💦 Bring An Extra Sleeve

📢 Fore, Please…

Hi — nothing cutesy from me this week.
Let’s get it.

Rick

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Jacob Bridgeman ($6,800): 138.5 pts
Adam Scott ($7,900): 120.0
Aldrich Potgieter ($6,000): 118.0
Rory McIlroy ($11,300): 113.5
Kurt Kitayama ($7,300): 111.5
Ryan Fox ($6,500): 105.5
Total: $45,800: 707.0 pts

🌉 No Bridge Too Far

There’s only been one small change in Jacob Bridgeman’s game from 2025 into 2026. But that small change is actually massive and is the entire reason he has found immense success early in the new year.

He’s always been a good putter but now he’s one of the best approach players on TOUR (so far) in 2026. He’s hitting 74% of his greens in regulation, compared to 65% a year ago.

He’s currently 7th on TOUR in SG: APP after finishing 124th in the category last year.

I’m not sure how sustainable that will be this year. We’ve seen Sam Burns and Denny McCarthy make similar improvements over the years, before eventually falling back to their 100 round baselines. This will be the most important thing to keep an eye on with Bridgeman moving forward.

🚀 He’s At It Again, Ma!

Despite vomiting all over himself for three Thursdays in a row, Scottie Scheffler is still the best player on TOUR in 2026. His +2.59 sg/rd is right in line with that he did in 2025 (+2.60) and 2024 (+2.55).

Jake Knapp and Jacob Bridgeman are two to keep an eye on as the year continues. Will they be able to sustain this high level of play?

Joel Dahmen and Ryan Fox should get a hat-tip, making the most of their three starts each. Dahmen’s T7 at Torrey Pines went largely unnoticed and his missed cut at Phoenix was fine — only losing 0.827 strokes to the field. He’s played much better than the finishing positions would indicate.

👐 Wide Open Week

The Cognizant is not in a good spot on the schedule. It’s smack dab in the middle of four massive events and, despite being close to home to many top players, it becomes a natural resting spot.

The field was already weak before Ben Griffin, Adam Scott, and Jacob Bridgeman withdrew on Monday morning, but now it’s even weaker!

There are 17 golfers priced at $8,000 or more on DraftKings. Those 17 golfers combine for 20 career PGA TOUR wins — with nearly half coming from Brooks Koepka alone. That’s a combined 0.99% win rate.

That, and the combination of volatility at PGA National, makes me think this tournament is VERY WIDE OPEN. There are cases to be made for at least 50 golfers who could win this thing.

🤖 Summing Up The Sim

I’m not the only one who had some thoughts about the field this week. In the Tournament Predictor, which simulates the results of the event 10,000x, an uncommon name found himself at the top of the Win% column.

I did a double-take and actually got a message or two about this. Nico Echavarria? Is that right? Does the model have the right Nico? So I looked under the hood.

The model loves his volatility. It doesn’t care about finishing positions 2-100, it’s just counting the number of times he wins.

Note: He has a much lower make cut, Top 20, and Top 10 rate than many of his peers in this simulator. His outcomes are at both ends of the spectrum.

He’s one of the few guys in the field who could gain eight strokes on approach, like he did at Pebble Beach. He’s also one of the few guys who has actually won PGA TOUR events recently — Baycurrent in 2024 and Puerto Rico in 2023.

His range of outcomes is massive, so only consider him when big multipliers and game theory are at the highest leverage points.

✏️ Rewrite At 30,000 Feet

I’ll be honest, I did have to re-write a portion of my article for PGATOUR.com this week. All those WDs happened while I was in the air and I had made the case for Adam Scott to finish inside the Top 5 this week. I’ll count that as a win, though.

The rest still stands, a few interesting data trends for guys like Tom Kim and Christiaan Bezuidenhout have me cautiously optimistic.

Read: https://bit.ly/3ONOCt1

🥩 Home Cookin’

Florida Golf is just different, man. It’s mostly flat courses at sea-level with pure bermudagrass greens and water coming into play on nearly every shot. It works for some guys and doesn’t work for others.

It’s not a surprise to see so many Florida residents on the list of best golfers in Florida, highlighted by Shane Lowry who is gaining +1.35 strokes per round in The Sunshine State.

If you shorten the timeframe to 2022 - present, Lowry gets even better — going to +1.85 strokes per round.

🚨 RickRadarGood

In case you missed it, I pushed a new update to the Radar Tool this week. The goal was to keep it robust but still expand on the user experience and improve the visualizations.

There are a variety of new features, but I do love the shot plotting for drives and approaches. I’ve learned so much about golfer tendencies and what types of courses might set-up well for each player. As usual, much more to come here.

🗣️ Join The Discord

If you made it this far, you deserve a reward. Here’s the link to our recently created Discord community. The membership is growing and we are 750 strong at the moment.

If you are an existing RRG member, you can connect your account to Discord via the My Account page, to ensure you have access to the Member Channels. For example, the members have been testing that Radar tool for me before it went live. That’s a perk that is helpful for everyone to make sure the tools are free of bugs and provide the data y’all are looking for.

😰 Way Behind Pace

Listen, I get it — it’s not a siggy but we’ve still got $25,000 guaranteed for our contest for this week. Potential overlay incoming.
Pick six golfers, best five scores count.
Join now: https://bit.ly/SplashRRG

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