2022 RBC Canadian Open Betting & DFS Preview, LIV Thoughts
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This episode of Inside Golf Podcast is brought to you by RickRungood.com. We will be talking today about the RBC Canadian Open and St. George's Golf Club. If you want an even more extensive breakdown, you can find my Monday article on RickRungood.com. I also read a Wednesday DraftKings article where I do a deep dive into ownership,

Talk about who I'm playing, the weather, all that good stuff. And all of the tools and data that I will be talking about on this podcast, you can find all of them on rickrungood.com. So make sure to use promo code Andy when you sign up. That is...

crucial to my livelihood, kind of, but it would help a lot. So rickrungood.com slash Andy, phenomenal community over there. And that Slack channel is the best place to reach me with any questions. Bunch of other smart people in there too. All right, before we get to St. George's, should we talk some Lyft stuff? I got to say, I'm really humbled by the few people that asked me if I was going to do an emergency podcast today.

or really wanted my take on this. I don't know if I'm going to say anything at this point that hasn't already been said. The one thing that I am surprised that I haven't heard more people talk about is how bad DJ's been at golf for about a year and a half. You know, it's all relative, right? Like we're still talking about a top 50 guy. I think he's like 36th in strokes gained over the past year and a half.

But the interesting thing to me was, you know, that he has been, if you really look into it, and I didn't really realize this until I did look into it, but he's been a far cry from an elite golfer for close to 18 months now over a pretty, pretty damn large sample size. He's got one top five on the PGA tour in a year and a half.

And that came at the match play, which is a limited field. And he kind of got waxed by Sheffler in the semis. So zero stroke play top fives on the PGA Tour since Dustin Johnson won the November Masters. The only point I'm making is, yes, on name value, DJ is still a big draw.

I don't know if he's as big as he was a couple years ago, but he's still a big name. The issue is his play has not matched up with his name value. And I kind of made a joke about how, you know, if I was 38 years old, I hadn't had a legitimate chance to win on the PGA Tour in a year and a half. And seemingly every single week, this new generation of 22-year-olds came

continue to rack up these top fives like it's nothing. I mean, Cameron Young's last month on the PGA Tour has been better than DJ's last 18 months on the PGA Tour. So even if Liv wasn't offering me outrageous sums of money, I understand why you would say, you know what? Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking good. And that's not me saying DJ's washed up.

or he's not competitive anymore, or he'll never win again. In fact, in the major over-under podcast that I did with Twitterless Steve, I picked him to win another major. And I still think he could. I mean, trust me, if they decide to hang a big number on him, I'll probably take that chance. This is just me saying, look, let's take a look at the results and maybe consider the fact that he's entering a different stage of his career. And by the way,

If DJ started playing awesome again, which I still think he's capable of, how would we know? How would we evaluate that if DJ wins the live event next week? How do you place that in context, right? So my only point is, I think if you're DJ and you've gone through statistically and results-wise the worst stretch of your entire career by a pretty healthy margin...

It doesn't only make sense from a financial perspective, but from a golf perspective too, which is why Westwood and Poulter and Sergio and all those guys we knew were prime candidates to go. Why would they give a shit about trying to make the cut at Bay Hill or Riviera anymore? What's the value in that for them? What would be really interesting to me would be if a player at the top of their game, if a shuffler who went on this crazy run

right? Or somebody that was playing like a top five player in the world, a Rory, a JT, a ROM, a Morikawa. If those guys, if those guys went now after proving over a large sample size over the last year and a half, that they are the P they're still the pinnacle of golf, right? They're still the peak of golf. If DJ was contending in majors and,

and contending in tour events and winning PGA Tour events and playing like a top five guy in the world, would he still make this decision? I think he would. But I also think DJ's a little bit of a different guy. I do have one friend that knows him a little bit and he's like, yeah, he's got a really tight circle. He cares about his family. He cares about his friends.

He felt like he answered a lot of those questions about underachieving in his career by getting that second major. You know, one major for DJ just always felt kind of wrong. I still think with two, based on what I believe of his talent level to be, you know, if you ask me at the beginning of the career, I would, I would say he ends up with way more than two. But I think for him, he got a lot of, he got a lot of peace out of that. Right.

And he's got different priorities than a Rory or a Justin Thomas. And that's fine. I think it's crazy to judge him for that. I'm not talking about the political stuff. I'm just talking about the existential why he plays golf, right? You know, he's going spearfishing a week before the Ryder Cup, joking about how he doesn't know where Whistling Straits is.

