🍁Canadian Open

📢 Fore, Please:

• This year, I started posting “behind-the-scenes” videos from my travel for members of my YouTube channel. They’ve been enjoyable to make so I’m opening my PGA Championship video up to readers of this email. It’s not public so you’ll need the direct link to access it:

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Davis Riley: $5,800 | 117.5 PTS
Scottie Scheffler: $13,300 | 104.0 PTS
Collin Morikawa $11,000 | 95.0 PTS
Keegan Bradley: $8,100 | 93.5 PTS
Pierceson Coody: $5,200 | 86.5 PTS
Hayden Buckley: $5,100 | 82.0 PTS
TOTAL: $48,500 | 578.5 PTS

⌚ The Day of Davis

I’ll be the first to admit — I did not see that coming. Davis Riley not only won, he won big and he stared down the best player in the world. He ran away with the Charles Schwab Challenge with the composure of a seasoned winner. All of this from a guy who entered the week 444 days removed from his last individual Top 10 finish.

His odds were 300-1, he was selected in less than 1% of fantasy lineups and he pre-tournament fantasy salary was $5,800.

He becomes only the second golfer in my tracked database to win with a salary below $6,000 — Peter Malnati was $5,600 in his Valspar Championship victory earlier this year.

The size of his victory was staggering — 5 shots better than Keegan Bradley and Scottie Scheffler. Riley gained 17.37 strokes to the field last week which is the seventh most of any PGA TOUR winner since the start of the 2020 season.

Hat tip to Davis Riley and reminder that golf is a four-letter word.

😭 ICYMI: The “Sorry, Max!” Edition

Homa did bounce back and play better in round two, but it was too little, too late.

🐖 Back To Hamilton

The Canadian Open has bounced around to four different courses over the last four editions which date back six years. My love for data regressions takes a hit this week but there’s some other cool stuff we can look at.

Hamilton G&CC has hosted this event six times in history but only four times since the turn of the millennium — 2019, 2012, 2006 and 2003. The tournament is played on a composite course using holes from both the West and South courses. As I was mapping the course, one thing kept popping up…

If you can carry the ball ~310 yards, you can remove a lot of trouble off-the-tee. Before anyone freaks out — I realize that this is tee/wind/whether dependent. It also will matter how long and penal the rough is this week.

However, there are a ton of holes where carrying the last bunker will open up wider landing areas and remove some of the most penal misses. I think distance will be a way to separate from the field this week.

💣 Bombers With A Chance

It would be easy to simply look at the longest hitters in this field, but many of those guys are one-trick ponies and don’t really provide a lot of upside outside of one elite skill-set.

Above is a run of the A) Longest Hitters and B) Best Players in the field for this week. I’ve used the last 36 rounds for each of these hopefully identify the big hitters with an actual chance of winning this week. A few notables:

Alistair Docherty is probably not a name you’re familiar with. He’s been playing mostly on the Korn Ferry Tour but finished T2 at the Myrtle Beach Classic just a few weeks ago.

Taylor Pendrith is your sneaky “Top Canadian” option (+700) — a very forgivable missed cup at the PGA Championship and (4) straight Top 11s, with a win, prior to that week.

It’s Davis Thompson Week — (I’ve written or said this 30 straight weeks).

😁 Tommy Lad Leads The Way

Tommy Fleetwood is the early front-runner to be the most selected golfer in One & Done leagues this week. He’s currently pacing at 22% with Shane Lowry and Corey Conners also in double-digits.

How about that Canadian bump?! Conners, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin are all inside the Top 8. This is likely to be the highest selected rate for all three. I don’t think I’ll be given honorary Canadian Citizenship anytime soon as I’ll be fading all Canadians (except Taylor Pendrith).

If you have Sahith Theegala available, this is about as good of a time as ever to use him. He’s got the second shortest odds to win and he’s running at 7.5% projected ownership. Are you saving him for anything? Probably not. Can we even figure out what is a good or bad course for Sahith? Probably not.

The PoolGenius tool confirms that line of thinking for me — ranking Theegala as my best golfer to use this week.

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

⭐ Before You Go …

• If you know someone who would like this weekly email delivered straight to their inbox, please feel free to share it with fellow sickos. It goes a long way to help me as well!