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📢 Fore, Please:

• Our friends at Splash Sports are going nuts and have guaranteed our Open Championship Listener League for $25,000, but wait there’s more! If you pick the optimal lineup, they are giving you a $100,000 bonus. 🤑

• This Wednesday’s Live Chat will be held at 11 AM ET! I have a commitment for live TV (CBS Sports Network) later in the day, so I’m going to rock a bit earlier than usual.

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Robert MacIntyre: $7,800 | 139.0 PTS
Adam Scott: $7,300 | 128.0 PTS
Romain Langasque: $5,800 | 120.5 PTS
Sahith Theegala: $8,200 | 115.5 PTS
Sungjae Im: $8,500 | 107.0 PTS
Collin Morikawa: $10,300 | 106.0 PTS
TOTAL: $47,900 | 716.0 PTS

🔥 Big Shot Bob

Robert MacIntyre adds a second National Open to his trophy case and becomes just the third golfer to win multiple times on the PGA TOUR this season (Scheffler 6, McIlroy 2).

MacIntyre certainly has a knack for making the most of his moments. Since the start of the 2020 season, he’s gained 0.29 strokes per round meaning that he’s a slightly better than average PGA TOUR player. However, as discussed, he’s cashed in two victories.

There are 11 multiple time winners, in that span, who have averaged fewer strokes per round than MacIntyre. Depending on how optimistic you are today, you could read this as either “Bob is one of the worst multiple winners on TOUR in the last five years” or “Bob has a sense for the moment and takes advantage of every opportunity he gets”. Choose your own adventure.

🤒 Ludvig’s Sunday Struggles

Entering Sunday with a two-shot lead, Ludvig Aberg was the favorite (-150) to win the Scottish Open and add another chapter to his already impressive career. Then golf happened.

Aberg lost 4.75 strokes to the field, the second worst round of his career, and finished T4. This is the worst Sunday that Aberg has ever had but it’s not the first time he’s struggled in the final round. During his career:

R1: +2.10
R2: +2.12
R3: +1.03
R4: +0.89

While he’s lost strokes on Sunday in five of his last seven Sundays, he had a stretch of 10 straight final rounds gaining strokes previous to that.

Yes, the final round has statistically been his worst round but he’s still an excellent player. That +0.89/round rate is better than the 2024 season for Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas, Russell Henley and Sam Burns (to name a few).

🏰 The Rota

Links golf is “forged by nature” and features deep bunkers, natural undulation and allows for creativity not often seen in American golf. There’s a reason why this championship is so entertaining and there’s a reason why some guys hate it.

Above are the best Open Championship players since (and including) 2016 — the last time we played at Royal Troon. I considered going back even further but we started to get a list of players well on the backend of their careers.

I love this list. Collin Morikawa has a win and two missed cuts in his three Open Championship starts. Rory McIlroy has a 71% Top 10 rate but zero wins. Henrik Stenson’s only Top 10 was his win here in 2016. Even the best and most consistent results have plenty of chaos — which defines this event as a whole.

🤪 Uniqueness of Royal Troon

There are plenty of similarities between Royal Troon and the other Open Championship Rota courses — well protected greens, deep bunkering, Mother Nature playing a major role in the defense — but there’s two things that stick out to me as unique.

1) These greens are small! It’ll be quite obvious when you see no. 8 (The Postage Stamp) which checks in at just 2,635 square feet but the rest of the greens aren’t much bigger. And, of course, they are going to be effectively smaller thanks to magnetic bunkers and greenside run-offs.

St. Andrews this is not!

And how about the shapes of these greens? Many have little tongues in the front and get increasingly wider the deeper into the green you go. Many front-pins will be no-go’s and playing to the middle or the middle/back will be valuable at nearly every green.

I believe there will be an emphasis on great approach players but also those who have great distance control. Missing left/right of your target doesn’t seem to be as penal as missing short/long. But those misses will happen — a solid short-game will be critical at Royal Troon.

Now for the second item…

👆🏼 There’s Levels To This Game

I absolutely love the set-ups off-the-tee at Royal Troon. There are infinite ways to play every single hole. There are levels, Jerry, levels.

Take a look at the image below from No. 7.

This is a 400 yard par-4 with a slight dogleg right. Simple on paper but there are probably four different options off-the-tee with none of them being great.

The trouble, in this case fairway bunkers, are spread out at basically every “level”. If you hit something ~250 yards to carry the first set of bunkers, you will run into the second set of bunkers at 270. If you hit something ~280 yards, you will run into the third set of bunkers at 300. If you try to carry all the trouble, you have to cut the dogleg and go to the narrow part of the fairway. It’s brilliant.

