🌸 Azaleas, Magnolias, & Green Jackets

While you’re reading this, I’m on my way to Augusta National. That’s a sentence that felt weird to type. I haven’t slept in days, and I plan on taking in anything and everything that I can for the next week.

I’ve never been more amped up to be in this space and I truly thank you for all the support. This email will be long. There’s lots to share and I hope you enjoy.

📢 Quick Announcements:

• My website, RickRunGood.com, now has LIV Strokes Gained data along with more shot-by-shot information from the league. That means that I have strokes gained data from the PGA TOUR, the DP World Tour and now LIV Golf.

• This week’s Live Chat is on TUESDAY NIGHT! It’ll kick off around 8PM ET (depending on travel). If you drop your questions now, I’ll compile them in case they get erased.

• Last week, I launched memberships to my YouTube Channel. The plan is to create “behind-the-scenes” content when I travel to events. My first video is already live.

• Splash Sports gave us the nod and made our contest the guaranteed contest for Majors. That’s $250,000 guaranteed — insane. Someone is going to win $45,000!

• This is your last chance to get into Underdog Major Drafts. I did a two-hour live show on Saturday and drafted a bunch of teams. It was a blast, check it out!

Plenty more below…

Rick

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Akshay Bhatia: $7,700 | 126.5 PTS
Denny McCarthy: $7,500 | 118.0 PTS
Rory McIlroy: $12,300 | 95.5 PTS
Jordan Spieth: $9,500 | 92.0 PTS
Brendon Todd: $7,100 | 90.5 PTS
Lanto Griffin: $5,400 | 86.5 PTS
TOTAL: $49,500 | 609.0 PTS

🚽 Akshay The Flusher

Akshay Bhatia has been an accomplished tee-to-green player throughout his career, but he’s elevating to new levels right now. He gained 7.9 strokes on approach at the Houston Open and another 8.2 strokes on approach at the Texas Open.

Gaining 16+ strokes on approach over a two-week stretch is something that Scottie Scheffler has only done once himself since the start of 2022. But wait, there’s more!

Bhatia has tacked on another 7.5 strokes putting over his last three events and has gained with the flatstick in seven of his ten starts in 2024. That is far removed from the Bhatia who finished 183rd in putting in 2023. Here are the best approach players in the field since January 1st:

😢 Winning Is Hard, Example #4,352

You have to feel for Denny McCarthy who did everything possible and should have won last week if he didn’t run into the Bhatia Buzzsaw. The last event that +21.15 would not have been good enough to win — the 2020 U.S. Open when Bryson DeChambeau gained 22.27 strokes to the field.

💼 Massive Purse, Massive Prizes

Okay, I don’t guarantee it, but Splash does. Our little RickRunGood listeners league is getting a big boost for the Majors — starting with the Masters.

• $250,000 Guaranteed Prize Purse

• $100 Entry, Up to 83 entries

• Legal & Regulated in 40+ States

• Segment Payouts For Each Event

• HERE’S THE TWIST!!

This is a tiers contest, meaning you pick one golfer from each tier for all (4) Majors. BUT!!!! Once you use that golfer, you lose him. If you select Scottie Scheffler for the Masters, you cannot use him for the U.S. Open.

It’s basically if Tiers and O&D had a baby, this would be the result. I’ve never played in one of these, so I’m excited for the new strategy.

👁️ Look To The Lead-In

Last week, I looked at notable golfers and how they fared in weeks immediately below a Major Championship. Let’s flip it around. Here are the last five Masters Champions and how they played in the five-event lead-up to their victory.

2023: Jon Rahm: 31st - WD - T39 - WIN - 3rd
2022: Scottie Scheffler: WIN - T55 - WIN - T7 - WIN
2021: Hideki Matsuyama: T30 - T42 - MC - T18 - T15
2020: Dustin Johnson: T2 - T6 - WIN - 2nd - WIN
2019: Tiger Woods: T5 - T30 - T10 - T15 - T20

Matsuyama had the worst lead-in form, but it wasn’t miserable. It’s incredible difficult to luck your way into a green jacket and generally requires stout form in the weeks and months leading up to the Masters.

