🔋 The City of Putterly Love

📢 Fore, Please:

Listen, things are going well for me — I realize that. I’m piling up a lot of wins recently and I hope that doesn’t stop anytime soon. The reason I like sharing my wins is because they are actually our wins. If you weren’t reading this, or watching my YouTube channel, or clicking through RickRunGood.com, none of this would be possible. I’m just your vessel.

So with that — I’ll be making my PGA TOUR LIVE debut this week! I’ll be on the ESPNBet stream on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I’ve been trying to get involved with PGA TOUR Live for (literally) years because I think it’s the best demonstration of the RRG community. Who wakes up and watches Aaron Rai and Keith Mitchell play the Texas Open at 7:30am on a Thursday? We do.

My hope is that I can provide insight, analysis, data, logic, and reason through this feed and speak directly to you, the way that you consume golf. I don’t need to explain to you that -150 means you have to risk $150 to win $100. I don’t need to tell you that Denny McCarthy is an elite putter. You know these things.

I’m hoping to blow this thing out of the water. If you could provide as much support as possible, I’d appreciate it. Things you can do:

• Turn it on all four days and leave it on (just mute me and walk out of the room!)

• Tweet about it and tag me, @GolfBet and @PGATOURLive.

• Tell your friends.

Thursday & Friday: 12PM - 2PM ET
Saturday & Sunday: 11AM - 1PM ET

Any of all of these things would be amazing. Hopefully we can continue to put more of our voices into the general golf ecosystem.

Thank you, as always.
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Scottie Scheffler: $13,300 | 177.0 PTS
Erik van Rooyen: $6,700 | 144.0 PTS
Sam Stevens: $7,600 | 123.0 PTS
Will Gordon: $6,400 | 117.5 PTS
Eric Cole: $8,100 | 115.0 PTS
Ricky Castillo: $7,000 | 110.5 PTS
TOTAL: $49,100 | 787.0 PTS 

🏆 The Scottie Section

Well, the long national nightmare is over. Scottie Scheffler has won a golf tournament in 2025. And he did it in record fashion. There are simply too many amazing things from last week to have individual sections for — so I’m just going to rattle them off here:

• He gained 23.71 strokes to the field, the 6th best mark for any player at any event since 2000.

• He gained 18.21 strokes ball-striking which is the best since 2008*.

• He won in May for the first time, now only has January, July, October & November to go.

• This was his weakest full-field event win — ranking as a 155 SOF+ and bringing his average SOF+ win to 290.94.

• The time between his first PGA TOUR win and his most recent is now 1,176 days —meaning that he is averaging a win every 69.17 days on the calendar.

• Scottie has won 13x since Jordan Spieth’s last win. Spieth only has 14 wins meaning that Scottie has basically had Spieth’s entire career since February 2022.

*outside of the 2016 Farmers Insurance Open which is widely considered the biggest outlier in all of golf stats because of the weather situation. It created just a ridiculous range of scores.

🧟 The Rest of the Round-Up

The rest of what you missed last week:

• Erik van Rooyen beat Scottie Scheffler by a stroke (128 to 129) over the weekend.

• Jordan Spieth’s final round (+6.441) was his best since R4 of the 2023 Masters.

• Si Woo Kim carried two putters in his bag and tried (at least) three different putting grips — he lost 3.29 strokes on the greens.

• Jake Knapp had (32) Opportunities (birdie putts of 15’ or closer) — that was third most in the field behind Spieth (35) and Scottie (40).

• Jhonny Vegas has (19) Opportunities and all but one was inside 10’ — the highest percentage in the field last week.

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🤥 The Truth About This Course

Here’s the truth — we don’t actually know anything about Philly Cricket Club. Sure, we can make some assumptions or educated guesses but until balls are in the air, we don’t actually have a clue! Step 1 is admitting our lack of knowledge.

One of the things that I find really interesting is how golfers prepare for a course the first time they see it in competition. Obviously for Major Championships, they might do a recon mission a few weeks before. However, most of the work is going to be done in practice rounds in the days leading up to the event.

Preparation is a skill. Some guys are better at it than others. The chart above shows every golfer in the field and how they have fared only the first time playing a course in competition. Once they get to their second start, it’s not included in this dataset.

Some of the names are obvious because they could play well anywhere. But a few that standout:

Hideki Matsuyama ranking 5th is not something that I anticipated. I think about him being a “course horse” and dominating a few courses every year. Apparently, he picks it up rather quickly.

Justin Rose! How about that! Of course, he’s a pro’s pro. He’s going to be prepared and take everything quite seriously.

Sahith Theegala — what’s going on, buddy? He had a lot of success early in his career so you’d expect these numbers to actually be better.

🍔 AW Is Not Just A Burger Joint

I was clicking through the satellite imagery of Philadelphia Cricket Club and wanted to point out a few of my observations.

Firstly — gorgeous!

This is not a long golf course, playing 7,119 yards as a par-70.
The two par-5s are 546 and 553 yards.
The par-3s are 122, 172, 215, and 240 yards.
There is one hole over 450 yards on the front.

The classic design features gentle doglegs with bunkers on the inside. The landing areas are a bit generous, ranging from 35-45 yards depending on how far you can carry it. Which, by the way, if you can carry it ~310 yards you’ll be able to remove almost all the trouble off-the-tee. That is obviously player, set-up and wind dependent.

The greens are heavily protected with bunkers and the pin positions could lure players into biting off more than they should. Playing to the middle of the greens won’t be an issue but you know these guys don’t aim at the middle of the greens.

I think distance will matter. I think approach play will matter. I think putting on bentgrass will matter. Very brave, I know.

🚂 Having Trouble Leaving The Station

I nearly jumped out of my seat when I saw Tom Kim was playing in Myrtle Beach this week, and even worse, he’s not the favorite. And to be clear, I mean that respectfully. I think Tom Kim is way too good to have to play that event but it made me take a deeper dive into his 2025.

Kim is halfway through his 2025 campaign and it’s on pace to be the worst year of his career by a wide margin. He’s down 0.83 strokes per round compared to his 2024 self and down 1.43 strokes per road from his 2022 career peak. Those are certainly concerning.

The good news is that he’s still a plus approach player but he’s lost both off-the-tee and with the putter. He’s currently 78th in the FedEx Cup Standings so he’s going to need to play well in the second half if he wants to make a deep run in the playoffs.

1️⃣ One & Done

I know it feels like the season just started but we are basically halfway done. There are eight tournaments remaining that are either signature events or Major Championships. As we’ve seen under this new model of the schedule, you better make your hay in those events since the payouts are so top-heavy.

Early returns have Xander Schauffele (16.3%) and Viktor Hovland (11.8%) leading the way for OAD selections. Both are fine options but if you have Collin Morikawa available, now’s the time.

The Honeymoon Phase begins with Joe Greiner on the bag. Morikawa has been an elite second-shot player for the entirety of his career and he will certainly be able to manage the ~7100 yards that Philly Cricket has to offer.

🦅 One More Thing

go birds.