🦀 Crab Cakes & Golf

📢 Fore, Please…

For many, this is the final week of your One & Done leagues — another year in the books! However, I’m already looking ahead to next year. In previous emails, I’ve asked for feedback that I can use to get us in the best possible situations on Splash Sports next year — limited entries, big guarantees, specific rules, etc.

I’m back with another poll, but this time pertaining to our weekly RickRunGood contests. These contests have grown from $2,000 guaranteed each week to $25,000 guaranteed with no end in sight. But I want to make them better!

Option 1: Stick with the tiers system, choosing one golfer from each of six tiers. This forces you to make decisions every step of the way, but never allows you to play two golfers from the same tier.

Option 2: Go to a Salary Cap format, significantly increasing the number of lineup combinations, but removing the ease and uniformity of creating lineups.

Let your voice be heard!
Thanks
Rick

🏆 Winner Winner, Sawgrass Dinner

As you guys know, I was invited to Memphis last week on behalf of the GolfBet Creators Activation. We were pitted against one another in a handicapping competition, which I’m happy to announce that I won. 🤑

Sidenote: It turned into a game theory contest on the final day that saw me place my final units on JJ Spaun To Win, Andrew Novak w/o market, Rosey to Win, and Tommy Fleetwood over 4.5 birdies or better. This allowed me to successfully box out the competition and take home the prize — a trip and round of golf at TPC Sawgrass (woohoo!)

That was fun and all, but I’m thrilled with the access the TOUR gave us and I was still able to contribute to the PGA TOUR Live Bet Feed. It was also great running into a bunch of you who are just as sick about this stuff as I am. Thanks again for all the support!

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Justin Rose: $6,900 | 138.0 PTS
Tommy Fleetwood: $9,900 | 115.0 PTS
JJ Spaun: $7,700 | 110.5 PTS
Andrew Novak: $6,600 | 99.5 PTS
Rickie Fowler: $7,000 | 93.0 PTS
Cameron Young: $8,200 | 92.5 PTS
TOTAL: $46,300 | 648.5 PTS 

🌹 A Rose With Thorns

My goodness, Rosey! He barnstormed the leaderboard on Sunday with four birdies in his last five holes to force a playoff before nipping JJ Spaun for his first win of the year.

Rose has made the absolute most out of the handful of times he’s played well this year. He’s only gained 0.54 strokes per round in 2025, the fourth worst mark of his 23 year career. He only has (6) finishes inside the Top 40 yet he’s been able to:

• Win a playoff event

• Finish runner-up (in a playoff) at the Masters

• Lurk at both the Scottish Open & Arnold Palmer Invitational

👽 Alternate Realities

There’s some universe somewhere that bows down to the greatness of JJ Spaun and the 2025 season that he’s having. Already a Major Champion in 2025, Spaun has been dangerously close to adding a PLAYERS Championship and FedEx St Jude Championship to his resume — losing in playoffs at both events.

He’s now qualified for the US Ryder Cup Team and the boys in the locker room will likely be fighting over his services as a partner.

The resurgence of Spaun’s career is hard to qualify, but here’s how I’ll do it —

Spaun has played 238 events across nine years but 2025 accounts for 39.8% of his career Strokes Gained mark.

The biggest difference this season for Spaun is the flatstick — where he’s gained 0.21 strokes per round. That’s by far the best mark of his career. It’s only the second time he’s even been a positive putter, along with the +0.06 rate that he put together in 2022. It’s probably also worth noting that Spaun has only won golf tournaments in years that he has been a positive putter. I think that pretty clearly speaks to his game.

 🚧 Please Excuse Our Dust

Caves Valley got absolutely blitzed in 2021 when Patrick Cantlay and Bryson DeChambeau battled in a playoff after scorching the course for 27-under par.

There was a renovation to the course since the last edition that has borrowed some yardage to create a new par-70 layout instead of the par-72 that we saw in 2021. Other notable changes:

• All greens have been resurfaced.

• More danger added to the short, drivable par-4s to generate strategy decisions.

• Some greens have been relocated closer to penalty areas.

These are definitely welcome changes but I’m dubious about how much of an effect it’ll have on the best players in the world. The score (to par!!) will obviously be worse, but it’ll be interesting to see how Cantlay’s winning mark of 261 holds up.

👍 If You Like …

Let’s gamify this section and see how many nuggets I can fire off. I’ll make a variety of cases here in a new segment called “If You Like…”

• Guys Who Can Bomb It

  • Rory McIlroy and Chris Gotterup lead this field in Ball Speed, the only two golfers over 184 MPH this year.

  • Schauffele, Cam Young, Aberg, Vegas, Pendrith, Kitayama, and Fox are the only other golfers at 180+ MPH.

• The Ones Trending Up

  • Russell Henley is currently playing 1.62 strokes per round over his 100 round baseline — the highest mark in the field over the last 16 rounds. That puts his current “SG: Trend” at +2.22/round.

• Flushers Only

  • Kurt Kitayama is gaining 0.94 strokes per round on approach in the L36. That’s second behind only Scottie.

• Local Angles

  • Rory McIlroy has gained 3.70 strokes per round in Maryland, by far the best of anyone with at least three starts.

  • Rickie Fowler, Jason Day, and Justin Rose are the only other golfers with gaining at least one stroke per round.

  • Maryland Native, Denny McCarthy, has played in his home state twice — MC at the 2018 Quicken Loans and T25 at the 2022 Truist (TPC Potomac).

• Breakout Candidates

  • Jhonny Vegas is gaining 0.68 strokes from tee-to-green on himself in the last 16 rounds and (somehow) losing 0.30 strokes per round on the putting greens. The model thinks he’s ready to explode.

• The Coach Narrative

  • Patrick Cantlay confirmed he is now working with Phil Kenyon, the famed putting coach. This has been one of Cantlay’s worst putting seasons of his career, currently ranking 78th in the category.

🤑 Lean, Mean, & Green

This week’s Listener League is back and ready for your lineups!
Currently 60% full with $25,000 guaranteed!

🔗 Click Here To Join: www.SplashSports.com/RickRunGood