year to year is to take some deep shots on outright bets there each year. We see so many big numbers hit there over the years. Jon Rahm won there back in 2017 as the favorite, but beyond that, we’ve seen some long odds hit there many times over the years. I suppose Hudson Swafford winning was not entirely unpredictable. He’d been playing well through the fall and I brought him up the other week on the podcast. He had also previously won at this event before, though his results after that were a bit choppy at best. He was in my player pool at the Sony Open and even made my cash game player pool, but finished just 48th and had not cracked the Top-25 in eight prior starts this season so to go from middling finishes to a win left me feeling a little frustrated in being one week off. The AMEX is always a tricky event with such a huge field that is a little on the weak side and with a three round cut where it takes a very low score to get into that final round.
My cash team ended up 4/6 for the week and came up a little short of the money. At the top, I felt like it was a week to pay up for either Patrick Cantlay or Jon Rahm. With the weird cut rules, missing was not quite as punitive and a high finish would certainly be rewarded. Plus, I knew that both would likely carry very high ownership numbers so I knew fading them would get me in trouble if either worked their way into contention. I settled on Rahm as he was not that much more expensive than Cantlay and as the #1 ranked player in the world with a win there under his belt, I was not going to overthink it too much. Unfortunately, he was slow to get going, seemed ornery on Saturday about the course for whatever reason and just never made a charge to contend. He finished 14th for the week, but at his salary, that was not good enough to help me out and definitely hurt my ability to build a stronger lineup in other spots.
Given the cost for Rahm, my next play was at $8,600 for Justin Rose. I think Rosey is going to have a big comeback season this year so stick with him in these early months and I think you will be rewarded. He got off to a blistering start on Thursday and had me feeling great before struggling on Friday and just slid through the cut on Saturday and managed a 33rd place finish. It is the sort of event where one bad round can take you out of the Top-20 for the week, but all in all, Rose is continuing to progress nicely.
The $7k range is where things did not go quite as planned. I was able to get KH Lee and Andrew Putnam through the cut, but perpetual disappointments, Russell Knox and Chris Kirk both reared their ugly heads and could not make any putts for three days with Knox failing in miserable fashion on Saturday needing to only shoot -1 to get to Sunday, but making just one birdie in the third round.
I do not really fault my picks there. Both entered the week having played well in Hawaii and each had shown they were capable of big things at this event. As I scanned over the other names in the $7k range, I do not feel like I skipped over any obvious options. Perhaps I just need to stick to my normal strategy of not paying up for the big names at events like the AMEX. It might burn me from time to time, but so often, these guys do not pan our and then I end up with a handful of names that have potential upside, but also the potential to crash and burn.
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Fantasy Golf Insider Weekly Betting Picks – Farmers Insurance Open
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Recap
The Sony Open got us off and running on the right foot to open the season for me in cash games. The Sony Open is always one of my favorite stops on tour for the PGA and an event where I feel like we have always been really profitable both in cash games as well as GPP contests. There are certain events each season that I have an affinity for outside of the majors and this is one. The same course is in play each year. We have a similar group of golfers that make the trip each season to the course so that course history is very useful. The course is designed in a way so that you can easily analyze the type of player that will be successful there from year to year. We were also fortunate this year in that weather was a total non-factor so we did not need to worry about winds kicking up during a round or two to throw a wrench into the mix.
The finish on Sunday was incredible. Hideki Matsuyama made one of the all-time great golf shots on the playoff hole to pull out an improbable, come from behind win after being down 5 shots going to the back nine. What made Hideki’s play so astounding was that it was not just his tee to green game that helped him, but an incredible run of putting throughout the entire tournament. Hideki led the field in Strokes Gained Putting for the tournament and was on the plus side in that category gaining strokes with his putter in all four rounds. We always talk about how dangerous he could be on tour if he could even be average with his putter, but if he can find a way to putt like he did last week throughout the season he could be in for a career season on tour that now includes two wins already.
As for Russell Henley, he has to be feeling beside himself this week. He had a two shot lead going into the final round, shot a -5, 65 and lost in a playoff. He made two mistakes on the back nine and that was all it took for Hideki to close the gap to force a playoff. Henley has been really good over the last two seasons, but he’s now in a spot where the questions about his ability to close out tournaments will only grow louder so I will be watching him closely moving forward to see if he can shake this finish off or if it dogs him for an extended period of time.