And Rory, on the other hand, is in fucking tears, right? They're just different guys. They have different priorities. Most people, by the way, are more like DJ than they are like Rory. Most people play golf for money. Guys like Rory, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Jordan Spieth. I think at this stage of their career, they play golf for trophies. I don't know if it was always like that.

They've all earned a lot of money over the course of their career. But those guys, especially JT, they're obsessed with Tiger. They care about the history of the game. They have all the money they need. And it's about legacy for them. And they have made that abundantly clear if you listen to any interview that they give. But...

Those guys are in the minority. Okay. The vast majority of golfers do not play golf for trophies. They play golf for money. And guess what? That's fine too. And by the way, if you think DJ is the only great player who doesn't value legacy as much as trophies, you're crazy. Just wait. In fact, I know the first live event is holding a couple of open spots available and I'm

I've been told there's another big name who might show up. I could be wrong. That's coming from a secondhand source, not a firsthand source, which is why I'm not reporting it or tweeting it. So don't aggravate me if they don't get anyone else. But the vast majority of good players, great players, medium players, have way more of DJ's brain on this one than they do on Rory or Justin Thomas's brain. So I don't think this is going to go away. I think unless the first event happens,

is like a fire fest ask embarrassing disaster, right? And we're already starting to see people make a joke of it with the, uh, the ticket promotions are basically giving the tickets away for free.

But I think if this goes on, if the actual event goes on without a hitch, right? And there's no big giant disaster with the players. The players aren't complaining about anything. And the actual golf goes rather somewhat smoothly. I do think the fields will keep getting better. And I know it's going to be a really easy target to make fun of. And...

I think a lot of people are probably going to tune into it because they want to see it fail and they think there'll be a comedy aspect to it, right? It's the same reason, or just a spectacle, right? There's that curiosity factor. It's the same reason why people slow down on the highways to watch car wrecks, right? But in a way, that's kind of good for Liv, right? Yeah.

Liv's worst nightmare is complete irrelevancy. And I think there's enough of a spectacle aspect, a curiosity aspect, that people are going to pay attention to it, at least the first event. What would be the other reasons that people would watch? Well, I'll give you the reasons why I watch golf. Reason number one, and I realize I'm in the vast majority of people that care about this, so I'll start with this one.

I watch golf because I love watching great players play great golf courses, right? A golf course like Southern Hills, a golf course like Riviera, even Shinnecock, Winged Foot, St. Andrews. That's appointment viewing to me because I love those great golf courses. I have a relationship to those golf courses and I have a relationship to the history at those golf courses. And I like seeing the best players being tested on what I believe to be is interesting architecture.

Liv does not check that box at all. I mean, I haven't done a deep dive into this London event. I just asked one of my friends that lives in London what he thought about the golf course. And he was like, yeah, it's really boring. It's really dull. I played Doral in November. That course sucks. I mean, it's incredibly dull. All of the holes blend together. I mean, it's really, really banal, uninteresting architecture.

which doesn't mean that it's not a good test for PGA tour pros. Torrey Pines is a good test for PGA tour pros. Doesn't mean it's a good golf course. So you're not getting the Boston one too, by the way, I heard sucks. So you're not getting any of these iconic venues that we as golf fans have built this relationship to during years and years of watching, right?

The second reason would be context, right? It feels like when you're watching the Masters every year, you're watching a piece of history, right? There's the tradition and the music and Jim Nance, and you kind of get the commercials that come on, and it's part of the calendar, right? And all the records and the history, and you know whether you're

a super golf fan, like a medium golf fan, or just an average golf fan, you know that week matters. That week changes the players that are playing in its lives. It changes the trajectory of careers and of history. And you know when you're debating at a sports bar in 20 years, who's better, Tiger or Jack, Phil or

Phil or Ernie, JT or Spieth. I don't know. Like all those debates are centered around these moments in time that we understand have significance because we have all these years of history and a relationship to them. What does winning a live event mean? I have DJ currently, if his career ended today, I have him as the 30th greatest golfer of all time. If he wins the first live event,

Do I move him up? I don't know. What does it mean? What are the stakes? If you actually think about why people love sports, it's the stakes. When a team wins a Super Bowl, it feels special. Certain moments in sports, the reason why we love them so much and the reason why we as fans develop an emotional connection to them

is when we feel like the sport, what's actually happening on the field or on the court or on the course is transcending, right? Is transcending what's actually happening, right? We know that we're watching history. And I don't understand what the stakes are with Liv. I'm trying to figure out what would be compelling to the fan audience

about watching rich players just get richer, right? What is the angle there if you're selling this? And this is why the FedEx Cup has not been successful, right? This is why no one cares about the FedEx Cup and people joke about the FedEx Cup. They could make the Masters worth $1. They could make the purse of the Masters worth $1 and the purse of the FedEx Cup $100 million. $100 million.