🔦 History Shines on Scottie

Stop me if you’re heard this before, but Scottie Scheffler is doing things that we haven’t seen since Tiger Woods. This time, it’s in the betting markets.

He will enter the week with the shortest non-Tiger odds to win the Masters in the last 10 years:

+130: 2008 Tiger Woods (2nd)
+150: 2007 Tiger Woods (T2)
+200: 2006 Tiger Woods (T3)
+220: 2009 Tiger Woods (T6)
+350: 2013 Tiger Woods (T4)
+350: 2005 Tiger Woods (WIN)
+350: 2004 Tiger Woods (T22)
+430: 2024 Scottie Scheffler (?)
+450: 2012 Tiger Woods (T40)
+450: 2005 Phil Mickelson (10th)

If you remove Tiger and extend the timeframe back to 1985, there are only three golfers who have had shorter odds to win the Masters.

Since 1985 without Tiger

+350: 1988 Greg Norman (T5)
+400: 1989 Greg Norman (T3)
+400: 1985 Tom Watson (T10)
+430: 2024 Scottie Scheffler (?)
+450: 2005 Phil Mickelson (10th)
+450: 1988 Seve Ballesteros (T11)

It’s fascinating that there’s only been one win amongst these historically short odds but nearly all of them have contended. That’s (12) Top 11 finishes amongst the 14 occurrences.

Maybe the more telling Scottie Scheffler market is the Top 10 market. He’s the only golfer in the field who is a favorite to finish inside the Top 20 at -200. Rory McIlroy has the next shortest odds at +115.

🐕‍🦺 Woof Woof!

There are countless props for this week that have my attention — many of which I’ll be diving into on Twitter and the Live Chat. But here are three to get you started. It’s a 6.39x return on the payout.

Joaquin Niemann 72.0 R1 Score: Lower ⬇️
If you haven’t heard my praise Niemann this week yet, you just aren’t listening. Maybe one of the four best players in the world right now with plenty of game and getting better every time he plays Augusta National.

Bryson DeChambeau 73.0 R1 Score: Lower ⬇️
Plenty on DeChambeau below, but the short — this isn’t the same DeChambeau. Has been consistently great for a long time.

Rickie Fowler 74.0 R1 Score: Higher ⬆️
The Fowler struggles continue into their 7th month. The only thing worse than his putter is his driver and that’s a great recipe to get exposed here.

If you use the code “RICK” to sign-up at Underdog, you’ll get a $100 Deposit Match and I’ll be forever indebted to you.

🐶 Rory’s Battle With History

There are countless storylines this week — but the one that I refuse to look past is Rory McIlroy and his quest to complete the Career Grand Slam. We’ve talked about it so much that it feels like its lost it’s shimmer.

There are only five golfers in modern history who have accomplished this feat — Nicklaus. Woods. Hogan. Player. Sarazen.

That’s golf’s Mount Rushmore … if we were to add an extra head. It’s insane to think that a golfer could add their name to this list, in this era, as one of the favorites! It’s possible we will never see anyone accomplish this feat ever again. Now we have a guy who is +1000 on the verge? It’s jarring.

McIlroy provided ample hope with his performance in San Antonio last week.

He gained 7.5 strokes on approach, marking his best approach week on TOUR since the 2019 Wells Fargo Championship. He cut down on the big numbers as well — he made three bogies (lowest in the field) and one double. Golf isn’t played in a spreadsheet, but this is a great looking trendline for McIlroy.

 👑 Consistent Greatness

When you start digging into Masters history, you can find so much. One of my favorite ways to slice the data is to see the frequency of golfers gaining strokes to the field at Augusta National.

In most weeks, I’d look for upside. I’d want to know how often a golfer is gaining 5+ strokes to the field. But Augusta is different. We have so many rounds to sample and it doesn’t reward volatility as much as other courses. It rewards a steady, consistent greatness.

In 97 career rounds, Tiger Woods has gained at least two strokes to the field in 53% of his rounds. Obviously, no one else has done it across that number of rounds, but there are five (!!) other golfers who have a 50%+ rate.

They are Cameron Smith, Jon Rahm, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele.

🏴 Return of LIV Golfers

I now have access to the shot-level data from LIV, so I have their strokes gained breakdowns, making it much easier to compare golfers across tours. Here are all the LIV golfers in the field this week and their SG metrics for 2024.

