⛵ Harbouring A Winner

📢 Fore, Please:

Last week was a great week for golf. Whether you love Rory McIlroy or not, seeing someone complete a career achievement is motivating. Seeing him do it after countless setbacks is inspiring.

We’ve been spoiled with Tiger Woods and Rory because there’s no guarantee that we ever see a Career Grand Slam again. Truly special stuff.

Thanks
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Rory McIlroy: $11,100 | 128.5 PTS
Justin Rose: $7,200 | 109.0 PTS
Patrick Reed: $7,300 | 99.5 PTS
Bryson DeChambeau: $9,900 | 89.0 PTS
Sungjae Im: $7,300 | 89.0 PTS
Tom Hoge: $6,400 | 85.5 PTS
TOTAL: $49,200 | 600.5 PTS 

💦 The Drought Is Over

3,899: The number of days between Rory McIlroy’s 4th and 5th Major Championships.

We could have never imagined in August 2014 that McIlroy would have to wait over a decade to finally notch one more to his Major count.

In those 3,899 days, Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa, Jon Rahm, and Dustin Johnson have each won all their Majors.

These guys have had entire careers in 3,899 days. And during those grueling days, McIlroy posted the third best SG:TOT in Majors of anyone in the world. He has (11) Top 5 finishes, second to only Koepka (13). He had more Top 10s (21) than anyone.

Constant close calls. Constant disappointment. Until last Sunday.

❓ So Now What?

Rory McIlroy is objectively in the prime of his career. His 2025 is off to a remarkable start, winning three times and picking up 2.46 strokes to the field. If the year ended right now, it would be the second best year of his career (in terms of SG) behind only 2022 (+2.60).

It’s intoxicating to think about the possibilities. Without the mental anguish hanging over him, how crazy do we want to get? Do we give him the Slam now?

According to our friends in Las Vegas, he is now a co-favorite to win the PGA Championship at +500. He’s +600 to win the U.S. Open. He’s +500 to win The Open.

Doing some quick napkin math, there’s a 40.4% chance that Rory McIlroy wins another Major this year. That’s nearly a coin-flip that Rory wins another Major in 2025.

🤫 I Have A Confession

I’m not going to lie to you. I was so caught up in Masters Week and the whole John Daly thing, that I didn’t realize there was a second (and final) contest for this week. It was right there in the rules the entire time.

If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, let me catch you up to speed.

• You can play a round of golf, travel included, with John Daly and myself.

• For every entry in this $25 Tiers Contest, you get an entry in that draw.

• You don’t have to have a good lineup to win the trip.

• It’s 80% full so you should sign-up now

  • Link: bit.ly/3EncnTZ

I met John last week and told me “oh we are gonna have some funnnn together”. He said it exactly how you’re imagining. It was … ominous. I’m not sure I’ll survive but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.

🛞 The Show Goes On

Going from Augusta National to Harbour Town is like going from a lie-flat seat in First Class to the middle seat in row 32 — a lot less room to spread out!

Harbour Town is a notorious positional golf course. The short holes, fairways lined by overhanging trees and tiny little greens will require precision and accuracy.

There are only six other courses on the PGA TOUR schedule where SG: Approach is more correlated with success than Harbour Town and I think there are two main reasons for that.

1) Tiny greens — 3,700 sq feet on average are amongst the smallest on TOUR. They will challenge players to find the putting surface, especially if a golfer cannot find the fairway (or even the correct side of it).

2) Many shots come from the same locations. Simply put, if we placed every golfer in the field in the middle of the fairway from 150 yards out, the best approach players would have a huge advantage. That’s not exactly the case here, but because it’s a positional golf course, many drives up in the same location. Which means many second shots are coming from the same location.

🩳 Short Kings Stand Up

Harbour Town certainly skews on the shorter side of the TOUR, playing at only 7,213 yards. That would be the 5th shortest course of the schedule for this year. It doesn’t take a deep dive into past champions (Simpson, Pan, Kodaira, Bryan, Furyk, Kuchar, McDowell, etc) to see that distance is not a prerequisite for success here.

Justin Thomas has a 39.2% Top 5 rate on short courses which, honestly, passes the sniff test. If he doesn’t have to pull driver and can rely on the other aspects of his game, he’ll be much better off.

🎙️ There’s Excitement In The Air

This week is the first full week of “The Second Cut” podcast — with episodes coming on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.

If you don’t know what this means, let me help. Over the last six years, myself along with a few of my close friends have podded over 1,500 times on a show called “The First Cut”. It was a CBS Sports Podcast that was retired earlier this year.

We were sad and we just couldn’t stay away. So we launched “The Second Cut” and we are going to do it ourselves. It’s myself, Mark Immelman, Greg DuCharme, and a few of our close friends discussing the world of golf.

This show works because we all come from different angles of the game, have different experiences, and we learn from one another. We talk golf and have a lot of fun along the way.

We are taking a big leap with this with the hopes that your support will be there to catch us. If you could take a second to help, you can subscribe right here. Of course, it’s available wherever you get your podcasts.

👣 Not All Who Wander Are Lost

There are 19 golfers in the field this week who missed the cut as the Masters. That’s obviously not a good thing to do, but there’s no need to hit the panic button entirely. Let me explain.

Russell Henley did indeed miss the cut last week but it was thanks in large part to the 5.41 strokes he lost on Thursday in an uncharacteristically bad opening round. He immediately bounced back and gained 4.66 strokes to the field on Friday with a +3.87 approach number. That round was the 7th best round of any golfer last week but he wasn’t around for the weekend.

Lucas Glover missed the cut last week and … duh! Of course he was going to miss the cut. Augusta National is probably the worst course on the schedule for Glover who has never been inside the Top 20 in 11 trips. But now — he goes to a tight, tree-lined golf course where accuracy is a focal point.

Tony Finau was the only golfer last week to gain at least one stroke from tee-to-green and still miss the cut. He picked up 2.65 strokes in that department, obviously offset by some seriously miserable putting. He’s struggled with the flatstick this year but he’s one mediocre putting week away from contending.

Thanks for reading — let’s have a week!