🥐 Beignet Done That

📢 Fore, Please:

Weeks like this, man.

Sometimes I get asked “will you be making a video this week?” The answer is, and always has been, yes. Admittedly, I think I’ve missed one week in the last ~eight years. It was the week after the 2023 Ryder Cup, we were in Rome and I didn’t have access to … anything. That’s it! Extenuating circumstances.

Because weeks like this are weeks where you guys show up too. And I’m going to show up for you. We treat every week the same because they all matter. And you’re not going to convince me otherwise.

Enjoy it.
Rick

🏅 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup

Justin Thomas: $10,200 | 127.0 PTS
Andrew Novak: $6,700 | 115.0 PTS
Brian Harman: $7,600 | 105.5 PTS
Daniel Berger: $8,300 | 99.5 PTS
Mackenzie Hughes: $6,600 | 112.0 PTS
Maverick McNealy: $8,100 | 98.5 PTS
TOTAL: $47,500 | 657.5 PTS 

💦 The Drought Is Over

(I’m using the same section title and emoji from last week!)

Justin Thomas has done it! Back in the winners circle and it couldn’t come at a more exciting time. We are just weeks away from heading back to Quail Hollow where JT captured his first of two PGA Championships.

JT has climbed out of the putting depths and is now gaining 0.46 strokes per round on the greens this year. That is currently the best mark of his career and the first time that he’s been a positive putter since 2020 — when he won 3x.

It’s also noteworthy that his SGPUTT number makes up roughly 30% of his entire SG mark which is also the highest of his career. The question lies in sustainability. If the putting continues, watch out! But since it’s such a large chunk of his total output, if he loses the flatstick, he will sink in a hurry.

⚔️ Majors Only Now

Let’s just continue this exercise but only look at JT’s Major Championship results. From 2017 thru 2022, he compiled a 31.8% Top 10 rate in Majors with (2) wins.

Over his last nine Majors, he has (1) Top 10 — 11.1% — and has missed more cuts than he has made.

There are 37 golfers who have played all nine Majors since the start of 2023. JT has lost 0.46 strokes/rd in those events, the worst rate among those 37. That is … not great! But I’m not ready to judge a career on nine starts. Let’s see what the next nine are going to look like.

🤖 Rory’s Best Version

Rory McIlroy has an incomparable resume. He’s done it all. No more questions to answer. And for all his accolades over the previous 15 years, he is having the best year of his career right now.

It’s early and it’s a small margin, but Rory’s +2.46 strokes/rd in 2025 is the best mark of his entire career — narrowly edging out the +2.45/rd of 2022. That would be an incredible pace to keep up for the rest of the year, but hey, anything is possible.

The other observation that I have from the data-set is that Rory has (7) different years where he gained 2+ strokes to the field. That felt like … a lot! Gaining 2+ strokes to the field, for an entire year, is the target for the #1 player in the world. So I looked it up.

I used rounds from six tours (PGA, EURO, LIV, KFT, SENIOR, ASIAN), so I’m being really generous here. I went back to the start of the Tiger Era (1996) and put a 30 round minimum on the query. The number of 2+ SG Years":

• 13: Tiger

• 7: Rory

• 4: Ernie, Phil, Stricker, Vijay

• 3: Duval, Alker

• 2: Day, Furyk, Rahm, Spieth, Goosen, Scottie

• 1: 20 others

I think I said this somewhere last week. If you have lived through this Tiger/Rory era, you’ve witnessed some of the greatest golf ever played — period.

🦄 Unique New York

Let’s clear up for the format for this week — there are (80) teams of two, so 160 golfers. There will be a cut on Friday, down to the Top 33 teams and ties. There are two different playing formats that will rotate each day:

• Thursday: Best Ball

• Friday: Alternate Shot

• Saturday: Best Ball

• Sunday: Alternate Shot

History shows that one of the favorites often wins the event (Lowry/McIlroy, Cantlay/Schauffele, Leishman/Smith, Rahm/Palmer) but the leaderboard will certainly be eclectic after that. It was Chad Ramey and Martin Trainer who took Shane and Rory to extra holes last year. The first page of the leaderboard will certainly have you diving deep into RickRunGood.com to see the last time these guys had a Top 30 finish anywhere in the world. Buckle up!

🩳 Pair of Podiums for Pauls

Good luck seeing the difference between Yannik and Jeremy Paul. Hopefully, for everyone’s sake, they wear different colors everyday this week.

The twins will tee it up together in New Orleans this week and BOTH are coming off their best finish of the year. They are seriously taking this brotherly one-upmanship thing a little too far.

Yannik just notched a solo third at the Volvo China Open where he gained at least 2.8 strokes in each of the four rounds.

Jeremy finished in the T2 logjam at the Corales Puntacana Championship, just one shot out of a possible playoff. That’s his best PGA TOUR finish ever.

This will be their first time playing the Zurich Classic but something tells me they have played quite a few rounds together.

☯️ You Complete Me

Out of 80 teams, there are only seven “complete teams”. Those are teams that gain strokes in all four categories combined over the last 36 rounds.

No surprise that Lowry and McIlroy top this list, but it is interesting to see some other pairings make an appearance. Bramlett and Smalley offer significant T2G gains but their two “weakest” spots are approach & putting — which will be very valuable this week.

On the other side of things, Gerard and Walker are producing significant gains on approach and with the flatstick which could make them a dangerous team.