🦸 The Real Quail Man

📢 Fore, Please:

It’s been a soggy start to the week, to say the least. Monday was a total wash with multiple inches of rainfall hitting Charlotte. That wasn’t much a of surprise though, the forecast nailed it perfectly.

I’ll be out on the course on Tuesday, getting a feel for how it could play. I’ll release my intel during my Wednesday Live Chat — which will run at 9AM ET (subject to change). Keep an eye on my YouTube Channel for any updates.

Is it possible that this is the most anticipated Major Championship since… when? Rory’s chase for the Grand Slam is complete and Jordan could add his name to the list himself. Scottie just crushed a field in Texas and JT is back. Bryson is destroying LIV and Rahm hasn’t missed a Top 10 in decades. My juices are officially flowing.

Thank you, as always.
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Sepp Straka: $8,700 | 128.5 PTS
Justin Thomas: $10,000 | 108.0 PTS
Shane Lowry: $8,500 | 103.0 PTS
Tommy Fleetwood: $9,300 | 100.5 PTS
Jacob Bridgeman: $6,400 | 97.0 PTS
Cameron Young: $6,200 | 97.0 PTS
TOTAL: $49,100 | 634.0 PTS 

🏆 Twice As Nice

Golfers with multiple wins in 2025:

3: Rory McIlroy, Joaquin Niemann
2: Sepp Straka

Sepp’s breakout year continues — gaining 1.44 strokes per round in this campaign. This is, by far, the best rate of his career. His second best season came in 2017 when he gained 0.60 strokes per round on the Korn Ferry Tour. He’s never had this level of success on the game’s biggest circuit.

He’s been incredibly consistent off-the-tee in his career, always a gainer.
He’s been incredibly consistent around-the-green in his career, always a loser.

The massive improvement comes over the course of three full seasons in the approach play department. He ranks 5th on TOUR in proximity this year at an average of 33’1”. That’s five feet closer (on average) than last year when he ranked 129th.

Note: it’s crazy that five feet on average is basically the best player to the worst player.

It’s unlikely that Sepp will sustain a multiple year run of 1+ approach play, but even if he settles in the +0.75 range, he’d be a threat to win once a year.

🧟 The Rest of the Round-Up

The rest of what you missed last week:

• Justin Thomas gained +5.06 strokes on approach extending his positive approach streak to 17 straight events.

• Rory McIlroy lost -0.41 strokes on approach last week, marking only the third time since 2023 that he’s done that and still finished inside the Top 10.

• Collin Morikawa got off to a hot start, shooting a 63, but lost a total of 0.74 strokes to the field over the final three rounds.

• Ludvig Aberg has now lost strokes on both approach AND putting in back-to-back starts for the first time in his career.

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Remember when we gave away an all-expense paid trip to play golf with John Daly and myself? Yeah, we’re doing it again. We’re filling that fourth spot in the group with one of you!

⛳ Play one round of golf with John Daly and myself.
✈️ $1,000 cash towards travel
🎟️ Each contest entry = one chance to win
⏰ All PGA contests thru U.S. Open

This Week’s Contest
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🎱 Pick eight golfers, best seven scores count!

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🏇 The Starting Gate Can Barely Contain Him

There are a lot of reasons why Rory McIlroy is so good here. He’s good at a lot of places. But there is no better player/course combination than Rory McIlroy at Quail Hollow. He picks up 2.8 strokes per round and he’s done that for a large sample size. His overall greatness here is indisputable. But why?!

A lot of it comes down, statistically of course, to Rory’s driver. And we can break that down into two parts:

1) His ball speed.
2) His ability to shape shots.

His ball speed at Quail Hollow has hovered right around 178 mph but we know he’s capable of breaking the 180 mark. There’s a fascinating phenomenon at QH where 175 MPH worth of ball speed is really the magic number. Once you are sitting there, it’s “hard” to lose strokes to the field (in total, not just off-the-tee).

At those speeds, you are able to carry trouble that others cannot AND you’re able to take more aggressive lines and give yourself superior situations for your second shot. A few extra MPH turns into a big advantage here. Also — that big advantage is available to Rory on every single tee box, no matter what happens. So it’s a built-in advantage.

