🌲 Who Does No. 2 Work For?

📢 Fore, Please:

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🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Scottie Scheffler: $12,100 | 106.5 PTS
Collin Morikawa: $9,900 | 93.0 PTS
Adam Hadwin: $6,400 | 91.5 PTS
Matt Fitzpatrick: $8,000 | 83.5 PTS
Christiaan Bezuidenhout: $7,000 | 77.5 PTS
Nick Dunlap: $6,100 | 75.5 PTS
TOTAL: $49,500 | 527.5 PTS

😳 Flush, Flush

It’s rare that Scottie Scheffler misses the center of the clubface, but he gave us a historically great ball-striking week at the Memorial.

Scheffler picked up a staggering 12.96 strokes on approach last week which was better than the next best golfer (Adam Hadwin) but over 5 strokes.

Not only that, but his 12.96 strokes gained is the 7th best approach week in the ShotLink Era.

🙏 Thanks Rory!

Sitting in the booth at Riviera, Rory McIlroy said something that changed the course of golf forever — “I’d love to see Scottie try a mallet”.

McIlroy knew the power of this statement because he continued — “But selfishly for me, Scottie does everything else so well that he’s given the rest of us a chance.”

Rory knew the future if Scottie could make some putts and now we are all living it.

Of course, Scheffler went to the mallet putter in his next start and hasn’t lost strokes putting since. He’s piled up five wins in eight starts and built a gap from his #1 world ranking to the #2 world ranking that is the same gap as #2 down to #112 — Seamus Power.

🎍 History Speaks Volumes

The U.S. Open dates back to 1895 when Horace Rawlins beat Willie Dunn and 12 others to capture the very first title. I can only imagine what they thought they were creating compared to the magnitude of this Championship now. They likely had no idea this competition would still be happening 130 years later.

Babe Ruth was born in 1895 and there were only 1,500,000 people living in New York City (compared to 8,300,000 today). I love looking back at the history of this game, so below are the Top Strokes Gained earners at the U.S. Open since WWII. It requires a minimum of 10 starts and the highlighted golfers are in the field this week.

Ben Hogan’s U.S. Open record is about as ridiculous as you could possibly imagine.

25 Starts
(4) Wins
(2) Runners-Up
(2) Thirds
(17) Top 10s
(21) Top 25s

🥵 More Like PineHurts, amirite?!

I don’t see any other way around this — but Pinehurst No. 2 is going to be incredibly difficult, right?

On the surface it’s a 7,543 yard par-70 which will rank as one of the longest courses played on TOUR this year.

Its landing areas at 300 yards are routinely between 25-35 yards wide and often smaller.

There’s no rough to stop the ball from rolling into the sandy wiregrass areas which put you at the mercy of luck.

All of this before you even get to the most difficult aspect of the course — the greens (or areas around the greens). The notorious green complexes would have you and I begging for mercy and it’s going to be a fascinating test for the world’s best players.

The turtleback greens will be the focus of the week but what does that really mean? I’ve heard someone describe the challenge as “hitting a 180 yard shot onto the hood of a Volkswagen Beetle”.

The greens are large (6,000 square feet) but effectively much smaller. You’ll see plenty of shots land on the green but much fewer actually stopping there.

Above is an aerial shot of Hole 2, with my (very amateur) markings about places where the ball is going to roll off. It’s overlayed with a TOUR pro’s shot dispersion from 200 yards — where most approaches will be coming from.

We are already seeing a larger percentage of shots getting swatted away and these dispersions are from ideal conditions! Think — inside on a launch monitor not outside at the country’s National Championship.

This hole yielded a 28% green in regulation rate in 2014 — the lowest of any hole on the course.

🚀 Small ShotLink Sample

It’s somewhat uncommon that we have a Major Championship venue that we’ve played before in the ShotLink Era AND that hasn’t had a major renovation since that last visit. But that’s what we have this week at Pinehurst. Obviously that last event was 10 years ago and it’s only one week’s worth of data, but I did want to compile the hole-by-hole metrics to serve as some starting point for this week.