It’s very much what you would expect from a few angles:

• Mickelson has been, by far, the worst player.

• Niemann and Rahm are excellent from tee-to-green while Bryson continues to use his driver as a weapon.

• Cam Smith has been well above average but completely reliant on his short game to get there.

From another perspective, there are some things to take note of:

• Brooks has been … bad? At least by his own standards and now it makes sense that he has been tinkering with a new style putter. Worth noting that he had old faithful back in play last week.

• After a slow start, Meronk has shown a ton of improvement and solid play.

• Sergio Garcia is still a flusher and currently putting to a zero!

🧨Speaking of Sergio…

The 2017 Masters Champion has started using a new putter and it’s had some short-term impact.

His 2024 has been marred by horrible putting and his 2023 wasn’t much better. However! Here’s the putter he used in Miami compared to the putter he had been using — this photo from Jeddah. He also used the bulkier one in Hong Kong and Mayakoaba.

Maybe he can keep the good times going because the rest of his game has been splendid.

🕵🏼‍♂️ Going To Battle With My Best Ten!

These are the last few days to enter the Underdog Major Champion Best Ball Drafts. You draft a team for the four majors, with no waivers, trades or setting lineups. Your best scores are tallied for you. This all features a $50,000 top prize from a $10 entry.

Below is my favorite team that I’ve drafted so far and here’s why:

Starting with the 1.1, Scottie is a no-brainer and feels critical to making a deep run in this format. Being able to capture Hideki Matsuyama and Cameron Smith at the next turn gives me elite short-game players with great Masters history.

Then I went with Bryson DeChambeau and Tony Finau — two guys that I think I’m higher on than most for the Masters and Majors in general (more on Bryson in a second).

Rounding it out with Jaeger (great short-game), Adam Scott (past winner), Grillo (one time!), Bhatia (drafted before he was in!) and Glover (tee-to-green specialist).

This feels good right now, but I’ll continue to try and beat it until Thursday morning.

You can draft teams on Underdog right now. There’s a $10 contest that pays $50,000 for first. Using code “RICK” will get you a $100 deposit match.

💪 It’s Actually a Par-72

This is a very low bar, but I think we are on the verge of Bryson DeChambeau’s best Masters finish of his career. The current mark is a T21 in 2016, his first ever trip to Augusta National.

It hasn’t been as visible because Bryson plays on LIV, but he’s not the same guy that tried to drive the 6th green at Bay Hill. Both visually and statistically, he’s different.

He looks much more fit and healthy than he ever has while still possessing incredible tools that can separate himself from the field.

His last seven individual LIV events have resulted in a win and (6) total Top 11 finishes. His Crushers won the team championship last year during that run as well.

Look at that stat profile! He’s been elite off-the-tee, as expected, but has really started to iron out the rest of his game. Of course, I worry about his creativity (or lack of) at Augusta National and the awkward lies that he will be presented with. But this feels like an excellent spot for the Beefy One.

😮 The Rahm & Done

Wow! I was expecting a lot of people to use Jon Rahm & Brooks Koepka in One & Done this week, but I wasn’t expecting this:

A staggering 32% of users have picked Rahm with another 23% using Koepka. Over half of pools are targeting those two alone. Then it seems like everyone who hasn’t used Scheffler will be doing so this week — 23.5% projected.

I’m all for using LIV golfers in Major Championships — the strategy is sound. But I think we should let the masses roll out Rahm & Koepka here and save those big boys for the later Championships. Koepka isn’t playing well! Let’s save it for the U.S. Open.

The more logical path to using LIV Golfers might be Niemann (7.5%) or Cameron Smith (4.3%). You’re still getting the luxury of using a LIV golfer with win equity but getting them at a fraction of the ownership.

For me, personally, my best play is Rory McIlroy. His lower ownership but having the second shortest odds is the exact situation we are looking for this week.

Above is a screenshot from the PoolGenius tool that I consulted on and I recommend you check out.

📢 The team at PoolGenius also released a Masters/Majors Pool Tool which they’ve continued to offer a discount to the RickRunGood community. They are top blokes (learned that from F1), so I highly recommend.

⭐ Before You Go …

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