For my cash game team last week, it was excellent to start the year off with a 6/6 team that was never in trouble over the weekend. Though I feel great about the team I put together, it very nearly could have gone south for me as I really debated a 2v2 decision and ended up on the right side by a huge number of points.
At the top, I considered going with Webb Simpson given his play at Waialae and his overall course fit, but ultimately decided that the field was just too strong in the middle to sacrifice the extra funds. I like paying up when I feel like the options are really narrow in the $7-9k range. When that happens, I am taking the approach that I am likely to lose at least a player or two to the cut line, but that I can potentially offset that with a big performance from a top player. However, at the Sony Open, that is an event where the biggest names in the field do not dominate play so I tend to be comfortable with a more balanced approach where I want to have extra chances for players in the middle range to step up with a solid performance.
I ended up starting my lineup with the almost always reliable Corey Conners who once again delivered for me with an 11th place finish. He provided considerable savings over Webb and I figured his performance would not likely be much worse even if Webb were on his game. As it turned out, Webb significantly underperformed last week so the pivot started me off well ahead of a good portion of the field.
From there, I dropped down to Billy Horschel at $8,700. His game is really a great fit for Waialae so he gave us a player with cut making ability that also had some upside potential if he got hot as he’s done a couple of times over the last year. He played well for the week and only shot one round that was a little below average on Saturday, finishing 36th. Though I would have loved a Top-20 finish, this was about what I projected for him in terms of a finish.
At $8,500, I really felt like Russell Henley was a steal last week. He is coming off of a really good season and was on a course where his game translated well. He has had some surprise missed cuts over the years, but he’s also been on the cusp of winning as well. I am fortunate that I ended up with Henley on my roster as using Webb up top would have forced my hand on Henley and would have dropped me down to Joel Dahman who ended up missing the cut. I was that close to going from an easy win to not even being close to the money. Fortunately, my instincts were correct on Henley who was also massive chalk in cash games.
I will continue to play CHIII at Waialae until it finally hurts me in the years ahead. He started off a little slowly, but shot a 63 on Friday and finished up well on Sunday with a 66 for a 36th place finish. It was a little lower than his average finish here over the years, but still a successful trip considering his $8k salary for the week. I was looking for any made cut so finishing in the Top-40 was just fine for CHIII. It will be interesting to see if he can keep this going during the early portion of the season as this is the time of year when he usually plays his best golf.
Christian Bezuidenhout (CBez) seemed like a bargain at $7,800 and his game looked like a nice fit for Waialae and sure enough, it worked out well. CBez has taken over the crown of cash game placeholder for me over the last year as he finds a way to make it to the weekend over and over. This time, he even gave us a little extra upside in recording a 17th place finish. His tee to green game and in particular, his iron play continues to be really sharp. If he can keep that going and his short game stays on par with where it was last season, he might turn some of these made cuts into better finishes.
Finally, I finished up my team with Denny McCarthy. He entered the week with a little momentum from the fall, but I thought he might end up being the weakest link after an atrocious putting performance in the first round that had me shaking my head as he is a bermuda specialist. It felt like another Carlos Ortiz type of moment from last year (poa specialist who crumbled at Torrey Pines). Fortunately, he got red hot on the front nine on Friday shooting -6 and then parring the back nine to eke into the weekend on the line. He did not do a lot over the weekend and finished 48th, but at $7,400 he more than earned his keep. I always get a little nervous about players like this coming back after a break as it is the perfect time for a letdown, but he made it through and completed my 6/6 team for the week.
It will not always be this easy and in fact, I never expect there to be more than a handful of 6/6 efforts all season, but it gets us off to a great start for 2022. This is the part of the season that I probably enjoy the most with the Hawaii events, the Farmers, Waste Management and Genesis all being highlight for me. These are all really great courses with solid fields that I very much enjoy watching during the first two months of the year. With the overlap of the NFL playoffs going on, it is maybe my favorite time of year for sports and one of the things that helps me to get through these brutal and cold winter months. Speaking of which, I will be out at Torrey Pines next week with Stat Boy for at least three rounds of the Farmers Insurance Open (Wednesday – Friday). If any of you are out there or want to grab a drink with us, shoot me an e-mail or a DM in Slack and we will line it up!
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