🦸 We Could Be Heroes

📢 Fore, Please:

Hi all — the game of golf is truly global this week with three solid fields/events taking place in every corner of the globe. Of course, the Hero World Challenge will be headlined by Scottie Scheffler in the Bahamas but wait, there’s more!

Max Homa, Will Zalatoris, Mackenzie Hughes and others will battle in South Africa at the Nedbank Golf Challenge.

Finally, Tyrrell Hatton leads 40+ LIV golfers in Saudi Arabia for an Asian Tour event held in Riyadh.

I’m going to do my best to provide information and visuals for all three of these events. If you like me writing about more tours, let me know at the bottom of this email.

Thanks for everything
Rick

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☹️ Weaker Than Most?

The field for the Hero World Challenge feels weak, no? Or weaker than previous years. I’m typing these words on Monday morning so I haven’t seen the final OWGR rating yet. Below I’ll post the last five years of those ratings and fill in 2024 when it’s available.

SOF+ (100 is tour average)
2024:
2023: 114
2022: 91
2021: 210
2020: 136
2019: 174

However, even without those numbers — only three of the Top 10 players in the world are here. Noticeably absent are Viktor Hovland (2x winner), Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa (played each of the last three years), Jordan Spieth (injury).

I’m assuming that most guys just want a rest considering how many events were played in 2024. This is really just a way for me to remind myself that Scottie is going to win.

✂️ No Cut, No Problem

The TOUR schedule has been increasingly adding no-cut events over the past few years and, to absolutely no one’s surprise, it helps the best players in the world.

Since the start of 2020, there are three golfers in this field who have earned at least 1 stroke per round in no-cut events — Thomas, Scheffler and Cantlay.

Note: there are actually 11 players in the world who have accomplished the feat but the other eight are playing somewhere else this week or not playing at all.

As with most things in 2024, all roads lead back to Scottie. He has won (won!) four of his last six no-cut events. Dating back to the 2023 BMW Championship, Scottie has played 11 no-cut events and has finished T6 or better in all but one! He has five victories. Madness.

👋 Pavon’s Coaching Change

Rarely do we get such forthright information from players regarding, well … anything. So when we get it, we should run with it.

Matthieu Pavon took to social media to announce that he has split from swing coach Jamie Gough and will be joining Mark Blackburn. The book of business continues to grow for Blackburn who is currently coaching (or has coached) Max Homa, Justin Rose, Collin Morikawa and a variety of other top end players.

Pavon’s year started out as well as you could have asked for with a T7 at the Sony, win at the Farmers and T3 at Pebble Beach. After that, there wasn’t much to get excited for and probably the reason he ended up making this switch.

I’ve always enjoyed Pavon’s game and think he has real upside across a variety of tours. We will keep a close eye on him in the short-term.

👇 Looking Down On The Board

The favorite (+1000) to win the Nedbank Golf Challenge is none other than Corey Conners (what could possibly go wrong?).

Corey has been hibernating since the Presidents Cup where he played all five sessions earning two points for the Internationals.

I have an extensive database of historical odds and I couldn’t find a time where Conners was this short to win, or really even sniffed the +1000 area. The shortest that I’ve recorded for him was +1500 at the 2022 Valero Texas Open. He’s been +1700 five times and he’s been +2000 or shorter a total of ten times.

In those events, his best finish is a T7 which accounts for his only Top 10. History has not been kind to Conners when he’s on top of the betting board.

3️⃣ Tyrrell’s Take at the Trifecta

I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that Tyrrell Hatton has been a Top 5 player in the world this year. The metrics would confirm that as Hatton ranks 4th behind Scheffler, Xander, and Rory is raw strokes gained for the year. He’s picked up +1.79/rd in 86 rounds.

His success hasn’t been limited to any one circuit either. He made the cut in three out of four majors, highlighted by a T9 at the Masters and T26 at the U.S. Open.

He finished 4th in the LIV season long standings and he didn’t finish worse than T25 in any of his 12 events.

He also played six more events on the DP World Tour, earning (4) Top 10s there.

He has won on the LIV tour, he’s won on the DP World Tour and now he’s looking for the trifecta — winning on a third tour in the same year.

✌️ The Tale of Two Tours

Peter Uihlein’s 2024 LIV Golf season hasn’t been anything to write home about. He peaked early, finishing T2 in Las Vegas at the second event of the season. After that, he failed to crack the Top 10 and had a bunch of mediocre finishes along the way — eventually finishing 27th in the LIV season standings.

His 2024 Asian Tour season has been a completely different story. He’s played seven events while earning (4) Top 6 finishes. That includes two wins (one last week) and a T3 at Riyadh GC in April — which is where this week’s Saudi International will be held.

🤔 New Era For Hunky Tony?

There has been rampant speculation that Tony Finau could be on the verge of signing with LIV. I have genuinely no idea, but some common refrains have been in the following ballparks:

1. Didn’t play Utah PGA TOUR event.

2. Withdrew from Hero World Challenge.

3. Not tied to TGL.

4. Friends with Jon Rahm.

5. 100 Kids To Feed.

6. Being sued by previous “investors”.

Take your pick. If Tony’s TOUR days are over, how did he stack up?

He made his debut at the end of 2014, which was the 2015 season. Over that period, he played 267 events earning (69) Top 10s and (6) wins.

The number of Top 10s is impressive and ranks 7th on TOUR during that time frame. As most people know, he hasn’t won nearly as much as he “should have” with six PGA TOUR wins. That’s 16th on TOUR. His resume compares closely to:

What a list!

💬 Quote Me On That

Here are some of the more notable quotes to come out of this week’s press conferences.

😏 The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Honestly, I feel a little bad that I’ve been doing so well in our Listener Leagues. I have been smacking you guys around when my intention is to mostly donate to the already guaranteed prize pool. The concept is simple, pick one golfer from each of six tiers. Your best five scores count.

🪫50% full at time of writing

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