And people would still not care because people don't watch sports to see athletes get richer. That's not what's compelling about sports. So we aren't going to be watching interesting golf courses. There are no stakes. The third thing is we know that it's not as long as Rory doesn't go, as long as Rom doesn't go, as long as Morikawa doesn't go.

As long as Hovland doesn't go, as long as those guys are still playing in the Canadian Open or whatever, as opposed to the live one, you're not watching greatness. And people love watching greatness. That would be the third reason why people watch sports. We love watching the best players in the world compete against the best players in the world. And we know with live, we're not watching the best players in the world. So

The final reason of why I would watch golf, why others watch golf, outside of all these reasons that I just mentioned with the golf course aspect on TV, the relationship that we build to certain courses, the relationship that we build to history and stakes and certain players, the big elephant in the room, why I still don't think you could totally stick a fork in this thing is can you gamble on this? Can you play DraftKings on this?

I have no idea if there are certain legal agreements. I don't think, if I remember correctly, the Saudi international had odds. I think maybe some of the big sports books didn't want to go there. But you're not watching this to see interesting golf courses with all this history. You're not watching this because you feel like you're watching something that actually matters in the grand scheme of golf.

You're not watching records come crashing down or greatness being achieved. We don't know if you're watching this because you have money on it, right? That's still TBD. So I think the only reason why people would tune into this first one is because of the curiosity aspect. And I don't know what's going to happen after that. I think the money is so crazy that they will get better golfers eventually. But I mean, they're giving these tickets away for free.

Completely outside of the politics of it, which I have no interest of getting into on this podcast, maybe another episode, and shitting on the players that are going, which I don't really understand as a content bit anymore at this point. I think it makes complete sense why they're going. Like I said, the guys like Rory and JT that cry at Ryder Cups and worship Tiger Woods, those guys are the minority.

Most guys in the PGA tour thought long and hard about this and are still probably thinking long and hard about this. I know Xander did, but is the money going to be enough that this is something that has actual staying power? Because in terms of what would be compelling to people outside of what is compelling to the players, we know the money is compelling to players, but what would be compelling to people to watch this, right? Like,

I don't know what the angle is there, right? But the money is so great that, you know, I'm not going to, I, it could fracture. It could hypothetically fracture the golf world, right? It's a lot of money. And so, yes, it has to be a compelling product for people to care, but how many PGA tour pros care if you're watching them, right? If they're still getting paid the same, right?

They're not getting paid based on how many people tune in to the event, right? And we already know that the absolute best players in the world aren't going to go. So do we get this fractured situation where many of the super elites stay on the PGA Tour, but a bunch of solid mid-tier players like a Taylor Gooch go to live? I don't know. I don't think anyone wants that.

I think everyone probably wants to see all the best players competing against each other on the same golf course, which is why the majors have so much prestige. We'll see. All right, let's talk about the golf courses this week. St. George's Golf and Country Club. It's in...

the West End neighborhood of Islington, Toronto. This golf course is hosted in the Canadian Open five times, 1933, 1949, 1960, 1968, and 2010, where it was won by Carl Peterson at 14 under par over Dean Wilson. This course was designed by Stanley Thompson in 1929,

It's a par 70 measuring 7,014 yards. The greens are bent grass. Shout out Twitterless Steve who found a video of the groundskeeper talking about how they have made the switch from a POA bent blend, which is what we saw in 2010, to pure bent grass. In terms of the rough and fairways, my guess from looking at other courses in the region is that we're dealing with

backgrass fairways and probably bluegrass rough, but I cannot confirm that. So check back later in the week. I think the GSCAA, I'm recording this on Saturday night. I think the GSCAA sheet should come out on like Monday, but this golf course actually looks really good and has some really nice history to it. So this is formerly known as the Royal York Golf Club and

and founded basically on money from the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1929, they hired Stanley Thompson, who's an architect I actually have a ton of respect for. He's probably the greatest architect of Canadian golf courses. He's designed 144 golf courses in Canada, about 25 of them in the U.S. as well, including Bam Springs, which is on my bucket list. I've heard that one's incredible. But he, along with Donald Ross...

and Robert Trent Jones were co-founders of the ASGCA, American Society of Golf Architects. And Thompson became design partners with Robert Trent Jones in 1932. So there's some real pedigree there. And I actually really like the look of the layout of this golf course when I just go through all the images of it.