I don’t believe you can just smash your way to Royal Troon. There’s many tee shots where you’ll be “bracketed in” and playing into much more demanding positions. The goal would be to have strategic power. Committing to a game plan and executing it. Getting your ball to stop in the correct level to attack those small greens. Easier said, than done.

🤬 The Mad Hatton

Tyrrell Hatton doesn’t do anything quietly, but he is quietly playing great golf right now. He’s had a solid Major Championship season (T9 - T63 - T26) and has been destroying the LIV Tour with (5) straight Top 15 finishes including a win in Nashville.

Hatton has gained strokes to the field in 13 of his last 14 events that I have designated as “Links Style Courses”. That includes all Open Championship events, the Scottish Open, and a variety of worldwide events like the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

🍞 Breadcrumbs In The Right Direction

If you like the take action on small sample sizes, let me present a few small notes for this week:

• Patrick Cantlay is coming off his two best starts of the year (T3, T5) and has the cheapest DFS price ($9,100) since the 2023 Arnold Palmer Invitational.

• Cameron Young has back-to-back Top 10s for the first time since March and has finished 2nd and T8 in his two Opens.

• Wyndham Clark broke out of a slump with a T9 and T10 in his last two starts, highlighted by gaining 6.44 strokes on Sunday in Scotland — the third best round of his season.

📖 Bryson’s Run At History

Bryson DeChambeau has finished T6, runner-up and 1st in his three Major Championships this season — gaining 43.60 strokes in the process. With another strong finish, DeChambeau could log one of the greatest Major Championship seasons in history.

There have been (56) 50+ Strokes Gained Major Years but only (12) since 2000. The last to accomplish this feat was Rory McIlroy in 2022 (+54.07).

If DeChambeau could somehow gain 17+ strokes to the field and crack through 60 for the year, he would enter an elite club that has only been breached 23 times. The list of those golfers, as you can imagine, is incredible:

Jack Nicklaus (8x)
Arnold Palmer (4x)
Tiger Woods (4x)
Ben Hogan (1953)
Gary Player (1974)
Harry Vardon (1900)
Johnny Miller (1973)
Jon Rahm (2021)
Jordan Spieth (2015)
Phil Mickelson (2004)

Of course, Tiger Woods holds the all-time record which appears to be safe for the foreseeable future. Here are the best all-time Major Championship seasons.

🥷 Sneaky Smith Has A Chance

Cameron Smith was a popular selection for the U.S. Open but I think the industry was one Major too early on the Aussie. Listen — it hasn’t been a great 2024 for Smith but he has a few LIV highlights and finished T6 at the Masters.

I’m actually building optimism based on his approach play, which has been somewhere between solid and good over his last three starts. That was the one area of his game that often decimated him this year as he still retains one of the best short-games in the world.

Which leads me to trying to get some investment down on Smith, while stacking some other reasonable plays.

Tail (or fade): https://play.underdogfantasy.com/es-tn6QNl1Dzs

We’ve already talked about Hatton, so I won’t reiterate everything again. Royal Troon is a par-70, so this is asking Hatton to shoot 2-under or better in round one.

I’m continuing my “pick on Max” campaign as he continues to struggle. He’s now lost strokes off-the-tee in eight straight events for the first time in his career. He’s also lost strokes putting in five straight, something he hasn’t done in three years. So it’s safe to say that he’s struggling right now.

Tail (or fade): https://play.underdogfantasy.com/es-tn6QNl1Dzs

📺 If You Like Deep Dives …

My weekly tournament preview uses data to cover the course, field and so much more. It can be found on my YouTube page and the direct link is below:

😛 Last Licks For LIV

With this being the last opportunity to use LIV golfers in O&D this season, the industry is not missing out on their chance! As of right now, four of the six most selected golfers for this are LIV players and those account for over 50% of all selections.

This newsletter has been very pro-Hatton so you’re not going to hear any complaints from me about him being the most popular selection. I certainly have concerns about Jon Rahm but I cannot overstate the value of not using a PGA TOUR player(s) that set-up well for the playoffs.

We are down to the final few events and if you still have someone like Xander Schauffele — he has massive future value compared to these LIV golfers that will expire in just a few days.

You can see that reflected in my rankings for this week, which are specific to my leagues and who I have used already. Schauffele is my second ranked golfer in the world, but grades significantly worse than Bryson DeChambeau (9th) this week because DeChambeau’s value goes to zero after this event while Schauffele still has multiple big time events ahead of him.

If you’ve gotten this far and still have multiple Top 10 players, you probably don’t need to pick a LIV golfer. If you’re down to your final few bullets, you will probably have to go with one of them.

Above is a screenshot from the PoolGenius tool that I consulted on and I recommend you check out.

⭐ Before You Go …

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