I’m going to be frank with you, it was a pretty awful week at the Wells Fargo.  I mean when Jon Rahm ends his streak of 22 straight cuts made, it was a bad week.  I kept saying that I wanted to see Rory do it before I jumped back in and he did.  Rory wins his first PGA Tour event since becoming a father and I’m sure it felt like a huge weight was lifted off of his shoulders.  After the win, he spoke about how special Quail Hollow is to him and how the fans really brought him to the finish line.  It’s nice to see him get some momentum heading into the PGA Championship which is next week on Kiawah Island. 

The Byron Nelson has been a regular tour stop for a long time but we’ve got a new venue.  The PGA Tour travels down to Dallas, Texas to TPC Craig Ranch.  While this is a new course to the PGA Tour, it is no stranger to the Korn Ferry Tour, the track played host to the 2008 and 2012 Tour Championship.  We’ve got 12 players in this field who participated in the 2012 edition.  Usually you don't see a great field for a tournament the week before a major because guys are either taking the week off to rest or heading down to the venue a week early.  We've got a solid field with DeChambeau, Rahm, Spieth, Koepka, Matsuyama and Zalatoris teeing it up this weekend.  When you look over the scoring from those two other championships, players will be able to score on this course.  You’ll see the winner end up in the upper teens is my guess, so pick players who can go low and go low often. 

When the course hosted the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, it was played as a Par 71 but it was stretched and will play at a Par 72 this week.  There are six par 4s that play over 450 yards which means you’ll want to target once again those solid long iron players.  We’ve also got two high risk/high reward short par 4s that play less than 360 yards.  One of the two has a huge water hazard on the left and bunkers along the right side while the second one doesn’t have any hazards it does have two large bunkers on each side of the green.  These players will have to make the decision to take out the big dog and go for the green or club down to an iron and give themselves an easy approach wedge.  Number 17 at this course is supposed to be comparable to the famous Number 16 at TPC Scottsdale with the crowds but with COVID restrictions, it won’t have the full effect.  TPC Craig Ranch did help these players a bit on the greens knowing that these winds will be challenging, they will be running relatively slow compared to most PGA Tour courses.  I will not be putting Strokes Gained: Putting into my key stats this weekend.

We’re playing in Texas which means I’ll be targeting players who know how to play in these winds, guys like Jordan Spieth, Scottie Scheffler, Marc Leishman, and Ryan Palmer.  I know it seems silly but there is a way to play these Texas courses and some players just know how to do it better than others.    

We’ve already had one huge withdraw from the tournament and it has me worried.  Dustin Johnson has pulled out as he battles a knee injury.  We all hope that this withdraw is about giving his knee a week of rest before heading to next week’s PGA Championship.  The worry is that this injury is more serious than originally thought and he might not be able to tee it up.  We will just have to keep an eye on the situation.

The weather report looks relatively clean with temperatures starting in the high-70s on Thursday and Friday and climbing into the 80s over the weekend.  The one thing I’m looking at is the wind looks like it’ll get progressively stronger as the tournament goes along peaking in the mid-teens by Sunday.  There is scattered thunderstorms in the forecast for Sunday right now.         

ONE & DONE PLAY: MARC LEISHMAN

Good luck everyone!

Stacks

{{stack.team.name}} {{player.name}}
DraftKings {{player.fantasy.price.value[8]}}-
Fanduel {{player.fantasy.price.value[6]}}-