So a couple other things about the golf course. Robbie Robinson, who was a design associate of Thompson, worked on the course too and consulted with the club all the way up until 1989 when he passed away. Robinson made some significant changes to the club in the 1960s in preparation for the Canadian Open in 1968.

which mainly comprised of lengthening a number of holes. And then in 1992, Doug Carrick was brought in to do more renovations, and he added a new green to the 10th hole, added some new tee boxes as well. They did a bunker restoration in 2001 with Ian Andrew. But then here's where things actually start matter. Why does this actually matter? So here's the big one.

Tom Doak and Ian Andrew rebuilt all the greens in July and August of 2014. The most significant change was the restoration of the third hole back to its original design by Thompson. So I love Tom Doak. I would probably say that he's my favorite modern architect, or I guess the one I connect with the most in terms of his philosophy. And I really liked the way that Doak approaches green complexes. So,

If I had to guess, these greens probably have a little bit more color, a little bit more provocation than what we're used to seeing regularly on the PGA Tour. Right? So again, we had this event in 2010. Well, they rebuilt all the greens. So I don't even know if we have shot tracker from that, but I wouldn't spend too much time getting caught up in that event. My immediate observations on this golf course, it's tight. It's claustrophobic.

It's tree-lined. It's quirky. There are some blind shots, some elevation changes, crowned greens. It seems like there's a bit of this meandering creek, but it only comes into play on a few holes. There's five par 3s. One of them is really short, 146 yards, and the other four are all between 204 and 215 yards. So you've got four long par 3s.

There are three par fives. All of them are between 528 and 560. So I imagine they're all reachable except 15. And then there's a fair amount of nicely, like good medium length par fours. Seven par fours measure above 449 yards. And the other three par fours are really short. They measure between 370 and 400. So 15 looks like this really cool par five range.

with a green atop this really big hill. The land formation on 15 is large and severe. So you really like have to think before you take on that green and two, you're going through this incredibly narrow corridor to a green that say it's, I don't know, 40 feet above you. Honestly, going for the green and two honestly seems foolish, but yeah,

I would never put anything past the control that players have over their golf ball at this stage. So I think that's going to be an incredibly fun hole to watch. It's been called by some the best par five in Canada. But since we don't have the regular stats and quotes from players of previous competition, I was looking a lot about through what people were saying about this course online. So here's a review that I read.

This is a mid single digit handicap. I was playing the blue tees at 6,800 and it's a tough test. I hit more three and four irons, which go about 200 to 215 than on any golf course. The greens are the best I've seen in Canada. You won't find a better place to get your butt kicked if your long irons and putter aren't on point. So this goes back to my thing with Southern Hills where I

People just immediately think, oh, short course equals a ton of wedges. Long course equals a ton of long irons. Well, you have to look at how the yardage actually maps out. So with this course, I know that it's only a touch over 7,000 yards, but let's run through that. It has five par threes, which by the way, four of them are between 200 and 215. So that's already four holes with an approach shot of 200 yards plus.

Then you have seven par fours that measure above 450 yards. So you have to imagine with how tight the fairways are here, I don't think that this is going to be a driver heavy course. You're going to at least have an approach of 175 plus on, I don't know, three to five of those holes. And then at least two of the par fives are reachable with a long iron. And suddenly it's like, whoa.

Okay, maybe you could have a long iron approach here on like 60% of your holes, maybe more, which is basically what you're getting with Muirfield, despite that golf course measuring 7,500 yards and playing as a par 72. But if you really map it out, a 7,500 yard par 72 with four par threes is

is not really that much longer than a 7,000 par 70 with five par threes, right? And the reason why the yardage is so low here is because five par fives, sorry, five par threes, and one of them's really short and all the par fives are short and three of the par fours are really short.

But the other 12 holes are long, right? So I actually think 175 to 225 is going to be extremely key this week, in my opinion. Here's some more quotes. The routing takes you out through a highly undulated landscape over rolling hills and through troughs.

