I know a lot of my readers are not big fans of Jim Herman after what happened last week but come on.  You want to talk about an underdog story, you’ve got a 42 year old journeyman who had two PGA Tour victories to his name coming into the Wyndham and shoots 61-63 over the weekend to take the title.  I don’t care who you are that’s a great story.  He also earned a spot in the playoffs with that victory along with the other top 124 players in the FedEx Cup standings.        

The FedEx Cup Playoffs begin in Beantown for the Northern Trust at TPC Boston.  This course got dropped from the FedEx Cup playoffs last year when the PGA changed their format of four events to three.  It used to be called the Dell Technology Championship.  It is a Par 71 that measures out 7,342 yards.  There are three Par 5's on this course and two of them are reachable with a driver and wedge for these pros.  That means Strokes Gained: Off the Tee will be an important stat this week.  The third Par 5 is 600 yards but these bombers like Bryson can still get there in two.  While some of these guys can get there in two, they’ll have to make a tough decision of trying to carry a massive bunker that spans the width of the fairway.  I’m also going to add Par 5 Efficiency 550-600 as a key stat this weekend.  As always players will need to get themselves into birdie making opportunities which brings in Strokes Gained: Approach once again.  We want ball strikers that will target pins throughout the weekend which means Proximity.  This will be tough to pick and choose players to go heavy on as we’ve got lot of players with good course history but all the players in this field have played well throughout the PGA Tour season. 

As this week is like a major field with so many great players, it will come down to the putter this weekend as we saw with Collin Morikawa at the PGA Championship.  Collin finished 1st in Strokes Gained: Putting that week while Justin Rose, Dustin Johnson, Brendon Todd, Kevin Kisner, Joel Dahmen, and Harris English all finished in the Top 10 and finished Top 20 at the PGA Championship.

Once again like I did last week at the Wyndham Championship, all these players are either trying to stay or get into the Top 70 of the FedEx Cup Standings to play in next week’s BMW Championship.  I’m going to put that as my last key stat this week because guys like Brooks Koepka, Justin Rose, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, Tommy Fleetwood, Harold Varner, Si Woo Kim, Chez Reavie, Louis Oosthuizen, Shane Lowry and Ian Poutler are all on the outside looking in right now.  That’s a lot of big names who need to make moves this weekend.  I would not be surprised if you see a bunch of these guys in my playbook.

PLAYBOOK WAS UPDATED WITH BROOKS KOEPKA WITHDRAWING FROM THE EVENT!

KEY STATS: Strokes Gained: Approach, Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, Strokes Gained: Putting, Par 5 Efficiency 550-600, Proximity, and FedEx Cup Standing

ONE & DONE PICK: Rickie Fowler

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