🐳 Whale of a Time

📢 Fore, Please:

Happy New Year and Happy New Season! Just like that, our long national nightmare (the golf offseason) is over. The next two weeks will be filled with primetime viewing with some of the most beautiful sights and sounds found on this little planet we call home.

I’m brimming with excitement and hope you are too. Here’s to a great 2025! 🍾

Rick

🤕 Scheffler Sidelined

If you haven’t poked your head out from under your rock, let me fill you in on the number one player in the world. Scottie Scheffler suffered a puncture wound to his right hand that required surgery. According to his manager, Blake Smith, this occurred on Christmas Day, Scheffler is going to need 3-4 weeks to recover and he’s still scheduled for The American Express.

Spoiler Alert: He’s not playing the AMEX. It’s 22 days from Christmas Day until the opening round of the AMEX which is just a touch over three weeks. That doesn’t include any practice time, more healing or barring any setbacks.

I personally think the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am would be the betting favorite for Scheffler’s return with an outside chance for both the Farmers (the week prior) or Phoenix (the week after).

There’s a decent chance that Scheffler misses January completely in 2025 but he will certainly play fewer events than any other January of his career.

Since gaining his full-time status in 2020, Scheffler has averaged 2.4 January events a year, for a total of 12. “Slow Starter Scottie” has never won in January and is sporting a +1.41 SGTOT figure that is below his career average.

🦶 Them’s The Breaks

Viktor Hovland has not found paradise in Hawaii losing a battle with a bedframe and breaking the pinky toe on his right foot.

He did an interview with Eurosport, which was done in Norwegian. I’ll translate a bit — he’s not sure if he’s going to play this week. He wants to try to tape it up and load up on pain-killers to see if he can make it happen.

He’s on the interview schedule for Wednesday so we should hopefully know a lot more then. ED NOTE: he’s no longer on the interview schedule but still remains on the pro-am sheet.

🏇 Hot Out of the Gates

This, of course, got me thinking about who hits the ground running at the start of a new year. Whatever off-season process Collin Morikawa goes through should be studied.

The man has done everything but win (similar to his 2024 year in total) by picking up (7) Top 10s in (11) starts and posting the best SGTOT mark of anyone in The Sentry with at least ten January starts.

I know what you’re thinking — “Rick, you have to go deeper.”

Fine — the best player/month combos in the Tiger Woods era, with a minimum of ten starts:

1. +2.54: Tiger Woods (March)

2. +2.48: Tiger Woods (September) and Jon Rahm (January)

3. +2.38: Tiger Woods (June)

4. +2.26: Collin Morikawa (July)

5. +2.22: Rory McIlroy (June)

👽 Totally Extreme, Dude!

Don’t be fooled by the calm, serene visuals coming out of Maui this week. I’m here to remind you that the Plantation Course is one of the most extreme courses on the PGA TOUR schedule. At least from a data perspective…

It’s a par-73 that is listed as 7,596 yards at sea level. That’s already pretty extreme. But as I’m sure you know, it won’t play anywhere close to that yardage.

The average hole length at Kapalua is 419 yards, the third longest on the TOUR schedule last season. However, the average approach shot was a measly 108 yards — by far the shortest on the schedule. The massive delta between hole length and approach length is due to the insane undulation on this course where tee shots will often roll out an extra 50-100 yards more than they should.

The penalty for missing the fairway is almost non-existent. It’ll cost you just 0.027 strokes every time you miss the short-grass. That’s the lowest penalty for a missed fairway anywhere on the schedule. The reasons for that include — very little rough in general, very short rough where it does exist, an overall low rate of fairways being hit (57%) and the fact that many will play from the rough at no fault of their own.

You can see on the two images above how many tee shots will end up collecting into the same areas. It’ll remove an aspect of off-the-tee play while increasing the value of approach play.

🏆 You Play To Win The Game!

Here are all the ways you can get involved, have a little fun, and maybe even win some cash in the new year.