The start takes us from an elevated tee through a small valley on the tee shot and then up the backside of the valley to green nestled at the top. Natural in its setting, the green slopes severely back to front with the slope of the hill. Thompson most certainly allowed the landscape and its features to dictate the routing, yet the end result was a seamless integration, giving the idea that the course had always been there.

Hearing that does not leave me surprised that Doak was willing to do some work here. So you start putting all these pieces of the puzzle together and you start thinking, okay, undulating greens, heavy bunkering, these certain holes kind of create illusions and can visually trick players because of the topography, you know, these plateaued greens. And you start going through the website and the website has a little kind of mini description of all the holes and

And I'm not going to bore you by going through hole by hole, but the one through line I found, kind of the key buzzwords that kept coming up, narrow fairways, intimidating tee shots, tons of bunkering, elevated greens, steep greens, severe back to slope fronts, angled greens, false fronts, steep contouring, blind approach shots, dramatic fairway bunkering,

narrow crowned greens, you kind of put all this stuff together and it's like, okay, honestly, the best way that I could describe this course is it seems to me a lot like a combination of TBC Potomac and Muirfield Village. More so Potomac than Muirfield. Potomac is very similar in length, narrow fairways, driving accuracy, small greens,

tree-lined, bent grass, deep bunkers, tough around the greens. Muirfield Village more so because of the undulation, the deepness of the bunkers, the severity around the greens, the meandering creeks, the emphasis on keeping the ball in play off the tee, and just kind of the general aesthetic topography. The one thing that I'm not sold on

is that I'm not sure that it's going to be as difficult as these two courses. And the reason why I say that is because I can't really get a great read on how much and how thick the rough is here. And I think that completely defines how difficult this course plays is how thick the rough is because the fairways are very narrow here. And if the rough is thick, then

Okay, that makes things pretty tough, right? But if the rough isn't really a problem and it's okay if you're kind of in the first cut of rough, I think that makes the course play a lot easier. So my guess is based on the climate and what I believe to be the agronomy in that area of the country in this part of the year, I think that rough generally...

will be enough of a problem that you really want to be playing from the fairway here. But I don't think it will be as thick as we saw at Muirfield Village last week. And the tricky thing with TPC Potomac too, right, is that they absolutely got horrendous weather this year, which kept the scoring completely down. So we don't know what the weather is going to bring, right? I'll talk about that a lot more as we get later on in the week.

Is there a universe where we get pristine conditions and this plays closer to like, I don't know, maybe a TPC river Highlands, which is still not a birdie fest, but you know, you can get to 20 under there if you're playing well. And if we get tougher conditions and the rough has grown out, there's some winds, you know, maybe it's closer to 12 under just for context in 2010, you know,

It was 14 under. And yes, modern technology and the strength of the field has increased since then. But the course also got harder. It's longer now and it now has dope greens. So I think if I had to guess, I probably signed for 15 under, right? The architecture is too interesting for this to be a pure birdie fest, but I never want to underestimate how good these guys are at this point.

So that's preventing me from saying that it will be hard. And I always, when we get these newer courses, you know, I guess it didn't really happen with Mexico, but I always probably overrate initially how hard it's going to be. And then I watch how good these guys are. It doesn't end up being as hard, but I think it's going to fall somewhere in the middle this week. So what stats do I think that you want to look at? So off the tee, I basically...

ran through a lot of the stuff I care about, but I'm relying pretty heavily on my model from TPC Potomac. So when it comes to off the tee, I'm looking a lot at driving accuracy and how players perform on these off the tee on these like courses under 7,200 yards that maybe take driver out of your hand a little bit. And even though this course has long holes and we see this with Potomac and even to a

A lot of these tour pros are going to look at a lot of these tee shots and not pull driver. So I want to identify players that improve their baseline off the tee on less than driver courses and then compare that back with how they do off the tee regularly to see if there's any massive discrepancies. Approach.

Right. So as I've alluded to, I do think that iron play is really crucial. Anytime you have small greens with a lot of severity and undulation, the proximity buckets that I would be more focused on would be the longer ones. I just think that when you map out the course hole by hole with all the longer par threes and the par fours and the reachable par fives, I think you're really going to be tested from 175 yards plus. Right. So driving accuracy is,

175 yards plus long iron play, right? And I definitely have an above average weight on around the green like I did with Potomac and Mirafield because A, these greens are smaller. I do not think there will be an extremely high greens and regulation percentage this week, especially when you factor in the fact that you're going to have some more long iron approach shots, in my opinion. And like with all dope courses, the green complexes and the surrounding areas are really tricky.

which is probably Doak's greatest strength. One of the guys, I was actually playing with him yesterday. He plays golf at a club out here, which recently had this big Doak restoration. And he talks about the running joke at that place is that when you get all these really weird bounces around the greens and you end up in uncomfortable spots and they will say, oh, you just got Doaked.

