🎸 Meet You In Memphis

📢 Fore, Please…

If you’ve been living under a rock, let me catch you up to speed. This golf season, I partnered up with Splash Sports to give away an all-expense paid trip to play golf with John Daly and myself in Nashville. It was simple to enter, just play in any of my golf contests this year and you were in the draw.

Well — that round happened last week. First off, JD and I have completely different life experiences and a love for golf might be the only thing we have in common. That “opposites attract” theory is why I think we get along quite well.

I can confirm that JD is probably the most authentic person I’ve met. He’s not faking anything. He’s not doing a schtick. He’s not acting.

Does he say some crazy stuff? Absolutely.
But he is genuinely himself.

I made a short video of the day that you can watch on YouTube right now. I’ll be honest — this is heavily edited for the sake of the internet but it should give you a pretty good idea of how the day went.

And big thanks again to Splash Sports for coordinating all this. They’ve been such a good partner for us and I don’t see that stopping anytime soon! I hope you enjoy!

📺 Watch: https://youtu.be/BBKFATuHVNY

🍺 Meet You In Memphis

Something really big is happening in Memphis this week. The PGA TOUR and their gaming arm, GolfBet, have organized a “BetSuite” for content creators.

We have a suite by the 14th green that will allow us to generate content, meet fans, watch golf and document the handicapping process. They’ve given us an unbelievable amount of access and have loosened the video restrictions so that we can share videos and nuggets along the way.

This is the first time they’ve ever done anything like this so please give it your support with likes, comments, views and all that fun stuff. You’ll be seeing me on a variety of platforms with actionable information from the grounds in Memphis this week.

And of course, if you’re going to be at TPC Southwind — please stop by and say hello!

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Cam Young: $7,900 | 148.5 PTS
Aaron Rai: $9,300 | 115.0 PTS
Mac Meissner: $6,400 | 111.0 PTS
Jackson Koivun: $7,400 | 109.0 PTS
Alex Noren: $7,200 | 108.0 PTS
Chris Kirk: $7,200 | 108.0 PTS
TOTAL: $45,400 | 699.5 PTS 

🏆 Forever Young!

Our long National Nightmare is over — Cameron Young has won on the PGA TOUR. He’s been a bit of a punching bag the last few years but it’s a “gift” to be one of the best players without a win. So let me give a big hat tip to Cam for crossing the finish line. Let’s dive into it.

The most notable statistic is the 10.34 strokes he gained putting last week. That was 2.5 strokes better than any other event of his career and only the 7th time a golfer gained 10+ strokes putting in an event this year — Young and Spaun were the only two to win in their big putting weeks.

Heading into the week, Cameron Young had gained 198.9 strokes to the field in his PGA TOUR career, the fourth most during that stretch of non-winners on the TOUR.

We can officially remove him from that list and while Tommy Fleetwood still has the distinction of being the “best player without a PGA TOUR win”, Denny McCarthy is nipping at his heels.

I was happy to subtweet the entire golf betting community by pointing out that Cameron Young backers still might be down if they bet on him every single week. That’s obviously very unlikely and all in good fun.

📈 There’s Levels To This

Only the Top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings will move on to Caves Valley next week. Since the points do not clear, there are target finishing positions for each player. Here are a few examples, via the team at GolfBet:

Aaron Rai #55 needs a solo 42nd or better to move on.
Tony Finau #60 needs a 2-way tie for 20th or better to move on.
Rickie Fowler #64 needed a 2-way tie for 17th or better to move on.

That creates some really interesting targets when comparing those against their betting odds.

For example, Aaron Rai Top 40 is -450 and Rickie Fowler Top 20 is +200.

Let’s dive into Rai who looked like his old self, gaining +10.45 strokes on approach last week and another +3.47 off-the-tee. Despite his below average year, there’s plenty to like about the way his game is trending.

He’s made the cut in five straight, which ties his longest streak of the season. He’s gained 20.86 strokes from tee-to-green over his last eight rounds. He finished T26 at this event last year while losing nearly five strokes putting.

 🎡 Look How Far We’ve Come

I was checking the tournament matchups for this week and WOAH did I see something. Matt Fitzpatrick listed as a -125 favorite over Collin Morikawa. I didn’t have that on my bingo card at any point this year.

I plugged it into the H2H Matchup Tool on RickRunGood.com and, sure enough, it adds up. I used the last 50 rounds, which is a massive number of rounds to use for this exercise. I thought I was going to have to use a small sample, like 16, to get a favorable Fitzpatrick outcome. He crushes Morikawa in the small samples but still beats him over 50.

Fitzpatrick quietly put up the second best score on the weekend in Greensboro, marking his fourth straight Top 8 finish. Over the last 16 rounds he is —

The 2nd best player in this field (Scheffler).
The 8th best ball-striker.
The 2nd best short-gamer (Hall).

Fitzpatrick is a candidate to be the darkhorse making a deep run in these playoffs. He’s 41st in the standings so he’s likely safe for next week and wouldn’t need to do too much to get into East Lake. Once he’s there, all bets are off.

 🤑 Lean, Mean, & Green

This week’s Listener League is back and ready for your lineups! Currently 50% full with $25,000 guaranteed!

🔗 Click Here To Join: www.SplashSports.com/RickRunGood