🐓 Good Cluck This Week

📢 Fore, Please:

I can’t believe how many of you I got to meet in Montreal last week, it’s always really cool when that happens! We’re building such a great little community and you guys absolutely rock.

Speaking of building communities. I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this space to encourage you to support Kyle Porter in his newest endeavor. If you haven’t heard, Kyle is no longer with CBS Sports and he’s going to pursue his Normal Sport Newsletter full-time.

He’s one of the few people that I would jump out of bed for at 2AM if he called. I’m proud to call him my friend but he also happens to be one of the best golfer writers out there. I’m excited for him and I hope you support him by subscribing.

Rick

💰 Content

• I promise that we will eventually get the Wednesday Live Chat back to its normal home but I am still on the road and need to move it up this week. It’ll run on Wednesday at 11am ET. I’ll see you there.

🤑 Plenty of Points To Go Around

The Presidents Cup was lopsided, with the Americans closing it out at 18.5 to 11.5. With both teams earning 5-0 session sweeps over the first two days PLUS the International using the same exact eight players for both Saturday sessions — there were plenty of fantasy points to go around.

The biggest disappointments would have been Tony Finau (47.5% ownership) and Sahith Theegala (30.4%). Yes, there were players who scored fewer points but they weren’t nearly as popular as those two.

The pathway to the top of the leaderboards ran through Corey Conners, who piled up a big 5&4 victory on Sunday, and Russell Henley who played beautifully alongside Scheffler all week.

🤬 Mad Max: Fury Road

I’m cautious about being cautiously optimistic when it comes to Max Homa. His woes have been well-documented within this newsletter and a variety of other places. However — he was really good in Montreal last week.

He gained 7.5 strokes from tee-to-green which is his best performance (by far) since the Masters. He kept the ball on the planet with the driver for the second straight start — he has lost strokes off-the-tee in 11 straight before this recent uptick.

We could say it’s just a flash in the pan. We could say that he beat Mackenzie Hughes in a meaningless Sunday match. We could still be worried about his dismal putting. All of that is fair. But Homa is a Top 10 player in the world when he’s at his best, so we need to keep a watchful eye on his next few rounds.

📈 Resetting Baselines

The TOUR moves onto Jackson, MS this week and the field is comprised of golfers with varying lengths of rest. Mackenzie Hughes played last week but some guys haven’t played a competitive round since the Wyndham Championship. This is usually a good time to reset everyone back to their 100 round baseline. We assume most have taken the adequate rest and training sessions to get back to the most average versions of themselves.

There are 15 golfers in this field who are picking up at least 0.50 strokes per round over their last 100 rounds. That list is led by Matt McCarty, but more on him later.

You might be surprised to see the list of names next — Fishburn, Kim, Meissner, Griffin, Bridgeman, oh my!

The last 100 rounds cover 159 total starts from those five. A stretch in which they’ve earned 23 Top 10s (14.4%), 8 podiums and 3 wins.

🔦 Player Spotlight: Matt McCarty

The man that shows up on top of nearly every list for this week is Matt McCarty. It’s well-deserved but all of his metrics are coming from the Korn Ferry Tour — where he dominated.

He has three wins over his last nine starts on the junior circuit and he’s finished inside the Top 20 in 10 of his last 13. His advanced metrics are a little bit different than what you’d expect to see from a 26-year old who is about to break onto the PGA TOUR scene.

He’s not a long driver — ranking just 91st on the KFT with an average drive of 302 yards.

He’s not an elite iron player — 40th in GIR percentage.

He separates himself with an unbelievable short-game and scoring ability. He’s 12th in scrambling, 1st in putting, 2nd in score average and 4th in birdie of better rate. It’ll be really interesting to see if his success can translate to the PGA TOUR.

🤿 Hold Your Breath

The CC of Jackson is flat, straight and won’t penalize you for missing fairways. We are looking for long hitters, dart throwers and great putters. I threw those three things into the Custom Model to pump out a Top 10 Ranking:

Pierceson Coody tops the lists, ranking inside the Top 37 of all three categories. He was in a playoff at the ISCO Championship with Rico Hoey — who appears 6th on this list.

Nick Dunlap might be the best player in this field and already has two wins in his career.