So I think that his strength as a designer, and in my experience playing dope courses, is his ability to create these thought-provoking green complexes. So I do think short game is going to matter here. Same with bunker play. There's a lot of bunkers on this course. In terms of putting, I think we already covered most of my thoughts on these greens already. I do think there's some challenge and some severity to these greens here.

I would imagine from everything I've read that like a Muirfield Village, this is considered by most like one of the best maintained golf courses in Canada, that they're incredibly pure. And we see poor putters be great at Muirfield Village and even Augustus to a certain extent all the time. So ultimately, I have a pretty standard weight on back grass putting. But I think if you start the ball online here, players are going to be

pretty pleased with their ability to hold putts. I don't think we're going to see a lot of inconsistencies on these greens. I don't think we're going to see a lot of bumpiness on these greens. I think they're going to play fast and really true. In terms of scoring stats, I just have a small weight on bogey avoidance. I don't think this is a course from everything I've kind of looked at and read. It doesn't really seem like a course where you can go out and

make a ton of birdies or be super aggressive. I also don't think that this course is going to play, you know, brutally challenging and you necessarily need to be looking for players who thrive in difficult scoring conditions. Right. And then I talked about Potomac, uh, how I liked that one a lot. And then a secondary options, uh,

You know, Muirfield Village, more so topography, aesthetics, agronomy than anything else. I guess the skill set too, in terms of, you know, keeping the ball in play and longer approaches. You know, I kind of like Valspar too, in terms of what's a course that you have to keep the ball in play off the tee. It sneakily plays longer than you think.

It sneakily has a lot more longer approaches than you think. And it actually has a lot of elevation changes where you can't really bomb and gouge it. It's tree-lined. You kind of got to think your way around it. So I kind of like Valspar too in that sense. Then on the off chance that it plays a little bit easier...

I think we could see something more similar to TPC River Highlands, which I think is also a sneaky important course in terms of driving accuracy, right? That's a course with similar agronomy. There's still POA in some of these greens, but that's a course with a little bit thicker rough, right?

where driving accuracy is important and you have these smaller greens. And then colonial too is another course where, you know, it got really crazy and baked out this year on Sunday, but normally colonial is another positional course where accuracy and restraint off the tee really matters. It's very classical in its design nature, a lot of dog legs, some thick rough. So it's

I probably like Potomac the most, but Muirfield Village, Innisfail, Colonial is kind of secondary options. But I think for me, I really want to identify players that are accurate off the tee, hit their mid to long arms well, and have a solid short game. If you're checking those three boxes for me, you're pretty high up on my list. And

Of course, obviously, it's a week before a major, right? So you've got to always be factoring in motivation and stuff like that. It's a very top-heavy field, too. I'll say that. So as it applies to DraftKings purposes, you have this—a bunch of great players at the top. Rory, Justin Thomas, Scotty Scheffler, Cam Smith—

Matt Fitzpatrick, Tony Finau, Corey Connors, I guess, Sam Burns, Shane Lowry. But then it gets really weak, right? So I think what's going to be interesting to me is we might get a situation where it's going to be interesting to see what they do with the pricing, right? Because you look at a field like Mexico, right?

And what did they do in Mexico? They completely underpriced John Rahm for what he should be. Right. And it was like, if you wanted to play Rahm and a 7k guy, that was probably a better one to punch than two high 8k guys. Right. Because the difference in this field between probably the 8k golfers and the 7k golfers is,

I don't think is going to be as much, but the difference between Rory McIlroy and a guy like, I don't know, Sebastian Munoz, who could be a high 8K golfer, that's a big difference. Adam Hadwin will probably be an 8K golfer this week. Chris Kirk, right? So I think it's going to be interesting to see how they do the pricing for DraftKings.

Let's do the model, right? Let's run through the top 20 of the model, and then I want to go through one guy that I actually think is going to win this week. All right, so I put all this stuff together, all the driving accuracy stuff, all the long iron stuff, the short game stuff, the bank grass, all these comp courses. I threw it all together, and who's who had shot out? Rory McIlroy, number one. Not a giant surprise there. Justin Thomas, number two. Matt Fitzpatrick, number three.

