2024 Sony Open Preview
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This episode of Inside Golf Podcast is brought to you by Rumpure Sports. I haven't gotten the chance yet to really give an official thank you for the overwhelming support and kind words that I've received from everyone since starting there last week.

It's been incredibly busy. I'm still getting my feet under me, but I really appreciate everyone who has reached out both privately and publicly and...

Followed me over to come check out what we're doing over there. Even before we had a golf only option, which I made a priority in my first week. Now we do have a golf only option. So I haven't been the best over the last couple of years in terms of

self-promotion in terms of asking people to check out my stuff. I've been very lucky where I haven't really had to, but I'm trying something pretty new with the model of what we're doing at RPS. Wiley and I have been super hyper-focused on trying to innovate, trying to do something different. And

I think the model that we landed on is pretty special. At my previous employer, my job was basically, I'm going to pour my heart and soul into these 5,000 word articles. And there's going to be so much information in there that after I post them, I can kind of just log off and then rinse and repeat the next week. And

You don't really need to bother me because I've laid out literally everything that you could possibly need to know about this golf course, about this tournament. So you can make your own decisions based on the information I'm giving because the information I'm giving is really good. And I don't really want to have to engage in that decision making process with you because I already did my job to lay out all the information for you.

We kind of realized that that wasn't the right model. In fact, we're trying the opposite. Maybe the model actually is make the articles a lot more tight, a lot more concise, and spend all of your time and energy interacting in the Discord, answering questions, and creating the number one DFS community out there. Wiley and I

Talked about this a little bit on the podcast that we did last week. But the reason why I personally fell in love with DFS was not because I had some giant big score at the beginning. I actually was terrible at it when I first started playing, to be honest. I fell in love with it because...

of the friends that I made and how additive those friendships became to my life and how much joy I got out of tilting these random golfers early on Thursday morning and completely overreacting. And those friendships I've made, I think about my friends like Brian and Kyle and Wiley and Kobe and many others.

I talk to those people more than anyone in my life, short of probably my girlfriend. But those people will be in my life forever. Those people will be at my wedding. Some of them may probably be in my wedding. And some of the places I've gotten to travel to, to play golf with, just random people that I've met through the golf betting and daily fantasy community that have made indelible impacts in my life and life.

will be lifelong friends that I can call up at any time in any city that I'm at and play golf with, have a place to stay. I'm already playing golf with a Discord member that I met just last week. And, you know, I now have a place to stay at pretty much any PGA tour stop that I travel to, a new golf trip planned. Like, what if that happens?

Right there. That's actually the model that we should be shooting for in terms of what we're trying to create. Right. What if what makes DFS great? Like, listen, if you've been reading my articles for a while, you can probably read between the lines that.

and see that you can get all of the data that you need for free on DataGolf. That's what I've been doing at least for the last couple of years, and it's worked out pretty well for me. And that's not to say that paid data sites don't have great data too. They do. Same thing with projections. You want to pay to get projections for golf? No.

You can do that. There are paid sites that have great projections, including RPS. But that's not why I was brought on. Sure, it's a part of the puzzle if you want it to be. But what we're trying to do at RPS is actually build the best community in the industry and create a model where we get the smartest people in every sport and

not just to write articles for people to read or do a show or two for people to watch and then log off like I had kind of done in the past. The model we are creating is to get the smartest people and have them provide the best information, but then also chop it up with you about that information at all times.

and collaborate and answer questions and cultivate the best and interactive community in the space. I'm on the West coast. I woke up to over 1500 messages in the golf channel, in the discord this morning before 11 a.m. Eastern time. And I went through every single one of them because that is actually what my job is now. Really all I care about is making this the best and sharpest possible conversation

community, not information site. And trust me, I'm far from the only sharp person that you want to listen to in that community. But again, that's actually really all I care about now and what I'm trying to provide. And anyone that wants to sell you on having the best plays, projections, that's great. I think ours are incredible too. Not really what I'm in it for. Not really what we're trying to do here.

You can literally ask me who to play and I will tell you, I will give you my opinion on anyone. My new Wednesday article, as a matter of fact, I literally give an opinion on every single player in the field. Again, we thought that was a better model than just ranting about a couple of players. But what we're trying to do at RPS is give complete and total access to the best information providers at all time.

not just give the best information, but actually give you the opportunity to work with those people and chop it up with them about everything. It's radically different than anything I've ever done in the past. It's a lot of work, but I have such a fire under my belly to make this place the best in the industry for this. And that's kind of why me and Wiley work so well together because we both have this

character trait, arguably character flaw, because it can get us into trouble sometimes, of not stopping until we have made this the best and wanting to crush anything and everything in our path and doing everything humanly possible to make this the only, the best, the best place for this. We're making a ton of new hires. I've came in

and made a lot of demands. I've said, we got to change this. We've got to add this. We've got to get this person. And we will. It's not going to happen overnight, but I know we will. We're already making a ton of new changes and working on adding something specific that I think is only going to elevate us to completely new heights. And of course you can say, okay, sure. Sounds great. But

you know what? You look at all the most successful people in business. I've talked a lot about this with my dad. The thing that they all have in common is irrational confidence and dogged determination. And again, that's kind of what Wiley sold me on, right? Why we work so well together because we are not going to stop and we want all the feedback possible because again, that's the whole point. That's

That's the new model, right? This is all completely interactive. I took zero inventory or feedback at my last employer. I just, I did the same thing every single week. And, you know, my information was great. I had a ton of success from a, from a betting and draft Kings, you know, from a unit standpoint, but I don't really know how much of an impact I made on actually helping people.

