🐦‍🔥 Rising From The Ashes

📢 Fore, Please…

A little professional news — I’ll be on the call for PGA TOUR Live this week providing data and insights for their BetCast. They have increased the coverage of this feed eightfold which means — 🚀🚀🚀🚀.

This feed is getting better every week with more cameras, more players and just more whip-around coverage. I provide data nuggets to hopefully pass value along to you guys. If you could tune in, that would be amazing.

Thanks in advance,
Rick

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Justin Rose ($7,500): 142.5 pts
Si Woo Kim ($9,500): 120.5
Pierceson Coody ($7,400): 114.0
Ryo Hisatsune ($6,500): 111.5
Stephan Jaeger ($6,900): 105.5
Joel Dahmen ($6,700): 104.5
Total: $44,500: 698.5 pts

🌹 No Thorns On This Rose

I cannot remember the last time Justin Rose wasn’t in the lead of a tournament. Seriously, I was in a suite and pretty intoxicated on Thursday so I don’t remember anything. An outstanding wire-to-wire victory where he gained +18.18 strokes on the field.

That’s the fourth highest mark for a winner since the start of last season:

1. +23.71: Scheffler, Byron Nelson

2. +19.65: Detry, Phoenix Open

3. +19.18: Cam Young, Wyndham

4. +18.88: Rose, Farmers

5. +17.98: Matsuyama, Sentry

It’s also a sight to behold when Rosey has it going. There’s something in him that just “clicks” and it never looks like he’s going to miss a shot. Last week was the fourth time since the start of 2025 that he gained at least seven strokes in the ball-striking categories. Being able to be that good, that frequently, puts him on a very short list.

2️⃣ The Two Above Two

We are three weeks into the 2026 PGA TOUR season and it couldn’t be going any better for Ryan Gerard and Si Woo Kim. They are the only two players on TOUR who have 1) played all three events and 2) gained at least two strokes to the field per round.

Si Woo is teeing it up this week, while Gerard takes the week off — we’ll see if SW can stay hot!

✏️ Rick The Writer

I don’t do a ton of writing anymore, outside of these emails, but I do have a “Running With Rick” column on PGATOUR.com that allows me to jot down some additional thoughts and wagers for the week.
You can read that piece here.

I also fire off some more wagers in a Skratch article that supports my appearance on Dan On Golf each week. The appearances are quick and to the point. The article allows me to expand some of my thought processes and add context. Plus, there are more bets in the article than we have time to cover on the show.
You can read that piece here.

🏆 Here We Go Again

Scottie Scheffler plays well everywhere. But he plays really well in Phoenix.

This is every course that Scheffler has played at least five times. Firstly, it’s nuts that he’s gaining at least 0.79 at every course! There’s nowhere that stifles him?!

Anyway — even by insane standards, this is one of the better venues for Scheffler. It’s right up there with Muirfield Village and Augusta National.

TPC Scottsdale demands elite approach play but, more importantly, it demands elite distance control and Scheffler is pin high more frequently than anyone in the world.

Scheffler lost 2.2 strokes to the field in the final round last year. That snapped a streak of 13 straight rounds beating the field average and it was the worst round he’s ever played at TPC Scottsdale. It was also the only round all last year in which Scottie lost more than 0.37 strokes — which is pretty sick. Okay, I’m just rambling now … next section!

🍺 The Coliseum Is Calling

Mackenzie Hughes made birdie on 12.98% of his par-3s last season — which ranked him 119th on TOUR. Why is that noteworthy?

Well, he’s made birdie on no. 16 at TPC Scottsdale in 50% of the rounds he’s played. That is by far the highest birdie rate of any player in this field on that hole. All of them have been greens hit in regulation followed by a putt made between 3’ and 18’.

The only blemish (bogey) was the first time he ever played the hole in R1 of 2017! Since then he’s been flawless.

There’s so many other weird nuggets when diving into the no. 16 metrics:

• Erik Van Rooyen has never missed the green (10/10)

• Billy Horschel has made 12 birdies in 48 trips (25%)

• Christiaan Bezuidenhout has never made birdie in 10 trips (most).

• Maverick McNealy has made exactly nine pars in nine trips.

🎬Prop It Like It’s Hot

I love the fact that this event coincides with the Super Bowl because sportsbooks give it the same treatment and release some of the most amazing props that we will find all year. Almost anything you can imagine is on the board this week.

The first one that jumped out to me was the Bogey Free Round prop for Thursday. It’s simple in nature but makes you flex your brain a little bit. There isn’t always a direct correlation between the best players and how often they don’t make a bogey in a given round. Example: Andrew Putnam made the third fewest bogeys last year but I don’t think anyone is arguing that he’s the third best player in the world.

Someone like Chris Kirk leaps off the page at me. He doesn’t make a ton of bogeys in general but he has also gotten around TPC Scottsdale without a blemish in 7/41 rounds (17%). It would be reasonable to think his odds were somewhere in the +500 to +700 range but he’s currently +1075 to go bogey free in round one.

This, on the other hand, looks like the worst prop offering I’ve ever seen:

DraftKings is listing the total tournament birdies on hole 16, starting with over 79.5 at -420. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think they are ever going to sniff this.

In the last 20 years, there have been 80+ birdies on 16 just one time. It was 2020 and there were exactly 80 birdies. That’s the starting point of this board. The last five years have averaged 65 birdies.

The birdie rate on 16 is almost always 17% so with 121 players in the field let’s be generous and say that everyone makes the cut (obviously not). And let’s bump the birdie rate to 20%. That gets the birdie projection to 96.8 birdies but realistically it’s going to be like 66.6 birdies.

Please don’t bet this. I’m dying for DraftKings to drop the under sides of these.

🎬The Original One

There is a $3,500 One + Done kicking off this week on Splash — which I believe is the highest buy-in annual contest that I’ve seen. For the first time, Splash slapped a guarantee on it at $1,000,000 with first place collecting over $200,000.

There’s only going to be 318 entries (I’m one of them) so you won’t need to pick 15 winners to be in contention for the top prize. It also has some bonuses for longest cut streak, most top 10s, etc, so check it out!

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Strokes For The Folks

The people have spoken. Our Total Strokes Listener League filled first last week so that’s the format moving forward — much to my dismay. The Phoenix Open contest is live and already filling up on Splash.

Join now: https://bit.ly/SplashRRG

• Use my fantasy and betting tools here!

• Let me know which players and stats you want to hear more about. Reply to this email with suggestions.

• Play big contests & win big money. See my contests now.