🔔Ring The Bellerive

📢 Fore, Please…

Wow — I asked for book recomendations and you guys came through! The most recommended was Red Rising. I’ll be starting it shortly. Thanks all for being great.

On to golf!
Rick

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

$13,500: Scottie Scheffler (125.5)
$9,500: Sam Burns (96.0)
$7,100: Alex Noren (90.5)
$6,700: Sungjae Im (88.5)
$7,000: Jake Knapp (84.5)
$6,000: Pieceson Coody (79.0)
$49,800: 564.0 Pts

🏫 Somebody Learned How To Putt!

With his stellar putting performance in Memphis, Scottie Scheffler is now having the best putting year of his career. That’s a scary thought in general, but I wanted to look into what has truly changed and allowed him to unlock this new height.

Scottie has improved from last year, the second best putting year of his career, in nearly every putting distance. He went from TOUR average from 3-5’ to now making significantly more than his peers.

The biggest separator appears to be the 10-15’ range. He’s hitting a whopping 39.2% of these putts which is significantly more than the 28.2% TOUR average. He’s also making twice the rate of 25+ foot putts than the rest of the TOUR.

It’s impressive to see how far he’s come over the last two years. He was already dominant and this has taken him to new levels.

😤 Breakout Boy

Jake Knapp is a very good putter. He’s gaining +0.40 strokes per round this year which makes him the 9th best putter in this field. However, he lost 2.07 strokes putting last week in Memphis. He was still able to finish T7 but it felt like there was a little juice left out there.

That’s what this breakout candidates chart below details. It’s golfers who are playing over their T2G baseline but below their putting baseline with the theory that the putting will normalize.

Knapp is firmly in the optimal quadrant and basically in an area to himself. Alex Noren and Hideki Matsuyama are both in solid positions. As are Ben Griffin, Cam Young, and Ryo Hisatsune. But Knapp is camped in the upper right quadrant like he owns the place!

He’s been +1.00 stroke per round better from tee-to-green than his 100 round baseline and he’s been 0.60 strokes worse than himself on the greens. He’s brewing.

With a little extra added motivation, Knapp will need at least a Top 15 to make sure he gets to East Lake next week.

📈 The Course Dilemma

The last time we went to Bellerive was the 2018 PGA Championship. That was eight years ago and the course has seen significant work done since, making the course history pretty useless. We can, however, expand the pool of courses a little bit if we include the course comps from the Key Stats model.

Remember, these are the courses that players of the same statistical profile also find success at. It’s basically making groups of players and then running a bunch of regression models to compare success at a variety of venues.

The three comp courses are — Memorial Park, TPC Craig Ranch, and Detroit GC. That passes the sniff test.

So I queried the course history for all three of those courses, since 2020 and came back with the top players (min three starts).

1. Scottie Scheffler +2.43

2. Patrick Cantlay +2.26

3. Min Woo Lee +2.10

4. Cameron Young +2.09

5. Hideki Matsuyama +1.68

That is a “big four” before a sizable gap to Matsuyama in fifth.

There are only two players in this field who are losing strokes to the field at these courses…

Robert MacIntyre (-1.32) and Ryan Fox (-0.59).

💼 Get In While It’s Hot

Becoming a staple at this time of the week, our Listener League is going to fill early. It’s $35,000 in guaranteed funds with smaller tiers this week since there’s only 50 golfers.

Choose one from each of six tiers, lowest score wins!
Play: bit.ly/4x7BX5L

🤢Beware of the Sick Golferr

Michael Thorbjornsen battled an illness last week that probably took quite a bit out of him. He ended up finishing T47 but guess what .. I DONT CARE. I’m throwing that result right out the window. Imagine being sick and having to play four rounds of golf in 101 degree heat … no thank you.

Let’s rewind to one start prior when Thor won at Detroit Golf Club. A comp course for Bellerive. He’s been incredible off-the-tee this year and he’s starting to find the rest of his game.

He needs at least a solo 8th to get into the TOUR Championship. His top-10 odds are +270. I think he’s a boom or bust player who clearly has the upside to finish inside the top eight.

If you are looking for all the scenarios, you can find them here.

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