The Sentry Listener League (Starts this week!)
Our weekly tiers contest is back for 2025! Pick one golfer from each of six tiers and compete for a guaranteed $5,000 purse. This is only a $20/entry and will run every week this year. The quicker we fill it, the bigger the guarantee we get in the future.
🔗 Sign-Up: https://bit.ly/40TAAKK

One & Done $500,000 World Championship
This is the flagship OAD for both myself and Splash Sports. They have ponied up $500,000 which is completely guaranteed meaning that someone is going to win $50,000 off a $150 entry. I’m not going to lie — filling this thing (quickly) is a big deal. I want to ask for $1,000,000 next year and need you guys to have my back on this one.
🔗 Sign-Up: https://bit.ly/40TAAKK

One & Done High Roller
If the $150/entry is too small for you, or maybe you recently signed a LIV contract, or you just want some extra skin in the game — the $1,000 High Roller is for you. It’s a much smaller field (only 278 entries) with $50,000 to first if it fills.
🔗 Play: https://bit.ly/403KGb0

PGA TOUR Fantasy (Starts this week!)
I want to show the PGA TOUR that we mean business. I want our private league to be the biggest on the site. If you beat me on the season-long board, you’ll be entered to win $500. It’s free to play and they have some prizes from PGA TOUR Superstore.
🔗 Join: https://bit.ly/403KGb0

🏆 Most Improved Player

I love looking at year-over-year metrics. I believe that they tell us a lot more about a player than any specific number of rounds and provide a much better look into a player’s trend.

That’s where you find steady, incremental improvement from Max Homa and Matt Fitzpatrick — though both of their streaks ended in 2024.

If you compare every golfer in this field from 2023 to 2024, you’re going to find some impressive improvements. It’s not much of a surprise to see young guys on this list. Davis Thompson, Nico Echavarria, Taylor Pendrith and Harry Hall are all expected to keep getting better for a while. While I don’t think their “primes” are similar, I don’t think any of them have hit their prime yet.

But the names that really stick out — Billy Horschel and Alex Noren. Not only did they both improve significantly in 2024, but both were already positive players in 2023. Horschel is 38 years old while Noren is 42. These guys are ancient by modern golf standards.

Horschel has gained 0.50+ per round in six of the last seven years. Hat tips to the old men!

Finally, this Xander Schauffele career should elicit only one response from his peers.

🏔️ The Air Is Thin Up Here

With Scottie Scheffler WDing from The Sentry, oddsmakers have moved Xander Schauffele into the pole position, listing him at +500 to win this week. This is really interesting from a few different angles.

The odds of 5-1 or shorter has really only been assigned to 1) elite golfers in the middle of a run or 2) the best golfers in small fields. I’ve been tracking the PGA TOUR odds data for over five years and there’s been 28 other instances of a golfer cracking those odds.

14x: Scottie Scheffler
6x: Jon Rahm
2x: Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay
1x: Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, Xander Schauffele

To be transparent, 11/28 have come at the TOUR Championship which is a 30 golfer field handicapped with starting strokes. Another two have come at the Hero World Challenge — an even smaller field — so I’m going to throw those away. That leaves us 15 instances of a golfer being +500 or shorter in a “somewhat normal” tournament.

That golfer has gone on to win the event in 6/15 (40%) of those starts and finish inside the Top 5 in another six, making the overall Top 5 rate a staggering 12/15 (80%). History bodes well for Schauffele, but of course, past history doesn’t predict future results.

The only thing that I find interesting is how little Xander Schauffele has played without having to compete against the Scottie Scheffler buzzsaw. In 2024, Xander played just six times when Scheffler wasn’t in the field. One of those was the Zurich Classic (team event), so I’m throwing that away.

In the five starts without Scheffler to battle, Xander finished:

• T15 at the Scottish Open

• T41 at the ZOZO Championship

• 2nd at the Wells Fargo Championship

• T5 at the Valspar Championship

• T9 at the Farmers Insurance Open

The runner-up at Quail Hollow sticks out because Xander lost to Rory McIlroy by five strokes but beat the rest of the field by three shots. McIlroy will not be in the field this week either. Does that clear a path to victory for X?

🏆 OAD Pool Genius

One of the things that I’m most proud of is the One & Done tool from Pool Genius. I consulted on this during the production process and I stay in regular touch with them about updates and features. Honestly, I wasn’t going to dedicate the time and energy into building something this complex and they’ve done a wonderful job.

If you haven’t seen it before, it makes custom recommendations for OAD depending on your league size, entries, prize distribution, etc. It’s a very well thought out tool that I recommend everyone sign up for — it’s worth way more than they are charging.

💰 Plus we get a discount, so sign up here: bit.ly/3PjawS7

Remember, this is unique to me and my league but Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay and Sungjae Im are my best options. Notice Xander Schauffele ranking 8th for me. That’s because he has a ton of future value, something that I discussed in my OAD Mega Preview this year.

The combination of JT’s betting odds, course history and question future value might be good enough to overlook how popular he’s going to be. Plus, it’s week one — don’t need to get too crazy just yet.