The second item is a lot more abstract. When I think of Rory McIlroy, I think of big high draws off-the-tee. And the numbers bear that out. Since the start of 2024, McIlroy has hit 57% of his drives in a right to left pattern. But, at Quail Hollow, it’s a different story.

In the chart above, you’ll see that his R to L rate drops by 10% and his L to R rate balloons to ~70%. He’s hitting the shot that Quail Hollow is asking for even though it’s “against” his normal shot shape.

And you’ll notice that many of the players who have gained the most strokes off-the-tee at QH are playing L to R shots. So he’s working it in the proper direction and doing it with enough ball-speed to get multiple edges on everyone else in the field.

Note: Straight balls are counted in both buckets to account for small margins of error like wind.

💪 What Has Gotten Into Xander?!

For the last few years, basically once a week, someone says that Xander Schauffele is “sneaky long”. Or “much longer than he used to be”. Yeah, okay fine. But he’s not sneaky long anymore. He’s massively long!

He was 3rd in driving distance (all drives) and 4th in driving distance (two holes) last week in Philadelphia. And what he did on Sunday was jaw-dropping.

Above is the ShotTracker for the first hole in the final round. See those two dots in the bunker? The ones that are 30 yards further than everyone else in the field? That’s Xander and Rory.

But he wasn’t done there. On the very next hole, he drove it in the greenside bunker again. LOOK AT WHERE THE REST OF THE FIELD IS!

So when we have the discussions this week around distance and we mentioned Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau — we’re going to have to include the defending champ as well.

🍔 Still Getting Beefier!

I don’t say this lightly when I say that Bryson DeChambeau is driving it the best he ever has. I also don’t take it lightly when I say that he is driving better than anyone ever has.

There have been 35 different occasions of a golfer gaining 1+ stroke OTT in the ShotLink+ LIV SG era — dating back to 2003. There are 21 different golfers on that list since a handful have done it multiple times.

Of those 35 occurrences, only 12 have gained at least +1.2 strokes per round off-the-tee for an entire year. Only one of them has gained at least +1.35 strokes, which is Bryson in 2025. The Big Boy is another 0.5 stroke per round past that!

Yes, it’s early. He has fewer than ten starts and he plays on a tour where he gets to beat up on sub-par competition to pad his stats. But this is, statistically, the greatest driving season ever recorded.

1️⃣ Slim Pickins

We are getting down to the nitty gritty in OAD right now. Your availability rosters are getting slim and each decision could be worth millions of points. Below is a list of notable golfers and their industry-wide availability for this week. This might not match your league perfectly, but should be a solid representation.

Scheffler: 33%
McIlroy: 31%
DeChambeau: 92%
Rahm: 74%
Thomas: 29%
Schauffele: 68%
Morikawa: 34%
Aberg: 33%
Cantlay 30%

The way to read this — Scottie Scheffler is available to be used in 33% of entries. That means he’s already been used by 67% of users. It’s likely that someone like Rory McIlroy won’t be very popular anywhere the rest of the way because only 31% of users could even select him. Plus, that’ll get spread out here, at Oakmont, at Portrush, and at a variety of signature events along the way. And the way things are trending, more than 50% of users who still have Rory are going to burn him this week:

Early returns have McIlroy (18.3%) being the second most selected golfer this week with DeChambeau in a class of his own at 44.5%. From a strategic standpoint, Xander Schauffele and Jon Rahm look to be the “best options” when considering selection rates. I know many of you are desperate to use a LIV golfer as your benches wear thin. If that’s true and you’re in a good position, use DeChambeau. If you are trailing, use Rahm.

Our friends at PoolGenius also see DeChambeau as the highest graded option, but this is unique to me and my scenario. You can use their tools to enter your own pool details and selections to make sure you’re getting personalized recommendations. They also have tools for Majors Pools, March Madness, NFL Survivor and a variety of other formats.

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⏳ The Next Big Thing

In their first Major Championship start after completing the Career Grand Slam:

Gene Sarazen: T6, 1935 U.S. Open
Ben Hogan: 2nd, 1954 Masters
Gary Player: WD, 1965 Open Championship
Jack Nicklaus: T22, 1966 PGA Championship
Tiger Woods: WIN, 2000 PGA Championship
Rory McIlroy: ??