And the content was probably a little stale and a little bloated. And I wasn't making any effort to actually connect with the people who were consuming the content. So here's what we're doing. I imagine the majority of people that are listening to this are golf only people. The golf only option just dropped.

It's on the site right now, runpeersports.com. I think with my code, which is Andy, FYI, the same code I have everywhere, you can get the weekly pass for like 16 bucks. And this is a good week to do it. I hit Siwoo Kim 60 to one last year. And two years ago, I won the Pat Mayo Experience Open, great tournament, and finished second in the 33 single entry, I believe.

I think that's right because I remember I was going – I was on a golf trip that week and I was not sweating this tournament and I think I only invested – I think I only played –

Three entries in Mayo and the 33 single entries. I invested like $78, and I turned that into $7,000 that week, which is still probably from an ROI standpoint, one of the most successful Daily Fantasy weeks I've ever had. So this has probably been my most profitable tournament of the year for me. Maybe the fall swing. I always crush the fall swing, particularly with outrights over the year, but...

But Sony Open is up there. Anyway, I digress. You can get the weekly pass at runpuresports.com. Click golf only. Type in code Andy to get the 15% discount. Shoot me a message in the Discord the second you get in there.

I'm going to give away 200 bucks. I'll put all of the names in the drawing that message me in the Discord. That's all you have to do. Of the people that sign up this week, only going to do this once. It's only for podcast listeners, for all of the people that sign up. Even if you only do it for a week, it's a better deal for a month, but-

let us prove it to you that it's worth your time and value. Let me prove it to you. I think with the $200 that I'm giving away, that will pay for almost six months if you win. So just shoot me a message in the Discord. If you sign up, that is the only way to enter. Just message me in the Discord and you will be entered into the drawing. But point of this is,

you know, let's actually talk. I actually want to talk to people, get feedback, ask me questions. I'll introduce you to the gang, to the community. But yes, you will also be in a drawing to win more cash. Why am I doing the money? Thought about doing like the one and done. Thought about doing a free membership.

I've just landed on, I'm not going to tell people how to spend their money. Just give them cash and let them spend it how they want to spend it. If you want to spend it on a longer subscription to RPS, that'd be great, but it's up to you. We're, we're confident in what we have. I'm never going to tell people what to do.

Uh, and this is probably really the last time I'm going to talk about RPS that much on the podcast. You gotta forgive me. It's a completely new career change for me and something I've got a lot of passion for and it's my first week there and I'm really excited. So obviously I want you to be a part of it too. Uh,

So BrumpYourSports.com. You guys know the podcast listeners know for years. I never do giveaways or anything like that, but I'm trying something really new here with this model at RPS. I'm really excited about it. The first week has gone incredibly well. And I'm just pretty amped up about it. So code Andy to get you that 15% discount. Shoot me a message in the Discord. That's how you get in the drawing. And okay, that's it. This podcast is about the Sony Open.

And I'm going to try and get back to doing this every week because this has been a staple for me in the past. And I know a lot of people love this Sunday morning podcast. Last week, obviously, forgive me, not only do we have New Year's Eve, it was my first week in a new job. But

Now that I kind of starting to get my feet under me, I'm going to try and make this a priority going forward. I do. I do do a lot of travel once the golf season gets going, but we're going to try and get back to these Sunday shows because I know that was that was missing for a lot of people. And this is a tournament that I love, a golf architect that I love.

I recently bought the Seth Rayner book. It's an unbelievable coffee table book. I bought one for myself. I bought one for my girlfriend's dad for Christmas. That was a big hit for both of us. I know we just passed gift season, but for any golf lover in your life, I can't, this is a free ad. They're not paying me whatsoever, but I can't emphasize enough. I believe it is called The Golf Courses of Seth Rayner.

