🐊 One Helluva Drug

📢 Fore, Please:

Warning: This might be a long one.

It’s been a weird week. For those who missed it, we found out that CBS Sports was cancelling our First Cut Podcast and replacing it with a re-launched golf betting/fantasy show that will run 5x a week.

For me, personally, that’s probably good. That’s my world and now CBS Sports is going to give it a platform 5x as frequently as they did in the past.

But I can’t help but feel sad. I’m going to miss the First Cut crew and everything that we built over the last 10 years (six for me). We recorded 1,500+ episodes and I chatted with those guys more frequently than most of my family!

When something gets uprooted like that, it’s hard not to blame yourself. Why did this show fail? Could I have done something better? Could we have been more engaging? Do they not like me?

I don’t have the answers to those questions but it has really reinforced what I have always known about RickRunGood. That’s the community and “business” that matters. I don’t have to worry about anything cancelling me, because I pay the bills! I can forge the path however I want and that’s not going to stop. I feel more motivated than ever to provide the RRG community the best product and service possible as a thank you for giving me this freedom.

The only thing that will change is the day of the Weekly Live Chats, which will now be on Tuesdays at 3PM ET moving forward. This is to allow me to do the Early Wedge show on Wednesdays but to give the RickRunGood audience the priority. I won’t do any shows or do anything that changes that pecking order.

Thanks
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Brian Campbell: $6,800 | 137.5 PTS
Aldrich Potgieter: $7,300 | 125.5 PTS
Aaron Rai: $9,400 | 122.0 PTS
Isaiah Salinda: $6,600 | 117.0 PTS
Joel Dahmen: $6,900 | 112.5 PTS
Ben Griffin: $8,900 | 111.0 PTS
TOTAL: $45,900 | 725.5 PTS 

🅰️➕ Passing With Flying Colors

Last week we were challenged. Splash gave us our biggest guaranteed purse of the year for the Mexico Open. They wanted to see if we could fill it and continue to grow the guarantees. Well, we filled it with 24 hours to spare and now we’ve gone up again!

This week’s Listener Contest is $12,000 guaranteed and holds 600+ spots. As of this writing, it’s more than halfway full. Let’s crush it again and see how big we can go.

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

STARTING IN 2 WEEKS 
We have a $100,000 “Three & Done” live for the Players + Majors. The concept is simple — pick three golfers for each of these five events. You can only use them once and the most money earned, wins. There are segment payouts for each tournament individually. And yes, the $100K is fully guaranteed.

🍲 He Did What?!

When Brian Campbell won the Mexico Open, I received a lot of messages. Many of them were some form of … “who?!”. His generic create-a-player name doesn’t help Campbell stand out of a crowd but he definitely wasn’t on many radars last week — and rightfully so.

He’s made 150+ Korn Ferry Tour starts in his career but his voyage on the PGA TOUR was off to a rocky start in 2025.

Campbell is literally the shortest hitter on the PGA TOUR, entering last week ranked 182nd out of 182 qualified golfers. That severely limits his pathways to the top of the leaderboard but it doesn’t close them all — it just requires perfection (and luck) in nearly every other facet.

He only missed ten fairways for the week and he never missed more than three in any single round.

He was 22nd in proximity and 4th in Strokes Gained Approach.

He made nearly everything inside of 5’ (54/57) but also picked up some bonuses like (4) putts made from 10’-15’, (2) from 20’-25’ and another (2) from outside 25’.

Add all that up and sprinkle in a little tree luck on the 74th hole and that’s the recipe for Brian Campbell to win the Mexico Open.

🐣 Just A Matter of Time

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of smashing the golf ball into outer space, going to find it, and hitting again. However! Just a touch of accuracy from Aldrich Potgieter is going to go a long way in his career — that, or an improved short-game.

Above are three cherry-picked holes from Mexico where I overlayed all of Aldrich’s shots for the week. Normally there is a consistent miss or line or path or something when you do this exercise. These shot trails look like Aldrich is trying to see as much of the course as possible!

It’s clear that he’s going to be a menace and that these small critiques will age poorly, but until then … look at those shots!

🐊 Florida Men

The Sunshine State, the Alligator State, the Peninsula State and (apparently) The Orange State are all acceptable nicknames for Florida — according to a Google search performed by Rick twenty seconds ago.

I shouldn’t waste all my good names now, since we will be in Florida for the next four weeks. Those are the main fields with an alternate event taking place in Puerto Rico — opposite of the API.

Shane Lowry has done everything but win in the state of Florida, leading the way as one of the (4) players in this field who have picked up at least one stroke per round in the Everglade State (that’s another one).

The results above include all tracked tours on RickRunGood.com so that’s why Hubbard has a victory — it comes from the 2019 LECOM Suncoast Classic on the Korn Ferry Tour.

🦒 Howzit!

The European Tour heads to South Africa for their quick South African Swing — two events over the next two weeks. Allow me to highlight a few of the trending players:

• Jayden Schaper - After a volatile 2024, he’s starting to find his balance. He missed the cut in Bahrain, but struck it well. Then he rattled off a T5 in Qatar and a solo 4th in Kenya. He’s earned a Top 10 at this event in each of the last two years.

• Dean Burmester - is the favorite, and rightfully so. He won this event last year and hasn’t finished outside the Top 5 in any of the last three years. His 2025 LIV Golf season has gotten off to a stellar start with the T4 and T12 — picking up nearly 16 strokes from tee-to-green in those six rounds.

💦 Splash Free Zone

Florida features three things: 1) Tons of bunkers 2) tons of water hazards 3) a 15 minute window where it’ll pour every day. Let’s focus on item #2.

PGA National has water in play on 15 different holes, often on both the tee shot and the approach. It should be no surprise that it often ranks inside the Top 5 for most “water balls” on the PGA TOUR schedule.

The man best known for Straight Vibin’ and best known for his time on the water is the best player when it comes to avoiding the water!

Daniel Berger has a staggering 35% Top 10 rate on courses with water-in-play on at least 10 holes. There’s no one else who sniffs that rate but there are two others (Sungjae Im and Ben Griffin) who are gaining at least 1 stroke per round in those conditions.

💨 The OAD Whiff!

If you made a bad pick in OAD last week, much like myself, we got away with it! In one of the most bizarre weeks I can imagine, there was very little money won by … anyone!

The winner, Brian Campbell, had zero selections out of 3,700+ in the RunGood World Championships. The same goes for Isaiah Salinda.

The three largest payouts went to a whopping 0.6% of the field! Also considering it was the smallest purse of the year, whiffing wasn’t so bad!

3️⃣ Then There Were 3

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

My recommendations this week are solid and I love the “Big 3” — Straka, McCarthy and Berger. Let’s see where else we could conceivably play these guys. These are the places still on the schedule where each golfer has gained 1+ stroke per round in their career.

Straka: TPC Deere Run

McCarthy: TPC Deere Run, Sedgefield CC, Muirfield Village

Berger: TPC Southwind, TPC Craig Ranch, TPC Deere Run, Colonial CC, TPC River Highlands.

We’d have to remove TPC Southwind and TPC River Highlands for Berger since we 1) don’t know if he will make it that far in the playoffs and 2) the Travelers is a signature event where his value will drop. Same goes for McCarthy who you probably wouldn’t play at the Memorial.

This leaves a realistic expectation of using Berger here, Straka at TPC Deere Run and Denny at Sedgefield. If I was only playing one entry, I’d probably do that. With multiple entries, I will probably do 40% Straka, 40% Berger, 20% Denny.