🏖️Palm Springs Into Action

📢 Fore, Please:

Over the past few months, my wife (Mina) has started playing golf. I was nervous at first. We already spend nearly every minute together since we work together from home. Now if we golf together there really won’t be any “alone time”.

She’s been taking lessons and hitting a ton of balls in the sim. She asks all the right questions and is a very technical golfer. She asks things about swing planes and angles that are way over my head. I’m just a feel player!

It’s really cool to see her out of her element and it’s exciting to see where she’s headed. I’m going to try and use her as motivation to try something new in the near future. I hope you do too.

Best of luck this week
Rick

PS — she hit this putt beautifully, which would have been her first par.

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Nick Taylor: $7,100 | 130.0 PTS
Nico Echavarria: $7,300 | 116.0 PTS
Eric Cole: $7,500 | 113.5 PTS
JJ Spaun: $7,200 | 108.5 PTS
Stephan Jaeger: $7,400 | 107.0 PTS
Adam Schenk: $6,800 | 105.0 PTS
TOTAL: $43,300 | 680.0 PTS 

😢 Nick Forgets How To Putt

To call Nick Taylor’s Sony Open victory — “unexpected” — would be generous. Taylor’s struggles in 2024 were well-documented. He entered last week in a Top 10 drought that had lasted 11 months. He missed two short putts (4’6” and 3’ 11”) on the 68th and 69th holes of the championship. Those whiffs cost him 1.74 strokes putting at a critical time of the tournament. But then this happened ⬇️

You’re looking at every single second-shot hit into the 18th green at Waialae last week. The blue dots are pars, the red dots are birdies and the yellow dots are eagles. That lone yellow dot from long of the green was Nick Taylor. The only man to hole out from behind the green all week and he did it to get into a playoff — which he would go onto win. I believe that’s what the kids call clutch.

📚 Nico Learns How To Putt

If you’ve been following this newsletter or any of my content, I’ve been covering Nico Echavarria at great lengths. It’s just so impressive what he has done over the last handful of months.

He won the 2023 Puerto Rico Open after missing four cuts in a row and failing to make the weekend in 7/9 leading into the event. It wasn’t all roses and butterflies after the win — he would go on to miss 15 of his next 16 cuts. He wouldn’t post another Top 15 finish until the 2024 Puerto Rico Open.

Things started to get better around that time. He was putting together more consistent performances and was showing signs of improvement. Then — the Wyndham Championship happened.

Nico picked up two strokes putting which kicked off a stretch of positive putting in eight of nine — a stretch that is currently active. During those nine events (plus another two unmeasured), he’s earned five Top 12 finishes which includes a win (ZOZO) and two runners-up. Those putting gains have skyrocketed him into a different tier and now he’s someone to keep an eye on each week.

🏆 You Play To Win The Game!

Here are all the ways you can get involved, have a little fun, and maybe even win some cash in the new year.

American Express Listener League (Starts this week!)
Our weekly tiers contest is back for 2025! Pick one golfer from each of six tiers and compete for a guaranteed $5,000 purse. This is only a $20/entry and will run every week this year. The quicker we fill it, the bigger the guarantee we get in the future.
🔗 Sign-Up: https://bit.ly/40TAAKK

One & Done $500,000 World Championship (15 Days Away!)
This is the flagship OAD for both myself and Splash Sports. They have ponied up $500,000 which is completely guaranteed meaning that someone is going to win $50,000 off a $150 entry. I’m not going to lie — filling this thing (quickly) is a big deal. I want to ask for $1,000,000 next year and need you guys to have my back on this one.
🔗 Sign-Up: https://bit.ly/40TAAKK

One & Done High Roller (15 Days Away!)
If the $150/entry is too small for you, or maybe you recently signed a LIV contract, or you just want some extra skin in the game — the $1,000 High Roller is for you. It’s a much smaller field (only 278 entries) with $50,000 to first if it fills.
🔗 Play: https://bit.ly/403KGb0

💰 Sungjae In Pole Position

Xander Schauffele withdrew from this event on Monday and shook up the odds board. In the immediate aftermath, both Justin Thomas and Sungjae Im were listed as co-favorites. As of right now, on DK Sportsbook, Sungjae is the lone favorite at +1200 with Justin Thomas at +1400.

According to my database, Sungjae has only been +1200 or shorter four different times in his career.

His best result was a 7th place finish at the 2022 Shriners. That’s certainly been an underperformance when stationed at the top of the betting board but Sungjae’s record at The American Express is basically unmatched. In his six trips, he’s never finished worse than T25 (but never better than T10). It’ll be compelling to see which Sungjae shows up this week.

😍 Lovable Longshots

This event has made a habit of producing longshot winners. Everyone in the field can make the amount of birdies required and the course rotation adds just enough chaos to really make it fun. Recent winners like Nick Dunlap, Hudson Swafford, Andrew Landry, and Adam Long were all 150-1 or longer when they captured the trophy.

Which got me thinking — which golfers play the best when they are longshots?

What you see above are all the golfers who are at least 100-1 this week and their strokes gained in events when they are at least 100-1. The “Odds” column is their implied winning percentage, so anything under 1% would be 100-1 or longer.

I like this a lot. Why look at stats when Cam Davis was 30-1 and try to use them when he’s 100-1. In reality, Las Vegas has done a lot of work for us when assessing these players, maybe we should lean on them a little bit. I think there’s a lot of different paths to go down after this, but let’s start there.

🏆 OAD Issues

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

I’m quite torn here. I think this tournament is really difficult to handicap. With the smaller purse, I don’t feel any reason to use a star — so how far down the list are we going to go?

Finau seems a little rusty after his offseason knee procedure.
Wyndham seems too good to use at this event.
Kitayama doesn’t seem good enough to use at … any (?) event. This comment guarantees his wins this week.

I think I’m going with Harry Hall nearly across the board. He can win a putting contest. He can go low. He’s good enough with his wedges. His results have been fire. I don’t need to use him anywhere else. I think that checks all the boxes.

🏃‍♂️‍➡️ Does This Count as a Streak?

There’s a big event in Dubai this week on the DP World Tour. It’ll be contested between Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Tommy Fleetwood, Viktor Hovland, Tyrrell Hatton and a ton more golfers.

Jon Rahm is currently sporting an impressive streak (I think). If we remove his WD from the LIV Golf Team event, which seems reasonable, Rahm has posted a Top 10 finish in ten straight events.

That includes two wins (both LIV), his T7 at The Open, and three straight on the DP World Tour. Rahm is definitely the golfer I miss the most from LIV. He’s the most intense golfer I’ve ever seen in person and I love the way he competes. I cherish weeks like this and hope he is battling with Rory and the others down the stretch.

🙋‍♂️ I’m Rick & I Have A Problem

So I have this “problem” when it comes to running a golf database. The question I ask myself all the time is “should I include this?”. In theory, I can add anything to the database.

The main six tours (PGA, LIV, EURO, KFT, SENIOR and ASIAN) are no-brainers. I have data deals with them and it all comes in (mostly) automated. But what about the Ryder Cup? Yes, that should definitely be included. But what about the Grant Thornton? I mean, sure. What about The Match? Hmmm.

The lens that I view it through — the data should be accurate and complete. So to be complete, how could I leave out Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler playing golf on national television? The stats don’t go into the models but I want you to be able to see what each golfer was doing in the lead-up to a specific event.

And if I’m going to include one Match, then I have to include them all. Even if there are a bunch of celebrities and no professional golfers at all. So if you’re wondering why Nate Bargatze has a golfer profile on RickRunGood.com — that is why.