And it's by John Cavalier, Michael Wolfe, James Sitar. It's available on back nine press. So yeah, I'm a huge Seth Rayner guy. This golf course has great bones and it will be really good again when they roll the ball back and hopefully do something about driver heads. Right now it's just wedges and putting, but good bones, good architecture to this course. All right, let's talk about it. So,

We had Siwoo Kim last year, 18 under par. I hit that 60 to one flex 2022 Hideki Matsuyama, 23 under par over Russell Henley in a playoff had did the rare Russell Henley outright fade and DFS situation where Russell Henley was a popular outright. He was like 30% owned and,

And Hideki was half the ownership, I believe. I think he was in the 10% to 15% zone. So I had the Russell Henley outright, and I did full fade in DFS and played Hideki. And it won me all the monies that week. So Hideki won that year at 18-1. People had not a lot of confidence in Hideki heading into that week. Could be a potential theme that we see this week as well.

Kevin Na, 21 under. Cameron Smith, 11 under. Matt Kuchar, 22 under. Patton Kazire, 17 under. Justin Thomas, 27 under. Fabian Gomez, 20 under. Jimmy Walker, back-to-back years, 23 under, 17 under. And so for as much of a golf course where this is a lot about putting and wedges and a pretty high greens and regulation percentage, and there's a lot of variance involved,

Fabian Gomez at 100 to 1, highest winner in the last 10 years in terms of outright odds. Siwoo 50, Hideki 18, Kevin Noss 65, Cameron Smith 50, Kuchar 40, Kazire 80, JT 14, Jimmy Walker, second year 18, first year 40. And we'll talk about why that is because there's something incredibly unique about this course.

when you place it in context with other PGA courses. But Wai'alaik Country Club, Honolulu, Hawaii,

Never been to Honolulu. I was just in Hawaii on a different island. Heard it's beautiful. Have a lot of friends that have played this golf course. It's par 70, 7,044 yards. Water comes into play on five holes. Fairways are Bermuda grass measuring 34 yards wide. That's pretty standard. This is going to be mismarketed to you as a short positional course, and it certainly has elements to it. But

There's a lot of colonial in it where it's just outdated. So, you know, the decision matrix on a lot of these teas that we're going to take driver out of players hands in the past that players can just hit driver now and it's going to be okay. And we'll talk about that when we talk about off the tee a little bit, but the greens are 7,100 square feet featuring Tiff dwarf Bermuda grass. Tom Doak did come in here and did a renovation of,

In 2017, it didn't do much, you know, in terms of how the course played. It did not impact scoring much. Wind always plays a factor, but under tranquil conditions, this is still one of the easiest golf courses on tour. It's not Kapalua easy.

Uh, but outside of a wind affected year in 2020, we're in which Cameron Smith one, it has ranked as one of the top five easiest par seventies on tour. Each of the last 10 years, it's the eighth shortest course on tour last year. It was 30th out of 45 courses in difficulty. And, um,

The wind, and it's a little firmer than what we saw last week generally, provides enough pushback to prevent it from being Kappa Lua easy, one of the three to five easiest courses on tour. This is still by all accounts a birdie fest. The two par fives are essentially glorified par fours, and each of the last five years they've ranked as the easiest set of par fives on tour overall.

In terms of the actual layout, it's par 70. The par threes are probably the toughest aspect of the course, but none of them are even super long. They all measure between 176 and 200 yards. Not really a course where you're going to see a lot of long irons here, but they rank as the fifth, sixth, seventh, and 14th toughest holes on the course.

three of the four historically play over par of the 12 par fours. None of them are quite drivable, but nine of them play under nine of the 12 play under 460 yards. So the only true long par fours are the first and the 13th and they respectively play as the first and third most difficult holes on the course. The two par fives truly a joke. Um,

The ninth hole measures 560 yards on the scorecard, places the easiest hole in the course, scoring average of 4.33, featuring over a 60% birdie rate and a 6.5 eagle rate. So basically a par 4.5. If players do not birdie both the par 5s at wildlife, they're really falling behind the pack.

And the fact that nine of the 12 par fours play between 350 and 460 yards also explains the fact that this is a tournament that is nearly always won by a player that possesses the best combination of mid to short iron play and putting inside 15 feet. So let's dive into some of the stats off the tee here. Now, last year they made a change.

An active effort to make the golf course play more difficult, a cost that the golf course incurred to make the golf course more difficult. They grew the rough up to three inches compared to the usual 2.25 inches. Now, this did not make much of a difference in terms of scoring. It was a concerted effort from the PGA Tour to attempt to

to protect par on a great golf course that is certainly outdated for 2023 equipment and is on a piece of property that does not lend itself to simply adding 500 yards to the scorecard, right? So this is a good case study in a lot of the rollback stuff. Here you have a golf course that has a lot of history on the PGA Tour,

Players love coming to Hawaii. This is how I didn't mention really solid field this year. And I'll get into that a little bit more when we get into the players. But it's a golf course that has a phenomenal, phenomenal relationship with the PGA Tour. A lot of history to it. It's not a Mirafield Village or a TP Sawgrass, but nobody's looking at the Sony Open players or fans and being like,

let's nuke this tournament off the face of the earth. Like it's fun to be transported to Hawaii in the beginning of January when most of the country is still freezing their asses off. It's a good tournament. I like the architecture of the course. Again,

It's a bit outdated due to modern technology. And here's an example of them growing the rough up to over three inches, which is some pretty gnarly Bermuda rough. Now, three inch Bermuda rough isn't nothing. And let me tell you the impact on scoring.