Even on its easiest day in 2014, Pinehurst No. 2 played to a +2.40 scoring average which is 72.40 strokes. The most difficult day played to a 73.31 average. So it’s fair to use 72.5 or 73.0 as a solid starting point for scoring averages this week.

👀 Which is why these R1 props stand out to me:

Wyndham Clark: Higher than 71.5 Strokes
Clark would need to gain at least one stroke to the field which he has done just once in his last eight rounds. He’s firmly in the struggle right now.

Patrick Cantlay: Higher than 71.0 Strokes
Cantlay probably needs to gain closer to two strokes on the field which is something he’s only done twice in his last ten rounds. The U.S. Open has also been his worst major.

Shane Lowry: Higher than 72.0 Strokes
Regression hit Lowry in a big way on Sunday, losing 10 strokes to the field. He was due for that and it’s likely to continue. He’s been putting way over his baseline and earning a significant amount of hole-outs.

Phil Mickelson: Higher than 74.0 Strokes
Mickelson has lost at least a stroke to the field in four of his last five and seven of his last ten. His wayward driving could create some huge numbers this week.

Tail (or Fade): https://play.underdogfantasy.com/es-CIbo2FtgMd

🗣️ Word of the Week — “Wiregrass”

There are two words you’re going to hear constantly this week: “turtleback” and “wiregrass”. Let’s look at the latter.

There is no rough at Pinehurst No. 2 — instead the fairways are surrounded by sandy/native areas with patchy wiregrass. These are planted, basically at random, to increase the penalty for missing the fairway.

You might catch a good lie if you miss the fairway but you might also be up against some wiregrass that impedes either your ball or the path of your club.

It’s not the same, but it does remind me of two places that we’ve seen somewhat recently — Kiawah (Ocean) and Congaree. Both are rough-less courses that have native/sandy areas as a defense. They lack wiregrass but they do have that “luck of the draw” result for wayward shots.

This spans back multiple decades but here are the best players in this field at Pinehurst No. 2, Congaree and the Ocean Course.

💪 It’s Bryson’s World

Another major, another LIV golfer 30%+ owned in One & Dones. This time — it’s Bryson DeChambeau (37.1%) who has finished T6 and runner-up at the year’s first two Majors.

Listen — I get it. There’s a ton of value in using LIV golfers at Major Championships but I’m quite worried about both Bryson and Cameron Smith (10.5%) this week. They are two of the three most selected golfers.

Let’s start with Bryson — I think he’ll be “fine” but I’m not really looking for fine at 37%. His best weapon, the driver, could be easily mitigated here with the native areas and wiregrass lurking around every corner. He gained 12.4 strokes off-the-tee between Augusta National and Valhalla but both of those were way more conducive to Bryson’s style of play. I think this could be one of the worst U.S. Open set-ups for him.

If it was 2021 or 2022, I would be all-in on Cam Smith this week. In those years, he had the best short-game in the world, never 3-putted, ranked inside the Top 5 on TOUR in approach play and all of that made up for his only glaring weakness — his driver.

Fast-forward to present day and Smith still has an above average short-game but he’s lost strokes putting in three of six. He’s hemorrhaging strokes on approach (down 7.67 strokes over his last eight starts) and he still hasn’t figured out the driver.

If you still have Brooks Koepka, this feels like the best spot to run him out while hoping that Rahm gets healthy and shows signs of life before The Open Championship.

For my situation personally, if I don’t have Brooks available, it might end up with me playing a PGA TOUR player like Schauffele, Morikawa or Matsuyama. We’re getting toward that time of year where the lists of great options keep getting shorter.

Above is a screenshot from the PoolGenius tool that I consulted on and I recommend you check out. The tool mirrors the ownership so I’ll definitely be rolling with a variety of those three in nearly every entry.

⭐ Before You Go …

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