Tony Finau, number four. Scotty Scheffler, number five. Sebastian Munoz, number six. That's probably the first real surprise. Adam Hadwin, number seven. I bet you these next two guys get popular this week. Adam Hadwin and Corey Connors, seven and eight. Number nine, Ryan Armour, which he did the same thing at Potomac. And I think he was really chalky at Potomac and actually ended up finishing T25.

that's probably going to be a popular, I mean, in my opinion, I don't know. I may have a completely different breakdown of this course and other people. I know when I did my breakdown of Southern Hills and then I heard what other people were saying, I was like, whoa, I do. I am not seeing that at all. So who knows? Hopefully my shit's different because then the guys that I want to play and are coming up for me will be at lower ownership.

But number 10, Chris Kirk, number 11, Sam Burns, number 12, Shane Lowry, 13, CT Pan, 14, Harold Varner, 15, Cam Smith, 16, Justin Rose, 17, Martin Laird, 18, Vaughn Taylor, 19, Luke Donald, 20, Terrell Hatton. So as you see, you've got all the...

the big names in there, right? But then you got some, I mean, Vaughn Taylor and Luke Donald. That's gross, right? So it gets pretty, it gets steep pretty quickly. And I think the way that I'm going to attack this one, I haven't had, you know, I've been a little bit more, you know, restrictive with the early lead section, right? I think you guys, because I think you guys put too much faith in me and then these guys get,

It gets super mushy and chalky and stuff. So I've kept my cards a little bit close to my vest a little bit more. But I'm going to go out on a limb on this one and tell you who I really think is going to win. And I will probably bet you can't say no matter what anymore because you

There's some really, there's some higher powers at play with some of these, how things shake out on Monday morning with some of these players and who picks them. So I can't say that there's a 1 million percent chance that I'm going to bet this guy. But I really think Matthew Fitzpatrick wins this tournament. I could just see it. And part of, yes, we'll get to the course fit in a second. Part of this is,

anecdotal because I heard something he said about a live question recently, I think at the Memorial and talking about his PGA championship too, where I think he got asked about live. And he was like, I care for me, the rest of my career is about winning trophies. Like I care about winning golf tournaments and being in the mix at the PGA for the biggest event of my life, you know, a life changing tournament.

I wanted that so badly. I wanted that so badly. And you saw he even made like a corny Instagram post after the PGA where he was like, you know, I didn't have my best stuff. I'm really disappointed in myself. I'm going to learn for it and be better. I love Matthew Fitzpatrick this week. I think this is a perfect golf course for him. He's turned into this absolutely awesome driver of the ball.

He's 11th off the tee. He hits a ton of fairways. The irons continue to get better. He's a lead around the greens. He's third in sand saves. Great on back grass. Second in bogeys avoided. No one makes pars like Matthew Fitzpatrick. Second at TPC Potomac this year. Third at Muirfield Village before. And here's what I love the most. He's coming off a miscut.

at the Memorial by one, where he gained 2.1 off the tee and 2.8 on approach. Now, I've been wrong way too many times where the guy that I lay out this whole case for and I say he's going to be under the radar and I end up looking stupid on Monday morning. So I'm not saying that Fitzpatrick is going to be under the radar. What I am saying is that hopefully,

People look at the miscut and it's not a situation where Fitzpatrick is coming in hot, right? And he's front of mind, right? But he hit the ball great and he lost 7.5 strokes putting. So he basically, his ball striking, actually he hit the ball better in two days at Memorial than he did at the PGA championship. The ball striking actually got better. And so now you have this perfect combination of, um,

Hopefully a better number, hopefully lower ownership, right? But somebody that's actually trending in the right direction. And Fitzpatrick has been, he's going to miss a cut or he'll be there, right? You know, he's played 10 times this season. He's missed three cuts. The seven times he's made the cut, he's finished top 15. So he's got seven top 15s and 10 starts this season. Second at Potomac earlier this year when I bet him. I've bet him a fair amount this year.

And I kept saying, this guy's really, really good. He's ready to win on the PGA Tour. You look at his Euro results, it's like these narrow, quirky, bent grass courses, tree-lined Parkland, Valderrama. Like, this is Fitzpatrick. This is it. Fitzpatrick is, this is the one for him. I felt that way about Potomac too. But this has got to be the one for him, right?