While I ranked 26 out of 45 courses and off the tee difficulty, it ranked easier after they grew the rough up and off the tee difficulty. 28th out of 45 courses and missed fairway penalty. So the

The missed fairway penalty here, not really grave at all. It usually ranks on the easier end each of the last 10 years. 18th out of 45 courses in rough penalty, 41st out of 45 courses in non-rough penalty, 22nd out of 45 courses in fraction of fairways that result in a penalty stroke.

So it's an improvement, right? The Bermuda rough definitely leaves you something to think about. But I would not say that this is going to deter players from pulling driver on this course. Didn't really have an impact on scoring. Didn't really have an impact on strategy. Just a cost that a golf course had to incur for the distance problem at the PGA Tour level.

But that's a separate podcast. So, again, not a ton of trouble on this course. 32nd out of 45 in penalty strokes per round, 29th out of 45 the year prior, and no real correlation in terms of driving distance or driving accuracy, right?

Two of the top 10 in driving accuracy finished top 10 in the leaderboard. Zero of the top 10 in driving distance finished top 10 in the leaderboard. Prior year, six of the top 11 lost to the field in driving distance. Four of the top 11 lost to the field in driving accuracy. None of the top 10 players in driving distance last year finished top 10 on the leaderboard. Off the tee here is an ancillary stat, right? So this is not the accuracy-laden test of...

a TPC Potomac, maybe even a TPC Sawgrass, a Harbor Town. Like there's not a discernible difference in terms of playing from the rough versus playing from the fairways here in terms of its impact on scoring. And you see that in terms of strategy off the tee, right? Obviously it's helpful to hit the fairway. Certainly is the case at every course, but this is not a golf course that is going to deter players from hitting drivers anymore.

And this is not a golf course that requires a great deal of off the tee skill. It doesn't really benefit distance all that much. There are actually a couple holes that come to mind where longer players are

Have some bunker trouble the way they farther get off. And you see that in the leaderboards every year where there's not any discernible impact on driving the ball far here. And there's not really any discernible impact on being hyper accurate here, too. And that's why you've seen so many. We'll get into the guys that have been awesome here. But a lot of the guys are just just OK. Drivers of the golf ball. It's not.

It doesn't resonate with me a lot this week. I think this is an easy course. One of the reasons why I like doing a breakdown on a course like this is because it's the type of course Augusta is like this. Not every course is like this, but YLAI is like this where, um,

And this is one of the things I've been trying to get a lot better at. And in these previous this year is like, let's just dumb it down. And instead of explaining to people all of the reasons why this isn't important, sometimes the reason why I do that, sometimes the reason why I explain things, why things aren't important is because I listen to content and I hear things get said and I get triggered. So I feel like I need to clarify certain things that I hear that,

I don't want to say incorrect because whatever works for anyone else, but have little statistics or things that people put in models that have very little to zero predictive value. But while I is a golf course where I think you can dumb it down and get super hyper focused on a couple of few things. One of those things is short to middle iron play. Now,

while I has close to 70% of its shots from 125 to 200 yards, specifically almost 30% of its shots last year from one 50 to one 75. That is massive. It is one of the largest courses in terms of correlation to short to middle iron plate. You don't have a lot of shots. It's again, it's all those par fours that are between three 50 and the two reachable for our fives. You're not even necessarily hitting a long iron on.

So you have all and the par fours are all kind of between 175 and 205. So you've all these shots between 125 and 200 yards. They're going to be, I guess, like two and a half, three things that I think are massively paramount this week. And I said this last week in Kapaloo. I talked about this a lot in the discord and it helped me. I think it helped a lot of people. But at Kapaloo, it was like,

Okay, and this is a lot of way that I check a way that I go through players when I play DFS and check people off. It's like, okay, I'm going to think of the two most two to four most important things this week. And if you are checking both of those boxes, you're slam. If you're checking one of those boxes, I'm going to give you a chance. And if you're checking zero of those boxes, you're

No chance. I'm not playing you. And at Capitol Hill last week, it was like the two things that I focused was hyper, hyper focused on.

was this putting metric that I made where I kind of combined Bermuda and slow greens and lag putting you've seen probably by watching the importance of putting on this golf course that's what happens when you have an 85 percent cruising regulation percentage um and approach play from a certain distance and and it's like that's if you have to check those two boxes at Kapalua and and

I played some guys that check one of those boxes super low down on the odds boards and the DraftKings pricing. And because they checked one of those boxes, they've been able to excel here. I'm recording this Saturday night, so I don't know what's going to happen on Sunday. But Akshay,

