🧠 You Don't Know Jack

📢 Fore, Please:

I try not to ask for much, but I’m going to break that policy right now and ask you to subscribe to The Second Cut Golf Podcast on YouTube.

Many of you know this, but ‘The First Cut Podcast’ was a CBS Sports podcast that ran for 10 years (six with me) and produced over 1,500 episodes. It was a near daily podcast with round-by-round recaps of basically every PGA TOUR event.

Earlier this year, that podcast was retired. I’ll spare you the shock and devastation but, long story short, we brought it back. This time, with Mark Immelman and Greg DuCharme, it’s an independent project. We are doing it our way.

The first eight weeks have been great and the feedback has been awesome, but we aren’t even close to being done. If you could take three seconds of your time to subscribe on YouTube it would go a long way for us and you will not be disappointed.

Thank you, as always.
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Ben Griffin: $8,700 | 118.5 PTS
Matti Schmid: $6,700 | 111.5 PTS
Bud Cauley: $7,800 | 94.0 PTS
Scottie Scheffler: $13,700 | 93.5 PTS
Aldrich Potgieter: $6,400 | 90.0 PTS
Nick Hardy: $6,300 | 81.0 PTS
TOTAL: $49,600 | 588.5 PTS 

🦄 The Unicorn

Ben Griffin is a unicorn — let me explain. No, it’s not sunglasses. It’s not the loan background. It’s the volume AND production that he’s putting up right now.

Usually on the PGA TOUR, there are guys who play well and then there are guys who play a lot. The latter are playing out of necessity to try and earn as many FedEx Cup Points as possible. It’s why you never see Rory McIlroy play 35 times — he doesn’t have to.

Ben Griffin is doing something rather rare right now. He’s made 18 starts this year, the second most behind Eric Cole. But he’s doing it with +0.87 SG/round average which is right on par with Corey Conners and Jordan Spieth. There was a stretch where Griffin played 13 straight events to start the year!

How crazy could this get? Griffin is playing this week, so that’ll be #19. Then there’s another dozen events until the end of the FedEx Cup Playoffs + any fall event(s) that he might play.

31 is the magic number — that’s the most starts by any golfer with 2+ wins in the Tiger Era. Hal Sutton (1997), Jeff Sluman (1997), Todd Hamilton (2004) and Bryson DeChambeau (2017) all did it.

Griffin is on pace to crush that number.

🧟 The Rest of the Round-Up

The rest of what you missed last week:

• Andrew Novak gained +8.43 strokes from tee-to-green, which was second only to Scottie Scheffler and the second-best mark of his career.

• Tommy Fleetwood gained strokes in all four SG categories last week for the 15th time since the start of 2023. Only Scheffler (19), McIlroy (16), and Schauffele (16) have accomplished the feat more frequently.

• Gary Woodland, Michael Kim, and Robert MacIntyre all gained +6.15 strokes to the field over the weekend. That was the second best weekend total behind … Scheffler.

⌛ We’re In A Moment

I’ve forgotten all about the “slow start” for Scottie Scheffler this season because he is right back onto a historic pace. The greatest single years is a list that starts with Tiger Woods and repeats his name an insane number of times before you find anyone else.

Scottie Scheffler’s 2025 is currently the 12th best calendar year since 1997, the third best non-Tiger year and the second best Scottie Scheffler year.

If this position were to hold, Scheffler would own three of the five best non-Tiger years since 1997.

🐳 JD + RRG + U

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
🤑 $25/Entry
🪙 $25,000 guaranteed purse, $2,500 to first.
🎱 Pick six golfers, best five scores count!

🔗 Play Now

🎁 A Gift & A Curse ☠️

Being the all-time Minor League Home Run leader is a good thing, right? It’s also a bad thing, though?

You were excellent, the best at what you did, but you spent much more time in the minors than you would have liked — just ask Mike Hessman. He racked up 234 minor league home runs, more than anyone else in the stat tracking era. But he only played 109 games in the Majors, hitting .188 and knocking 14 dingers. His last stint was as a Met in 2010.

Where am I going with this? Well, this is how I feel about Lucas Glover and his record at the Memorial. The fact that he’s been able to qualify and play this event 19x should be celebrated! No one has played this event as often as Glover in the Tiger Era (1996+).

But — his record at this tournament is the sixth worst player/tournament combination of golfers with at least 19 starts. He has (1) Top 10 which, funnily enough, was in his first ever trip in 2005. Since then, he hasn’t cracked the Top 35.

I’m appalled. I’m impressed. The Lucas Glover Experience.

😰 New Greens + Old Green

In 2020, Jack had his team literally ripping up the greens while play was still finishing up on Sunday. It was the start of a renovation where all 18 greens were re-done and Jack “touched up” the golf course.

I love having a definitive time like this to compare the before/after stats. Below you’ll find a complete list of golfers who have rounds played both before and after the greens were re-done — along with their accompanying Strokes Gained numbers.

I’m not sure if this means anything, I really don’t know. But some of these swings are fairly sizable. Justin Thomas has hemorrhaged strokes to the field on the new greens, losing nearly 15 strokes over ten rounds. Prior to the renovation, he had gained strokes putting in three of his previous four starts.

The other J.T. (Poston) lost nearly nine strokes putting across 2019 and 2020 before gaining in four straight starts after the renovation — to the tune of +12.53 strokes.

🥪 Extra Spread, Please.

This week’s O&D ownership is distributed fairly evenly. Only one golfer, Viktor Hovland, currently stands to collect 10%+ of selections.

Xander Schauffele & Collin Morikawa round off the podium with the rest of the Top 10 listed below.

This is intriguing. It’s a massive purse ($20,000,000) with a little extra juice for first since there is a cut here — $4,000,000 to the victor.

Most people have already used Scottie Scheffler and roughly 1/3rd of the users who still have him are using him this week.

It’s worth noting that a big change in O&D took place this week for those of you who have to make a selection for the TOUR Championship. The TOUR changed the format of the season finale and removed the starting strokes.

If you were trying to save a golfer like Rory McIlroy or Scottie Scheffler for that week, thinking you’d have an extra leg-up, no need to head down that path any longer. They will still certainly be favorites in a 30 player field but it’s no longer a necessity to stash them.

Back to this week — Morikawa and Cantlay are probably the top options. I don’t feel comfortable with either, but they are course horses and way overdue for victories.