🌯 Me Llamo Ricardo

📢 Fore, Please:

We are fully entrenched in the golf season now.

22 days until THE PLAYERS.
50 days until the Masters.

I’m foaming at the mouth. It feels so good to be rolling from one great event to another, thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you all Wednesday for the LIVE CHAT — click here.

Best of luck this week
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Ludvig Aberg: $9,800 | 125.5 PTS
Maverick McNealy: $7,800 | 108.5 PTS
Denny McCarthy: $6,800 | 94.0 PTS
Tony Finau: $8,200 | 91.5 PTS
Patrick Cantlay: $9,400 | 90.0 PTS
Patrick Rodgers: $6,200 | 87.0 PTS
TOTAL: $48,200 | 596.5 PTS 

📝 They Are Testing Us

Splash has been very good about guaranteeing our weekly contests but I didn’t see this one coming. They slapped a $10,000 guarantee on the Mexico Open contest. That amount is usually reserved for Signature Events. So it feels like we are being put to the test.

Join: https://bit.ly/4hUHvIN

Can we fill it? And if so, does that launch us into a new era when the bigger events roll around? I’d like to think so. We already have a $100,000 “Three & Done” live for the Players + Majors. Let’s keep it rolling.

🤖 It’s Becoming Aware

What a week for Ludvig Aberg who stamped his “Signature” career victory onto his resume in exciting fashion. He held the outright lead exactly once throughout the tournament — when his birdie putt dropped on the 72nd hole.

There’s a few things that stand out to me about this win.

First, Luddy picked up 10.00 strokes from tee-to-green for the week, which was first in the field by a sizable gap. No real surprise there, but it’s such a weapon that translates to every golf course on the planet.

Secondly, he “only” gained 2.31 strokes putting for the week but it felt like a lot more. The strokes gained calculation doesn’t take into account the moment or the “leverage” of the situation.

Yes, an 8-footer on Thursday is worth the same as an 8-footer on the 72nd hole, but they feel a lot different. Ludvig was nearly perfect in high-leverage putts

✅ 6’11” for par on 12
✅ 5’6” for birdie on 14
✅ 25’6” for birdie on 15
❌ 8’9” for birdie on 17
✅ 6’9” for birdie (and the win) on 18.

Those five putts were all incredibly high on the leverage meter and he needed to make at least three of them to have a chance of winning. He made four and didn’t even have to go to a playoff.

This should hopefully put to bed any non-sense about his “Sunday Struggles”.

🤮 Sometimes The Best Have Their Worst

It was a frustrating week to be a Rory McIlroy backer. He was pretty stellar through two rounds and lurking in contention going into the week. And then … the wheels fell off.

Yes, there were some really bad moments and short missed putts but it was a consistent struggle on nearly every single putting green. Over the weekend, he lost strokes to the field on 24 of 36 greens.

The “good news” is that Rory has often bounced back after dismal putting performances. He lost 7.8 strokes putting at the 2024 FedEx St. Jude and then picked up 1.34 strokes putting just seven days later at the BMW Championship.

His 3.63 putting loss at the 2024 Cognizant was followed by a 1.56 stroke gain the next week.

This time around he will have some more time to get dialed in. We probably won’t see Rory until the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

😴 Don’t Knapp On Him

Since winning this event last year, Jake Knapp has done … very little. Almost nothing.

He’s played 24 events since and has finished outside the Top 50 in 14 of those. He’s had two Top 10s but his most recent such finish was in Early May. However!

He’s starting to lay down breadcrumbs of his game coming back to form.

He’s gained strokes to the field in every event of 2025 and is coming off his best finish of the campaign — a T17 at the Genesis Invitational. He’s trending at the right time, heading back to VidantaWorld for his first-ever title defense.

🐨 Koala Karl Coming Out of Hibernation

Where has Karl Vilips been? Seriously — does anyone know? He was the 2024 KFT Rookie of the Year thanks to a win, runner-up and (5) more Top 25s in only 10 starts last season.

He played the Australian Open in December (T46) but hasn’t played since. He hasn’t made a PGA TOUR start despite earning his card through the junior circuit last year.

He’s such a talented and excited player, I’m not sure why he hasn’t played but I’m excited to see him in action this week.

🌍 Kenya Dig It?

Nearly 10,000 miles from Puerto Vallarta, the DP World Tour will tee it up in Nairobi, Kenya. This event dates back to 1967 as a part of the “Far East Circuit” but working up the ranks to a DP World Tour event in 2019.

There are a handful of really interesting names in the field for this week, let me address a few:

• Brandon Robinson Thompson (+5000): Probably my favorite player in the field. He’s on a life-changing run of golf right now that began with a Challenge Tour win in August. He’s stayed hot since, earning (5) Top 20 finishes on the DP World Tour since. That includes a T8 and 3rd in his last two events.

• Minkyu Kim (+7000): Won the Korean Open last summer and finished 4th at the revered Shinhan Donghae Open on the Asian Tour. Has gained 10 strokes putting in his last eight rounds and flushed it in Qatar. He needs to keep the driver in play, but there’s a pathway to success.

• Eugenio Chacarra (+3000): He’s no longer on the LIV circuit and it appears he’s looking for a little revenge as he has been working his way around the globe to find some status. His last four starts have all come on the Asian Tour where he’s gone T14, T5, T6, T3. He’s an incredible talent and is playing for his job every week.

👓 The Man For the Job

Last week was … pain. I played Rory McIlroy in every single OAD entry which didn’t end well. He didn’t play poorly overall but the missed putt after missed putt definitely took its toll on him (and me!). No worries, this is a new week.

If you haven’t seen this before, the OAD tool from Pool Genius makes custom recommendations for you depending on your league size, entries, prize distribution, etc. It’s a very well thought out tool that I recommend everyone sign up for — it’s worth way more than they are charging.

💰 Plus we get a discount, so sign up here: bit.ly/3PjawS7

This is the smallest purse of the year, at '“only” $7,000,000. That assumes that you don’t have to make a pick for any opposite field event.

The winner’s share will be $1,260,000 which is still plenty useful but we don’t need to go crazy here. As of right now, Akshay Bhatia is trending to be one of the highest selected golfers of the season — roughly 33% at the time of writing this. He’s the obvious play if you’re front-running but I will be scattering a bunch of entries around Kitayama, Stevens, Knapp and Rasmus.