It's like I have identified Akshay is a really elite iron player, specifically from these ranges. At 6,200, I'm going to play him because he's good at that one thing. Figure everything else out later. Brendan Todd, same deal. Brendan Todd is elite at that one specific skill of putting on these type of greens, slower greens, bigger greens, Bermuda greens. Because he checks that box, he'll be fine here. He can play here. And then there are a lot of players...

where they were very good at certain things. Cameron Young, Ludwig, O'Bear, like elite, elite at certain skills at golf. They didn't check either of those boxes. So it's just a cross off. Right. And so if we're doing that for a while, I this week,

Middle iron play is huge. Short to middle iron play. So identify those guys that are elite from 125 to 200 yards. I break this down way more extensively in my article on Monday morning. This is a podcast. We've got to get through it. So I'm just going to give you the important things to look at if you want to see the full model and the players who excel at each one of those things. I'm going to say the players in my model too when I get down to that at the end.

But I want to keep these tight. I want to keep these under an hour. So check out the article for a deeper dive on the actual players that are super, super elite at this. And honestly, I'll tell you the top 20 of my model. It's a lot of those guys because that's a massive, massive part of my model this week.

uh around the green you want to look at it like off the tee it's ancillary okay um you look at the data golf radar plot and it kind of prop uh and i would not take this as gospel but it pops to prominence a little bit in terms of around the green even though um from a degree of difficulty standpoint it's it's a pretty easy around the green golf course particularly bunker super easy uh

The Bermuda fairways are pretty easy to chip out of. You can get a little touchy in that Bermuda rough, but the only thing that I really looked at is just kind of the same as off the tee ancillary. You can look a little bit at around the green on Bermuda courses, but I would not say it's a pillar of this week. Putting is probably like the third most important thing. I'm going to give you the second pillar. It's not a pillar that I usually look

have as a, as an important pillar for me. But putting is like the two and a half, the, the, the third banana in terms of importance here, because this is a still a course with a high greens and regulation percentage, not a golf course with as high of a greens and regulation percentage as Kapalua, but it's,

One of the reasons why this golf course rewards course history so much is because there is some nuance to these greens, right? Rainer generally create some pretty tough greens, um, more for amateurs. It's kind of a different story for PGA tour pros. You look at the numbers and putting difficulty at this course is not incredibly high, but because you are going to have a scoring club in your hands so often, um,

Putting inside 50 feet, 15 feet is going to be really, really important. And you look at some, I pulled this quote from Kevin Knob, but he talked about the greens can be really tricky out there and the grains can fool you. It's tough to read. I can make some momentum putts tomorrow. I think I'll be all right. It's not a golf course. You need to overpower, just keep hitting it straight.

straight. The greens roll great, but the only difficult part is the grains are difficult to judge. We've had a couple of putts this week and not just myself, even my fellow playing partners, where it looks like it's going to do one thing and it doesn't. If you just read these greens, well, you're going to be really ahead of the field. So right. Some nuance to the graininess of them, right? There's some undulation with any Rainer course and the

It's just a specific grainy strand of Bermuda that certain players are going to be more comfortable on than others. And again, on a golf course with such a high greens and regulation percentage with so many scoring clubs in hand, you got to be able to putt. You got to be able to putt. So it's not really a pillar in the way that it was last week for Kapalua, but I would say that

It's the third. I don't know if I would play somebody like Brendan Todd this week in the same vein as last week just because they're an elite putter. But it's, I would say, the third most important thing that I'm looking at this week. The other number two thing that I think is incredibly important this week, and this kind of goes hand-in-hand with approach play, with that middle iron play, where if you are elite at this...

I will give you a look. And that is, and I'm going to kind of combine two things together here, but I was shocked to find, I knew this already because I do this every year. So I remember some things, but it always surprises me when I confirm it after another year. YY features the most predictive course history on the entire PGA tour outside of Augusta National.

which I have some theories about, which I'll share, but that is wild to me, right? Because it's a pretty, you know, again, there are some nuance to the green complexes, right? But in terms of strategy off the tee, a lot of the strategy has been lost because of equipment, right? You can kind of just bomb away in certain spots now, um,

holds play a lot shorter than they used to. The approach shots are now with a lot more wedges, which closes, decreases the dispersion pattern a lot more. But there's something about Wiley. I think the greens do play a role in this, but there's something about Wiley where it is incredibly kind, uh,

to its repeat players to guys seem to show up here year after year after year. Now, I don't think this is all about the golf course, right? I think the fact that for many players in this field, why lie is the first event of the season. This is also a limits test of how players spend their Decembers every year, right? So a player may be good at the Sony open every single year, but

Not necessarily because he's the perfect course fit for the Sony Open, but because he grinds all of December and practices all of December. And this is the first event every year.

