🌊 Shore Is A Nice View

📢 Fore, Please…

Hi — I don’t have anything poignant to say. Enjoy the newsletter!

Rick

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Chris Gotterup ($8,300): 130.5 pts
Hideki Matsuyama ($9,600): 113.0
Michael Thorbjornsen ($7,800): 107.5
Akshay Bhatia ($6,900): 112.5
Nicolai Hojgaard ($7,600): 112.0
Jake Knapp ($8,800): 105.5
Total: $49,000: 681.0 pts

🏇 Giddy Up, Gotterup

If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know that Chris Gotterup is not only winning but he’s doing it in a way that is unique and potentially quite sustainable.

Since the start of 2024, Gotterup has gained 0.45 strokes per round off-the-tee. However, that number improves to +0.61 since the start of 2025 and +0.87 since last May.

This is an important starting point because that final figure (+0.87) makes him the best driver on TOUR during that period. He has played 16 measured events and has gained at least 2.5 strokes OTT in 12 of them. He has a built-in floor that is sustainable.

With that, he can win without being perfect. He lost strokes on approach in his victory at the Sony Open and he lost strokes putting in his win last week in Phoenix. Imagine the confidence you would have knowing 1) you have an advantage on every single tee box and 2) you don’t need to be perfect to win. That’s got to be incredibly liberating for a player.

👋 Making Their Debuts*

There are a few notable players in this field making their PGA TOUR debuts this week, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. They’ve been playing tons on the DP World Tour, not just sitting at home on the couch.

Rory McIlroy - the defending champ has played eight worldwide events (plus a Ryder Cup) since the TOUR Championship last year. He won the Irish Open and has (3) more podium finishes. He hasn’t lost strokes from tee-to-green since the Canadian Open last year.

Tommy Fleetwood - picked up a win in India before a runner-up finish in Abu Dhabi and a T3 in Dubai to close out 2025. His 2026 start hasn’t been as sharp, with a 25th and T41 in two Dubai events, but the underlying metrics have been solid and there’s certainly no reason to panic.

Shane Lowry - has been knocking the cover off the ball, gaining over 30 strokes on approach in his last five starts. Four of those have been T12 or better and now he returns to Pebble Beach where he finished second last year.

⚠️ Approach With Caution

Pebble Beach has one of the shortest “average approach” shot distances in professional golf, checking in at 151 yards. That feels like a lot of pitching wedges for these guys but they will need to be accurate.

The cost for missing a green in regulation is 0.40 strokes on average, firmly higher than the TOUR average. Nearly a half a stroke penalty for every miss of these tiny little greens.

While the desired path to the top of the board is via greens in regulation, there is clearly an emphasis on scrambling this week — since missed greens will be inevitable. So what I wanted to do is 1) find golfers who are great with those wedge distances and 2) could be serviceable around-the-greens when they do miss.

The chart above is my first crack at that, with one caveat. I took the SG number for each golfer between 140-160 and multiplied it by nine — basically saying nine shots will come from that range per round. That way both SG 140-160 and SG ARG would both be “per round” stats.

Note: No wonder Cantlay has had so much success here. 🙄

⛹️The Bounceback Boys

Scottie Scheffler had one of the worst rounds of his career on Thursday at the WM Phoenix Open. He still finished T3 thanks to his stellar play the rest of the week. In fact, he was not alone! Si Woo Kim shot the same Thursday score and also finished T3 which got me thinking — how often can guys have one really bad round and still finish near the top of the leaderboard?

It’s a fairly rare feat — to lose at least two strokes in a single round and then still finish inside the Top 5 for the tournament. It’s only happened 15x since the start of last year (for players in this field) with Scottie Scheffler being the only golfer who has done it multiple times. Pretty handy to know for this week when players are guaranteed four rounds.

🪼 Sea Finds Its Level

I’m not sure if you guys are aware, but Pebble Beach is pretty close to the ocean (LOL). Which made me think about elevation — as one does — and I wanted to see if there were players who excelled playing near sea level. Maybe they are very good at math, maybe they like to hear the sound of the waves, I don’t know. But figured it was worth a query.

Is this helpful? I don’t know. Seems like the list of best golfers to me. But maybe there are a few notables like Shane Lowry, Corey Conners, and Tony Finau being higher than they should be.

🪨 Pebble For Your Thoughts

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