🌮 ¡Vamos A Mexico!

The TOUR heads south of the border to Mexico this week where the weather should be much better than we’ve experienced for the last few weeks. Also this is just a reminder that we are just 23 days from THE PLAYERS Championship and 48 days from The Masters.

Gear up,
Rick

PS — There are over 16,000 (!!) nerdy golf people who read this newsletter. You can join them by subscribing below.

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Hideki Matsuyama: $7,400 | 130.0 PTS
Will Zalatoris: $7,900 | 119.5.0 PTS
Luke List: $6,600 | 109.0 PTS
Xander Schauffele: $10,100 | 107.5 PTS
Patrick Cantlay: $9,300 | 99.0 PTS
Adam Hadwin: $7,100 | 96.5 PTS
TOTAL: $48,400 | 661.5 PTS

🔥Dart Throwin’ Deki

The final hour of the broadcast last week was setting up to be chaos. There were five golfers tied for the lead with 6-7 holes to go and plenty of storylines to be explored. But the event ended in a runaway — thanks to Hideki Matsuyama.

His back-nine 30 was 5.75 strokes better than the field on that side alone. His final round total of +8.47 was the third best round (out of 910) in his career.

It was highlighted by consecutive approach shots on 15 and 16 that both ended up within 10” of the cup — gaining two strokes to the field on those two swings alone.

He had not one, not two, but three different stretches of birdie-birdie-birdie. It was a pleasure to watch even though he sunk my Will Zalatoris 60-1 ticket!

🧹 Sweeping To The Top

Will Zalatoris has been using the broomstick putter since his return from back surgery and it has provided immediate dividends. Last week he gained 2.28 strokes putting which is just the 14th time in his career that he’s gained at least 2+ strokes putting in a single week. In those 14 starts:

• He has (12) Top 15 Finishes

• (9) Top 8 Finishes

• (3) Runner-Up Finishes

• (1) Win

Of those 14 great putting weeks, three have come at Riviera where he’s now gained 7.91 strokes putting in his career. That’s the second most strokes he’s gained putting at any event — besides the Masters. 👀

🙃 Quick Hits

• Ben An finished T16 last week, marking his sixth Top 25 finishes since the Scottish Open last year — 10 starts.

• Eric Cole posted another T10 which makes (8) Top 15 finishes since the Fortinet — 12 starts.

• Harris English (7th) now has (4) Top 17 finishes in six starts this year.

🌮 ¡Vamos A México!

While the Mexico Open is new to the PGA TOUR, it’s been played since 1944 at Mexico’s National Championship. Since 2003, it has bounced around a variety of tours like the PGA TOUR Latinoamerica, Korn Ferry Tour and it got the bump to the PGA TOUR schedule in 2022.

That’s also when the event was moved to Vidanta Vallarta, so we are working with two years of history for this week. Here are the best players (in the field this week) at Vidanta Vallarta:

🦘 Weaker Than Most

This week will feature a weak field, let’s be honest. But there will be a winner, an optimal lineup and the money you win this week will be just as green as last week.

I have a metric on RickRunGood.com called “SOF+”. It’s basically a way to compare field strength across events, tours, and eras. It’s adjusted similar to some baseball metrics, like ERA+, that help show performance relative to a specific season.

Average = 100 with stronger fields being higher than that and weaker fields being lower than that. Here are the best players in “weak fields” (<100 SOF+) since the start of 2017. This includes events played across the globe.

🤔 To Tony Or Not To Tony, That Is The Question…

This is a fascinating O&D week! It’s a small purse ($8,100,000) with a clear favorite (Tony Finau) who will be incredibly popular (~30%). That means game theory will be critical this week.

If you’re front-running, playing Finau is probably correct. If you’re looking to make up ground, you have a ton of options. A lot of this depends on your own position, who you have left, etc — but here is my short-list for this week.

Above is a screenshot from the PoolGenius tool that I consulted on. This is based on the variety of factors like future value and who I have already used.

You can see that Nicolai Hojgaard, Stephan Jaeger and Emiliano Grillo are my best options. I’ve already used Tony Finau in this league, so he is unavailable to me.

Again, this is specific to me and my league. You should get this tool yourself and enter your pool details and previous selections so that the results are custom for you.

You can get a free trial right now.

🏋️‍♂️ The Weights of the World

Weeks like this are a great opportunity to use the “Weighted Strokes Gained” metrics on RickRunGood.com which account for field strength and a variety of other factors.

We have players from the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour, Korn Ferry Tour and a variety of other places — and we need to have a way to level the playing field and compare them equally. Enter Weighted Strokes Gained.

Above are the best players in the field, in wSG, for the last 50 rounds. A few notes:

• Thorbjorn Olesen ranks 2nd in Raw Strokes Gained but 23rd in wSG. 📉

• Thomas Detry ranks 24th in rSG but 1st in wSG. 📈

• Tony Finau is 59th in rSG and 25th in wSG. 👀

😴 Underdog Is Sleeping

I was perusing the props on Underdog this morning and I’m not sure that they know this course has (5) par-3s. That means there are 13 fairway opportunities which were hit at 62.8% of the time last year. Meaning the average number of fairways hit was 8.16.

Tail or Fade: https://play.underdogfantasy.com/es-z2GutU4xx6

Well — there isn’t a single player on Underdog right now with a Fairways Hit prop lower than 8.5. Clearly, not every golf available will hit more than the average.

Some of the notables that stood out:

• Tony Finau: 9.5 FW — 76th on TOUR in driving accuracy

• Mackenzie Hughes: 8.5 FW — 158th on TOUR

• Patrick Rodgers: 8.5 FW — 136th on TOUR

• Ryan Fox: 8.5 FW — 167th on TOUR

I’m going to put in some entries surrounding these “core four” and see if I can pull one over before they adjust. Maybe I’m crazy here, but I’m not sure these numbers are adding up!

Whatever you decide, you should decide quickly — clicking here will pre-load the entry for you.

Tail or Fade: https://play.underdogfantasy.com/es-z2GutU4xx6

 🐳 Turn $20 Into $720!

Our Tiers Listener League is back for the Mexico Open and fully guaranteed.

• $20/entry

• Pick (1) golfer from (6) different tiers

• 25 out of 200 entries will cash

• First Place is $720

• Play Now: Splash.com/RickRunGood

⭐ Before You Go…

• I outlined what a “World Golf Tour” could actually look like and it made people feel lots of emotions.

• You can read my Vidanta Vallarta statistical profile in my written preview on RickRunGood.com.

• This week’s Live Chat will be Wednesday, kicking off at 3:00PM ET on my YouTube Channel.

• This week features four rounds of ShotLink which means my Live Leaderboard (with full shot-tracking) will be your best friend.