And the inverse of that is a player could be a solid course fit on paper at the Sony open every year, but maybe he doesn't play well here year after year because he takes December off and his diet goes to the wayside for the holidays. And he does some travel and he doesn't pick up the clubs in December. And maybe it's not the fact that he's good, that he's a good fit on paper for Sony, but rather the fact that this is just the first event, first event of the season and,

And he didn't really spend his December the way that other players spent their December. I think that's a big part of it personally. If I had to, if I had to theorize, but yeah,

This is the type of golf course, and I am, if you guys know from listening to the podcast for a while, I'm not a huge course history guy. I am way more of a recent form guy than a course history guy. This is the one golf course outside of Augusta where I am willing to ignore everything, even what I saw last week, and play certain guys here. Now, the types of guys I'm talking about,

your Matt Coutures, your Cord Connors, your Russell Henley's. We can talk about the intrigue of Hideki this week. Um, Webb Simpson as well. I think I mentioned too. So, uh, there are a lot of guys that just seem to show up here every single year. Um, and just looking at it now, Hayden Buckley, Justin Thomas, Charles Howell, Corey Connors, Justin Rose, um,

Mark Leishman. Some of these guys have gone to live. Chris Kirk is another one. Chris Kirk is kind of a plug and play. Russell Henley. I mentioned web sense and Matt Kuchar is kind of the ultimate plug and play. Um,

But this is a golf course where you can lean on that this week. And it's something I'm generally opposed to, but you can lean on that this week. And what goes hand in hand in course with course history is is comp course history, right? How players have performed on other comparative courses. Right. So you're going to hear a ton of talk this week about short positional golf courses and

And I think Wiley masquerades more as a short positional golf course than, say, a Sedgefield or a Harbortown or a TPC Sawgrass. Those are three golf courses that driving accuracy really, really matters way more than it does at Wiley. So I wouldn't just say...

Guam on to any course under 7,200 yards. That's Bermuda. That's incorrect. There are certain courses, which I will talk about that are more similar to

than others, right? I look at, for me, from an architectural standpoint, Colonial is the most similar to Wiley, right? These are very similar golf courses strategically, architecturally. Perry Maxwell, South Rainer, both came from a similar school of classical Golden Age design that, you know, again, is now a bit outdated compared to modern equipment and kind of has allowed players to bomb away with driver, but Colonial is

similarly still encourages all styles of play off the tee features a high correlation with course history and short to middle iron play so you know i guess the biggest uh biggest knock against it is bent grass as opposed to bermuda but there are certain players and i would still categorize those sedge fields those tpc saw grasses el camaleon austin country club port royal

Sea Island, where driving distance is devalued at all of those courses. How much driving accuracy is accentuated? We can litigate. This is more about short to middle iron play, whereas some of your Sedgefields, Harbortown, CPC, Sartgrass are more position A to position B golf courses. Still, what they all have in common is accuracy.

Driving distance is not a discernible skill. It's devalued at these golf courses. And instead, the emphasis falls on driving.

short to middle iron play and putting. And so there are certain players that raise their baseline a tremendous amount on these shorter golf courses. And again, these are players that are going to rate out really highly in my model. I'll give you a few of them right now. So you know who I'm talking about. Russell Henley, Seamus Power, Brian Harmon, Eric Cole, JT Poston, Corey Connors, Denny McCarthy, Keegan Bradley,

Matthew Fitzpatrick, Justin Rose, Brendan Todd, Ben Griffin, Hideki Matsuyama, Chris Kirk, Cameron Davis, actually, Andrew Putnam, Nick Taylor, Adam Svensson, Alex Smalley, Matthew Neesmith, Matt Kuchar, Siwoo Kim. You guys know who I'm talking about. Okay, so that's it. That is what's most important here is short to middle iron play.

Guys who have played well here before and guys who play well at these shorter golf courses that devalue driving distance, right? It's not that difficult. I've won a lot of money at this tournament.

Just by looking at short to middle iron plate, by the way, Siwoo Kim still number one from 150 to 175 yards. Why do you think I played him last year? And what do you know? He won. So I feel like I have this golf course dialed pretty darn well. That was it was the same. Same with the Hideki year. It was like, wait, I know Hideki is not in good form, but.

He plays well here every single year. And when I say good form, it was kind of a Hideki, you know, injury concerns hadn't been playing, obviously coming off a long layoff. And it's like, well, Hideki stepped onto this golf course before and performed after a long layoff. And guess what? Hideki is also really good at short to middle iron play. It's like one of the best middle iron players in the entire world. So I'm just going to blindly play him. Um,

And that ended up being the catalyst for me to win all that money all that week. So those are really the two to three things that I think you need to super, super, super focus on this week. All right, let us take a quick break and then I'm going to run through the top 20 in my model, give a couple early leans, and then we'll get out of here.

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Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. All right. So top 20 of my model. I put all this together. Done a lot of improvements to my model making this year. That was kind of a December project for me. And I'm feeling pretty confident about the way I'm shaking things out these days.

