🕺Alone On The Dancefloor

📢 Fore, Please:

I’m writing this from Cromwell, CT where I am participating in Media Day for the Travelers Championship. But why? Why would I travel 3,000 miles to play in a Shamble and see Scottie Scheffler answer questions via Zoom?

Because I want to.

I just want to do fun things that I haven’t done before. In reality, my chances of playing TPC River Highlands on another day are pretty slim. So I’ll be able to cross that off my list. More importantly, I get to experience that round with my friends. I’ll be teaming up with Michael Breed, Greg DuCharme, and Joe Musso to (hopefully) bring home the crown. Whether we finish dead-last, I know we are going to have a blast.

Chat soon
Rick

⌚ Worth The Wait

The workhorses finally got into the winner’s circle last week in New Orleans. Andrew Novak and Ben Griffin have been knocking on the door all year long and it finally opened for them.

As we sit here, on the verge of May, Novak and Griffin have each played 14 TOUR events in 2025. There are only five golfers who have played more than these two. All five of those golfers have been at least a half shot worse per round than the dynamic duo. These two deserved the win, playing high-volume, high-level golfer for four months straight.

😁 We Are So Back!

Two items as it relates to Splash Sports:

1) Our listener league contest is back after an off-week from Zurich. It’s still a $20/entry with $15,000 guaranteed in the prize pool. The contest has been open for longer than normal, so it’ll fill quicker than normal — if it hasn’t already.

2) At the Masters, Splash Sports offered a chance to win an all-expense paid trip to play golf with John Daly and myself. I’m going to draw the winner of that contest live on my Wednesday Chat! I’m excited to see who will join us so I won’t make you wait too long. I’ll do it in the first few minutes of the show which can be found at:

⏰: 1PM ET
📺: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWlQQyjp8rU

🤖 The Standalone Scheffler

I cannot think of another recent tournament where one superstar sat alone at the top of the field list. This week, that’s Scottie Scheffler who is roughly +250 to win this event. Vegas is implying that he will win, a full field event (!!), approximately 30% of the time.

I’ve been tracking odds for years and I don’t have another example of a golfer being this short in a field this big. Sure, there are examples of Scottie at +150 at the TOUR Championship or Hero World Challenge or whatever — but this is way different!

My numbers don’t quite give Scheffler that much credit, but it’s not too crazy.

Over the last 100 rounds, Scheffler is picking up +2.46 strokes to the field. That is twice the amount of the next best golfer (Ryan Gerard) in that stretch. That doesn’t even account for some of Gerard’s rounds being played on the Korn Ferry Tour while Scheffler plays in the best fields on a near-weekly basis.

Top 5 in raw SG, last 100 rounds:

• +2.46: Scheffler

• +1.24: Gerard

• +1.07: McCarty

• +1.04: Norgaard

• +1.00: Cummins

Um, yeah. Those are the only guys who are picking up 1+ stroke per round and none of them have a majority of their rounds on the PGA TOUR. If you only count PGA TOUR rounds, it gets even uglier. Gerard drops to +1.02/rd but still remains in second. Sungjae Im moves up to third, but doesn’t crack the magic 1.0/rd mark — just short at +0.98/rd.

TLDR: Scottie is lapping the field in a sample size that is basically a full year.

⏰ Wake Up Will!

Optimism was high for Will Zalatoris this past fall as he played his way through the FedEx Cup playoffs with a T12 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship and T12 at the BMW Championship. He would carry that momentum into the silly season and collected some notable Top 25s. But something has changed.

In the seven events from the FedEx St. Jude to the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Zalatori gained 2.755 strokes putting. Certainly not lighting the world on fire, but enough to get the job done.

In the six events since, he’s lost a total of 15.632 strokes on the putting surfaces — a complete disaster.

If you’re hoping for a turnaround this week, Zalatoris will have to overcome his historic putting woes at TPC Craig Ranch, where he’s lost 8.558 strokes putting in his six career rounds.

🍞 Warming Up The Tosti

Alejandro Tosti and his partner, Joe Highsmith, missed the cut in New Orleans last week and I couldn’t care less. I’m not reading much into those results, good or bad.

Back to playing his own ball, Tosti should be back to good results. His three starts prior to New Orleans were a T5 in Houston, T12 in San Antonio, and T2 in Punta Cana. We only have ShotLink data from two of those events (the Texas ones) where he gained 19.5 strokes from tee-to-green.

He has one start at TPC Craig Ranch, a missed cut last year. He gained 6.5 strokes from tee-to-green but lost 6.17 with the putter. It’s the second worst putting week of his career. He’s not an accomplished putter, but assuming that we can get an average week on the greens from him, he could be quite dangerous.

🤠 Proud To Be A Texan

According to the official PGA TOUR residences, there are 16 golfers in this field who live in Texas. Obviously this doesn’t take into account those who grew up here and moved away, played college golf here, or any other combination of “ties to the area”. But let’s play along for a few minutes.

If I know anything about Texans (and I don’t, really) they are a proud bunch. Teeing it up at home means more and it’s why Scheffler and Spieth rarely miss these events. But how do they perform? Well — here are those 16 Texans playing in events held in Texas.