⭐ The Return of a Superstar

📢 Fore, Please:

Hi all — hope everyone has been having a great week. Mina and I are hosting Thanksgiving dinner which is going to be an absolute blast! (she reads these emails). Anyway!

When I first started “hosting” a RickRunGood One & Done, I think we had about 300 entries. The next year, we probably had about 800 with that steadily rising to 1,200 then 2,000 and now — the biggest One & Done I’ve ever been associated with.

A league for 3,700 entries and a guaranteed $500,000 purse.

The details are below but this has really been one the fastest growing areas in golf. Even with DFS, betting, and prop sites taking up the market share, One & Done leagues have done nothing but grow and I’m not sure we are even close to the top.

I think there’s a world where a 10,000 entry One & Done exists by 2028. I think there’s a pathway to a brick & mortar casino (think Circa) running a season-long One & Done as they would an NFL Survivor or Pick 5 contest.

The surface of high buy-in OADs ($1,000+) has hardly been scratched. These are going to continue to go bonkers for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for everything
Rick

💵 The $500,000 One & Done

The collaboration with Splash Sports has been fruitful and this is our biggest act yet. The 2025 RickRunGood One & Done has a $500,000 guarantee (their money, not mine) with a $150 entry fee.

🔗 Sign-Up: https://bit.ly/40TAAKK

I know it’s 2+ months away but please sign-up ASAP. The earlier we can fill this, the more ammo we have for next year’s guarantees and our weekly Listener League guarantees.

We worked hard to keep a large first place prize ($50,000) but still pay out 10% of the members with all payouts at least doubling their money. This still also leaves (6) different segment payouts where you can win up to $5,000 in each.

• Runs Pebble Beach to BMW Championship (28 events)

• Available in 38 States + Canada

• $50,000 First Prize

• $16,000+ Paid Out Each Segment 

You can see the full list of payouts below:

1st: $50,000
2nd: $25,000
3rd: $10,000
4th: $8,000
5th: $7,000
6th - 10th: $5,000
11th - 15th: $4,000
16th - 20th: $3,000
21st - 30th: $2,500
31st - 50th: $1,500
51st - 75th: $1,000
76th - 100th: $800
101st - 175th: $700
176th - 225th: $600
226th - 275th: $500
276th - 315th: $400
316th - 370th: $300

Segments:
1st: $5,000
2nd: $3,333
3rd: $2,500
4th: $1,666
5th - 7th: $833
8th - 9th: $583
10th: $500

🔗 Sign-Up: https://bit.ly/40TAAKK

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Rafael Campos: $6,600 | 136.5 PTS
Andrew Novak: $8,800 | 118.5 PTS
Mark Hubbard: $8,400 | 115.5 PTS
Adrien Dumont de Chassart: $6,500 | 108.5 PTS
Ben Griffin: $9,700 | 106.5 PTS
Justin Lower: $9,300 | 106.5 PTS
TOTAL: $49,300 | 692.0 PTS 

⛺ The 200-1 Longshot

“Out of left field”, “from the top rope”, “out of the blue” — however you want to phrase it, Rafael Campos winning the Bermuda Championship was a surprise.

He entered the week having missed 13 of his previous 15 cuts while ranking towards the bottom of nearly every stat category on the planet.

Even after the victory, where he earned 14.93 strokes to the field, he is still in the red when it comes to total strokes gained for the year. He’s lost 12.43 over the course of his 2024 campaign which makes him one of the eight men who have lost strokes for the year BUT have won at least once.

What’s the football crossover for this? A team winning their division with a negative point differential?

I suppose it doesn’t really matter, Campos is going to wake up this morning a PGA TOUR winner with an invite to Augusta National and he just doubled the number of TOUR winners from Puerto Rico — Chi Chi Rodriguez was the first, and only, until Campos. But it does get you thinking …

These golfers were the best in 2024 without a win. Morikawa, for example, had the 3rd best SG Total number on TOUR and didn’t add any hardware to his mantle.

Golf is weird, winning is hard.

🪫 Winning Is Hard, Ask Justin Lower

The last two weeks have been incredible opportunities for Justin Lower to scratch his first PGA TOUR win. They ended in a runner-up and a T5. His round of 72 on Sunday in Bermuda was the only over-par round inside the Top 10.

His weekend struggles have started to become more consistent. Over the first two rounds, Lower (+0.83) is one of the better players on TOUR — ranking ahead of Tom Kim, Russell Henley, Austin Eckroat and Sungjae Im.

But when the weekend comes around, Lower loses a half a stroke per round off that pace and his new peers become Min Woo Lee, Brandon Wu and Chandler Phillips.

I don’t have a solution for him and it could be noise (although the sample size is 40+ rounds) — but it’s fairly clear this is what is keeping him from crossing the finish line.

💤 Not A Well-Rested Rory

Rory McIlroy put another exclamation point on his year by not only winning the Race To Dubai but also the DP World Tour Championship itself.

He did it in impressive fashion, by absolutely knocking the cover off the ball. He picked up 5.8 strokes off-the-tee, which was his 5th best mark of the year. He also added another 7.57 strokes on approach, which was his best mark of the year.

Speaking of his year, Rory played a ton of golf in 2024. He played 102 official rounds which was the most he’s ever played in a single calendar year and the first time he’s ever broken through the century mark.

It might have been easy to play that much because he was awesome — picking up four wins and a +1.80/round average. His career averages are +1.72/round and 76 rounds per year so Rory outpaced both of those in 2024.

It’ll be interesting to see his schedule for 2025 which won’t have the Olympics and he’ll have some more responsibilities for TGL. It’s probably unlikely he matches this volume in 2025, or possibly ever again in his career.

🏦 Seaside’s 11

When I think of the RSM Classic, I think of consistency because it’s been such a staple on the calendar. The event is incredibly well-run in a region that many professional golfers call home. For those reasons, we often get the same players teeing it up over and over again.

(There are 22 different players who have played this event 10+ times in their career.)

But while there is consistency in most facets, consistently good play is hard to find. I imagine the course rotation is one of the reasons for that, since the format creates its own volatility. You’ll start clicking through names of golfers who “should play well” here and they don’t. Or guys that play often but not well. Or guys that play well but not often. It’s a mixed bag.

So with that being said, here are the 11 golfers in the field this week who have gained at least 1.0 stroke per round since 2018 — minimum 10 rounds.

⭐ Ludvig Is Back To Defend

Ludvig Aberg will tee it up for the first time since the TOUR Championship. A few months ago he underwent knee surgery to repair a torn meniscus. Remember that? That was the knee issue that I asked him about at the PGA Championship and he said he wasn’t worried about it and it wasn’t bothering him. Remember that?! Well I remember!

It’s clear something was bothering him because his play fell off a cliff towards the end of the year. His +1.7/rd rate in June declined each month until he got surgery. The hope is that everything is cleaned up and he’s ready to rock n’ roll moving forward. I’ll be interested to see if he addresses it during his presser this week (Tuesday PM). I’d like to know how the recovery has gone and how long he’s been practicing in lead up to the RSM Classic.

💬 Quote Me On That

Here are some of the more notable quotes to come out of Tuesday press conferences.