Uh, but I, you can get the full breakdown in the article. I'm just going to give you, it was, it's all the things I talked about at different weights, uh, very overcomplicated that can be found for the subscribers in the article. Don't need to break it down on this podcast. I'm just going to give you what you want, which is who it shot out. Number one, Hideki Matsuyama, uh, which is

Going to be a fascinating predicament. And we may see a repeat of two years ago. He looked, he's looked, I'm recording this on Saturday night. So maybe he does something on Sunday. Ball striking perspective. Hideki has looked terrible at Kapalua. Like towards the bottom of the field in both ball striking categories, including iron play. Which is pretty concerning. Same with Justin Rose, who's number two in the model.

Same with Cameron Davis, who's number three in the model. So it just so happens that the top three players from a course fit standpoint played last week at Kapala and looked horrendous. Okay. So we're talking Justin Rose. Yeah. Third last and Tita Green, Hideki Matsuyama, 40th out of 59 and Tita Green,

Cameron Davis dead last in tee to green, dead last in approach play. Not great. Not great. So going to be some interesting decisions this week, depending on how much you want to weigh what you saw with your eyeballs at Kapalua versus, you know, guys that will probably be lower owned because they were so terrible at Kapalua, particularly maybe a guy like Davis who was chalky.

And let a lot of people down. Number four, Eric Cole. He's been a little bit better, a couple of it, but still a lot of putting for him. I think he, well, we'll see what he does on Sunday, but he was an incredibly chalky selection. I loved him at Capitol. I bet him outright faded him in DFS. I think he's just middle of the pack.

Five, Tyrell Hatton. Six, JT Poston. Seven, Russell Henley. Again, same deal. So you've got this really interesting predicament where...

A lot of the guys that I think are the best fits on paper for this golf course looked horrendous at Kapalua. What are we going to do? I actually don't know yet. I'm to see how the, how the wind blows on that one, how things shake out pricing and how things look on Sunday as well. Russell Henley, third last through three rounds on approach at Kapalua tied for 50th. Not going to cut it. That's his, that's the best aspect of his game. Russell Henley.

Approach play. And I'll rerun this model to see how poorly maybe some of the middle iron play was last week and how that affects my overall grades on these players. I have a feeling some of these top seven are going to drop down.

Number eight, Corey Connors. I think that's your guy this week. That's my guy this week as it stands now. Corey Connors playing fine at Kapalua. Unbelievable course history at the Sony. But he is seventh off the tee. Don't really care as much about that. 23rd in approach. That's fine. 46 in putting, 46 in around the green play. 18th in tee to green. So it's really the ball striking for Connors has been solid.

Even though he's T 35th. So I'm kind of hoping that Connors just has another one of those average rounds tomorrow where the ball striking looks good and he gives up a bunch putting in on the greens. And so he finishes like T 30 something at Kapalua and isn't really top of mind for people next week because I think he might win.

I think that's my guy as it stands now, but I don't want to be beholden to that because things could change. Chris Kirk, number nine, he's playing great at Kapalula. So, and he's won at Sony before ton of great course history, uh, at Sony. And he's kind of doing it with everything at, at Kapalula. He's top 15 in approach. Chris Kirk got one of the best short games in the world. Uh, top 15 in approach second and around the green 10th and putting, uh,

10th Tom Hoagie, uh, another guy who I actually have a lot more interested in because he is again, just like Connors middle of the pack at Capalilla, but fourth in approach. And that is one of those two things. Hoagie has actually been pretty good at, at Sony too. So one of those two things where it's like, okay, Tom Hoagie, what is he good at? Short to middle iron play? Absolutely elite. He's checking one of those boxes live to win in my opinion. Um,

Keegan Bradley, Gary Woodland, Brendan Todd, Brian Harmon, Ludwig O'Beir. I was staunchly against Ludwig last week. He was the only guy I came out and said, this guy is bad chalk. I think I like him a little bit more at this golf course than I liked him at Kapalula, actually, but...

He's never played here before. And on a golf course with the highest correlation of course history, of course, like talent can always overwhelm course fit. We saw it at Sea Island, kind of a similar course to this where Sea Island, just like Wiley devalued what Ludwig was best at.

And guess what? He still ended up winning because he's awesome and probably a top seven talent in the world. So it didn't work out last week at Capitol Hill as I expected because that was another –

course where I said this golf course, all the drives funnel to the same spots. This is going to devalue elite driving ability when you have Brendan Todd's drives ending up in the same place as Ludwig's. That's not the golf course where I want Ludwig. That's the golf course where I want the better putters and the better wedge players. Sony, I think, is a bit better of a fit than Ludwig, but

I don't love—he hit the ball—he's been hitting the ball terribly at the century. It hasn't just been putting. He is 41st out of 59 in approach and 51st out of 59 in off the tee. Interesting. And then Adam Svensson, Lucas Glover is another guy kind of like Matt Fitzpatrick, Alex Smalley. Love me some Alex Smalley. So—

I think as it stands now, the players that I'm super hyper-focused on are Corey Connors. I mentioned him earlier. You look at what Corey Connors has done. Five appearances this year. He's made every single cut. Four consecutive top 12 finishes in a row. He's also gained over 7.5 ball striking in three of his last four appearances. So he's been...

