🪙Fort Worth The Wait

📢 Fore, Please…

As many of you know, I’ve been on PGA TOUR Live this year for their “BetCast” shows which take place 12x (siggys and playoffs). We are more than halfway done but apparently they are doing really well.

So well that they’ve added a LIVE PREVIEW show on Tuesday next week for the Memorial. I don’t have a lot of details but it’s going to air live on ESPN+ at roughly 11AM ET.

It’s really nice to see the TOUR, DraftKings, and ESPN all get behind something like this. I couldn’t have imagined this a few years ago. Progress, baby!

Rick

🏆 Last Weeks Optimal Lineup

$8,800: Wyndham Clark (166.0)
$9,900 Si Woo Kim (143.5)
$6,900: Jackson Suber (134.5)
$9,400: Keith Mitchell (125.5)
$7,000: Tom Hoge (125.0)
$7,200: Tony Finau (119.5)
$49,200: 814.0 Pts

🏆 Win-Dham Clark

Golf is weird, man. Wyndham Clark won the Byron Nelson … kind of out of nowhere?

This win is his only top-10 of the year. It’s his first win since the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach and it’s his first four-round win since the 2023 U.S. Open.

His first three PGA TOUR wins came across a stretch of 274 days. The time between win #3 and win #4 was 840 days.

He had hemorrhaged strokes putting this year and has gone through like … 8-10 (?) different putter combos to try get back on track.

Then he hoops everything last week and gained 12.5 strokes putting. That’s the best putting performance by anyone in 2026 and the second best of anyone since 2022.

It’s hard to see stuff like this coming but it’s a solid reminder how good some of these guys are. If they catch fire for four days, they can beat the world’s best.

🙂‍↔️ Si Woo Not Shaking That Ass

Normally when a player has a five shot lead after 36 holes and then loses by three strokes, I would blame them for “choking” or “vomiting all over themselves” or any other silly way to poke fun.

But while that scoring description matches Si Woo Kim for last week, I don’t think I can blame him! The man shot 68-65 on the weekend! He was 6-under from the final group and got boat-raced! This is way more bad luck than it was bad play — which has been the theme for Si Woo this year.

He continues to hold the dubious distinction of “best player without a win” this year. He’s gaining +1.34 strokes per round which is the fifth most of anyone on TOUR with at least 10 starts. He has five top-5 finishes, which is tied with Ludvig Aberg for second most on TOUR — both have zero wins.

He’s having the best year of his career by a country mile. He’s already surpassed his career highs in both top-5 and top-10 finishes. He’s nearly twice as good in 2026 as he was in his second best year (2024) from a strokes gained perspective.

👈 Left Over Right

There is a fairly significant cost of missing the fairway at Colonial CC. It ranks 11th out of 37 tracked courses and, on average, costs the player +0.38 strokes. The interesting thing is that this is one of the wider gaps between a left miss and a right miss.

The right miss is quite penal, 9th out of 37.
The left miss isn’t so bad, 25th out of 37.

It’s a 0.13 shot difference between sides which is pretty large for a course that doesn’t have a bunch of water on one side of every hole.

This is the entire field of qualified players and how frequently they hit it in each direction. You want golfers who have a lower “MoreRight%”. The way to read this is — “Russell Henley has a 1.79% lower rate of missing a tee shot right than he does left”.

Hideki Matsuyama, has a 12% left miss rate and 16% right miss rate so that is +4% to the right (wrong way!).

The guys who play big fades are often going to miss right more frequently. Notice the four most expensive lefties (MacIntyre, Bhatia, Harman, Yellamarju) all have good rates. Most guys play a fade which is right to left for southpaws. Meaning their misses are going to be in the better spots.

This may be too deep into the data, but what else is this newsletter for?

👉 This Week’s Wyndham Clark

This is a fun exercise. Which guy in this week’s field is most like the guy who won last week?

Wyndham Clark is an erratic multiple time winner who hits one shot-shape all over the yard who caught historically hot with the putter.

Could it be Keegan Bradley who has nine wins, including one Major (like Wyndham). I would argue that Bradley’s career is leaps and bounds better than Clark’s and Keegan doesn’t hit it all over the place. Erratic though? Sure!

Maybe it’s Justin Thomas. Again, the resume is too good but he definitely hits it all over the place! The only problem is that he cannot get white hot with the putter, at least to Clark levels from last week.

No, no, the answer is Tom Kim. A few wins in a really short period of time had us projecting his greatness. Then multiple years of subpar play with some recent improvement to give signs of hope. Can he spray it? Ehh — not really. But he can get scorching hot with the putter. Tom Kim’s Wyndham Championship victory was the second best SGPUTT week in the last five years — until Clark passed him last week. Congrats Tom!

⏱️ Tony FiNow or Never

I haven’t spent much time writing up Tony Finau in the last year (?) because he hasn’t deserved it. I love Tony but he has been in an extended slump, dating back to the start of the 2025 season.

Last year, Finau was a below average player on TOUR, losing 0.18 strokes to the field in his 21 starts. This year has been better, but well below his career baseline. Finau is a perfectly average 0.00 player in 49 rounds this year. He’s notched two total top-10 finishes in those 35 starts. However!!

His T6 last week looked different. He was dynamite off-the-tee, gaining +4.5 strokes which is his best driving week since the 2024 Masters. It was his best tee-to-green week since the 2024 U.S. Open.

Now he’s going back to Colonial CC where he has the best sg/round number of any player in this field (min five starts). It’s now or never.

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