It's got to be. So I think that, and I could just see him winning the week before a major. Like you don't like with Rory and JT. Okay. Maybe you think their minds on the US open Fitzpatrick wants a fucking win on the PGA tour. I know he does. So I think what my, what I'm probably going to do, I'm probably going to look to target like this group of Fitzpatrick, Finau and Hatton.

Right. Because Rory JT and Scheffler and probably now Burns are going to be at the top. Right. And then you probably get this like nice little 25 to 35 range where Connors will be chalk. We'll see what people do with Lowry. Camp Smith, I forgot, will probably be in the 20 range. But I'd rather get like this team of, you know, Fitzpatrick and Finau who's playing great, who I've been betting to.

And Hatton, who's sneakily playing good golf. Those are guys that I think really need a win on the PGA Tour, right? And are trending nicely, and you're going to get at appealing numbers. And I don't think, obviously, have as much...

win equity as a Rory or a JT or a Sheff or a Burns, right? Or a Cam Smith, right? But I still think they're just as likely to win an event like this. And yeah, there's some... I love DFS weeks like this. There's some bombs that I really like, right? But I really see this event being one

by one of those really good, not great, great players. Because after that, like after that Lowry, Fitzpatrick, Finau, Hatton, I guess Patrick Reed range, Justin Rose, I guess, it drops off really quickly, right? Like you're probably going to see Adam Hadwin

at a similar number, I would guess, to Tyrell Hatton this week, right? And I get the Canadian thing, but I'm going to take Tyrell Hatton 10 times out of 10 there. But there's some good, like some of the guys I have earmarked in DraftKings. My guy, Tyler Duncan, Lee Hodges, Alex Smalley, Austin Smotherman, Big Dick Nick Taylor. Probably the only Canadian I'll be deploying will be Nick Taylor. I like all those guys.

And then I still got to see how a lot of the guys finish up at Memorial end up doing. But that's it. Fitzpatrick wins this tournament. I really believe that. You know, I haven't had a bold claim like that. I think since I said JT was going to win the Masters. And, you know, my reasoning for that was JT was just playing unbelievable golf. And he'd been trending so, so well.

And it was time for him to win another major. It didn't happen that week, but we stayed on for one more week and we hit a big one at the PGA with him. Right? And I just, I feel that way about Fitzpatrick where I know a win is coming soon. I've been betting him.

And I think this is the week, and I would think it would be pure comedy too if he won this week because he won the AM at Brookline. So everyone's going to be blowing smoke up his ass at the U.S. Open no matter what. And I think the comedy factor would be off the charts if he just set the hype train off the rails and won this week and then bombed at the U.S. Open, which would be my prediction as of now. Tommy Fleetwood will win the U.S. Open at Brookline.

But that's it for me. All right. I will do a show probably out Monday evening, Tuesday morning with frequent guests. Hasn't been around for a while, but multiple time guests of the show, Tom Jacobs.

We'll get some... Maybe he'll give me some... We'll talk some Liv there too with him. He's a London guy, or I think he lives in the suburbs of London. So maybe he'll give me some more insight into that event and what the temperature of the room is like in London there. And then Scrambles Tuesdays and Fridays. We figured out the odds checker thing too. I was doing like... They wanted me to do some different stuff and I couldn't at first, but...

What I'm going to do now is I'm going to do an outright picks article earlier in the week, maybe even Monday morning. Sneak peek Matthew Fitzpatrick. So I'm going to odds checker articles, the article breaking down more of this course. I'm sorry if you felt like I skimped on the course a little bit. I didn't expect the live thing to go so long. And I kind of like, I have a good feeling of the course. Like I,

I think it's going to, I think this is what it's going to be. So I, you know, I don't really have a ton of more hot takes on it. Right. Like I'm pretty certain that this is what it's going to be like. And basically how thick the rough ends up being is to me really going to determine how I end up like completely attacking this course. Yeah. You know, if I, if I look and I hear later in the week that the rough is really, really short, um,

Right. And maybe, you know, they've gotten a lot of rainfall and I start feeling like this course is going to be closer to 20 under probably pivot off of Fitzpatrick. Right. You got to got to be fungible here. Right. So we will see. But that's what I got for now. Yeah.

Like I said, you can catch me later this week on the scramble and on this podcast feed with Tom on Tuesday morning and best of luck with your bats at the Memorial this weekend. And we'll see you next time. Cheers. Drinking and driving is a decision that could change your whole world. Things will never be the same if you ever get a DUI because legal fees and time in court are

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