Awesome here. This course seems to fit his eye from a T degree standpoint to a ninth and overall approach play 17th in that key range of one 50 to one 75 second in this field.

Um, in true strokes gained at YLI six in this field in true strokes gained over the last two years on shorter courses, getting over 1.2 per round fourth instructs game total at colonial 23rd instructs game total at a Harbor town in true strokes gained over the last two years, or excuse me for those courses. Those have those go back, uh, over the last six years. Uh, he's been great at those courses, uh,

And he also has the ancillary skill of being just an elite driver of the ball from an accuracy standpoint. And so I don't think that's entirely necessary at this golf course, but yeah,

You've seen a guy like Hayden Buckley, who really the only thing that Hayden Buckley is good at is driving accuracy. Be awesome here, right? So who knows? Maybe we wake up on Monday, Tuesday morning. It's a little bit hot and sticky in Hawaii. They let that grass keep growing, and suddenly driving accuracy becomes a little bit more important than it has in years past. It's another feather in Conor's bucket, right? Again, it's...

It's a luxury, not a necessity for Connors on this golf course, but a big Corey Connors fan this week. So hopefully he doesn't do too much on Sunday to get everyone else on him as well. And then I think, you know, he's a lot of scar tissue here, but I think Russell Henley is another guy you're going to have to look pretty close at. I'm going to be pretty curious to see what he does on Sunday as well.

Justin Rose, Hideki Matsuyama, Cameron Davis. I'm going to be watching those four guys, Hideki, Rose, Henley, Davis, very closely on Sunday because, you know, this week you're shaking the rest off.

I start to see some signs of life from a ball striking standpoint for any four of those guys. There's all four guys that have proven themselves at Wiley, are really good middle iron players, and you'll probably get good prices on because even if they go to ballistic tomorrow, their ceiling is probably like middle of the pack, right? Like some of these guys are so far back. Davis Rose, they're so far back that even if they go ham on Sunday, they're going to

they're still not catching a lot of people's attention, I think. So that will do it for me. We did it. We kept it under an hour. I'm going to try and do these almost every week. Not going to be able to do it every single one because I do do a lot of travel during the golf season. Big wedding year for me, you know, um,

a couple of golf trips on the schedule, uh, as well. So, uh, we're going to do our best here, but, uh, I hope you enjoyed the, the first Sunday, first look course preview over the year. The goal is for me to record these on Saturday afternoon, Saturday evenings, if I can. So you have them on Sunday morning. So if you don't have a sweat going on Sunday, I actually luckily do have a big sweat going tomorrow. Um, but if you don't have a sweat going on Sunday, um,

dive in first on market first to go super deep into this golf course, get a headstart, start your research. Um, and I hope you enjoy it. And again, one last time, sign up for rump, your sports.com, the golf only option with my code, Andy, that's the important part. Whatever you choose to sign up for, you want to do it for a month. You want to do it for a year. That's awesome. You want to do it for a week for, I think the computer, it's like 15 bucks with my code, uh,

Try it out. You know, shoot me a message in the discord. That is how you get entered into that draw to win $200. That's the only way to do it, but pretty excited about what we're doing over there. It's a new model. It's different from what I've done in the past. It's super interactive. It's super fun. I feel really, I know this sounds corny. I feel really invigorated about,

in the work I'm doing right now, sometimes you need to change to kind of get your juices flowing again. And I felt like what I was doing, my content, my writing, it was a little stale. And I wasn't asking people for feedback. I wasn't interacting with the people that consumed my content. And

I'm changing that this year in a big way. I'm trying to do the opposite. I'm actually trying to do the legitimate opposite of that, where everything is interactive. Everything is a community. This is about, again, I go back to how I fell in love with DFS. It was not really about the scores at the end, although that could even happen for me this week. And hopefully we keep those good times going at Sony. I'm

very, very confident in the information that I'm providing.

But I don't really think it's enough anymore to just have really good information personally. And that's kind of a heat check on myself. I thought it was for a really long time. I actually think that it's more important to cultivate a community and actually interact with people and help people and try and build something special and get back to the roots of why I fell in love with this in the first place. And I had it. I felt that for the first time in a while, like on Thursday, I

Being in that discord on Thursday, the energy of golf being back again. Listen, you can call it corny. That's fine. You don't have to do it. I'm just telling you what has been fun for me and what we're trying to do and what a lot of people seem to love and what I love. So...

RunPureSports.com, promo code Andy. And good luck with your bets and your DFS lineups on Sunday at the Century Tournament of Champions. Have a great rest of the weekend, and we will 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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