🦭 Deja Vu All Over Again

📢 Fore, Please:

Hey guys — just a quick note from me.

I’m traveling Wednesday so I had to do the Live Chat Tuesday — sorry for the switch! You can always find it on-demand here.

Best of luck this week
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Thomas Detry: $7,300 | 146.0 PTS
Daniel Berger: $7,400 | 122.0 PTS
Michael Kim: $6,700 | 120.0 PTS
Christiaan Bezuidenhout: $6,900 | 114.5 PTS
Jordan Spieth: $8,700 | 111.0 PTS
Taylor Moore: $7,200 | 106.5 PTS
TOTAL: $44,200 | 720.0 PTS 

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‼️ He Did What?!

Winless no more. Thomas Detry doesn’t have many trophies on the mantle at home. He won (1) Challenge Tour event in 2016 and he won the 2018 World Cup of Golf with Thomas Pieters as his partner — that’s it.

0 PGA TOUR wins
0 DP World Tour wins

Until now.

He didn’t look like a golfer who hadn’t been in the winner’s circle. He lapped the field in Phoenix and won by a touchdown (and extra point).

Detry gained a staggering 19.65 strokes to the field over four days. That was the 5th biggest SG number for a PGA TOUR winner since 2021.

Those are some impressive wins. My sincere apologies to Denny McCarthy who lost in a playoff to Akshay Bhatia at the 2024 Texas Open.

🎢 8 Rollercoaster Runs

We’ve now seen eight rounds from the most exciting man in golf since his return from injury. The first three were quite bad as he knocked off the rust. But since the final round at Pebble Beach, Jordan Spieth has looked like an entirely different golfer.

There are lots of reasons to overreact to this tiny sample size and here are a few:

• He’s picked up at least 0.90 strokes from tee-to-green in each of those five rounds.

• His ball-striking has been significantly better than his short-game.

• His short-game has still been very positive.

If you really want a reason to foam at the mouth, try this.

This current run (+14.333) is his best five-round stretch since April of 2023 when he finished T4 and runner-up in back to back weeks (Masters and RBC Heritage).

🔁 Deja Vu All Over Again

I have this familiar feeling, but I just can’t place it. It feels like we’ve been here before and recently! Ah, that’s right! Here are the players in the Genesis field, that played the Farmers Insurance Open, using only their data on the South Course from a few weeks ago:

Just a few things to point out — Shane Lowry, Tony Finau and Stephan Jaeger all failed to make the cut despite playing well enough to do so on the South Course. Jaeger’s one round was fueled by an insane short-game performance so that doesn’t feel super sustainable.

The other two, however, flushed it around the South and couldn’t buy a putt. Those are small indicators that would have me more optimistic for this week.

🪵 Good Grief, Gary!

It’s not often that Major Champions fly under the radar but that’s definitely the case with Gary Woodland. His 2025 is getting off to a stellar start but his improvement dates back further than that.

He really started putting things together in the fall, highlighted by a T16 in Jackson and T9 in Las Vegas. He has three straight Top 25s to begin this calendar year and he’s doing it exactly how we want to see.

He’s gained 12.805 strokes from tee-to-green in his last three events while marrying that with TOUR average putting numbers. That’s a big win!

This will be his 17th trip to Torrey Pines where he’s only missed the cut twice and has (5) Top 20 finishes in his career. If he can be slightly above-average with the putter, he gives himself a great chance to find the first page of the leaderboard.

🏷️ Clearance Sale

Sitting at +4500 and $7,900 on DraftKings, there is not much positive sentiment surrounding Viktor Hovland right now. In fact, his DFS price is the cheapest it’s been since the end of 2020.

His ball-striking numbers at Pebble Beach were elite, picking up +4.767 strokes over four rounds. The short-game numbers are still a problem. His history at Torrey Pines is a bit bizarre.

He played the Farmers in both 2019 and 2021, missing the cut and finishing T2 respectively.

His only other trip to Torrey was the 2021 U.S. Open where he withdrew after getting sand in his eye!

I’m a sucker, but I can’t pass this up.

🦘 LIV Boys Go Down Under

There are only a few events on the LIV Golf schedule that are returning to the same course for the third time. The Grange, in Adelaide, checks off that box for this week.

I’m keeping a close eye on Patrick Reed this week who has finished T3 and T22 at The Grange. The eye-popping numbers come off-the-tee, where Reed has piled up massive gains (+1.26/rd).

That’s the part of his game that has been holding him back recently on both LIV Golf and the European Tour. If The Grange is a place that fits his eye, there’s a lot of juice to squeeze out of his profile.

🥇 Man Amongst Boys

Do you remember when LeBron James was in high school and ESPN would air St. Vincent - St. Mary games? I do. The thing that always stuck out to me was that LeBron was a man and he was playing against little boys. They didn’t stand a chance. He was bigger, faster, stronger, smarter — it was a joke.

That … is Jon Rahm playing on LIV. These guys don’t stand a chance. He’s the best player in the history of the league and it’s not even remotely close.

Rahm just cracked the 40 round mark of his LIV career and has gained an insane +2.42 strokes per round. The only man in the same stratosphere is Tyrrell Hatton who is 0.50 strokes behind and sitting in a tier of his own — 0.70 strokes better than the rest of the league.

The difference between Rahm and Joaquin Niemann is the difference between Niemann and Kevin Na!

We aren’t talking about a few wins to pad the stats. In fact, he hasn’t won nearly enough (just twice). He has a 60% Top 5 rate, which is basically 2x anyone else in the league and a 86.7% Top 10 rate which is (again) leaps and bounds over everyone.

🦁 Hear Me Rory

Justin Thomas and Tom Kim made up the majority of my selections in OAD last week. After 36 holes, both were doing great — too bad they had to play 72! To Thomas’ credit, he rallied late and got inside the Top 10. Kim struggled all weekend long and fell to T44. On to the next!

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I’m really tempted to play Rory McIlroy. It’s a signature event with a generous cut which is where you want to use your best golfers. Saving him for a Major would introduce a bigger field and a smaller purse.

Xander Schauffele isn’t playing this week, removing a golfer who would have held 5-8% of the win equity. Rory’s driver will be a weapon here. I’m worried that Torrey Pines can beat up the top players but the longer I sit here, the more convinced I am about Rory.