Genesis Invitational & Debating Rahm with Ryan Baroff
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All right, welcome in. My name is Andy Wack, Inside Golf Podcast, Genesis Invitational with Ryan Baroff.

Feeling great today. I apologize if my energy was a little bit lacking in the Sunday podcast. I was so exhausted from my 11-hour drive in the car on Saturday, and I recorded it super, super, super early in the morning on Sunday, and I was so exhausted.

And then we had the Super Bowl, and it was just a really long couple of days. But I'm feeling a lot more rested now. Obviously, we hit Scheffler, so the vibes are strong. We've hit two in a row. When that's going on, the hoop just starts looking really big. So I love my picks this week, and I'm very excited to talk to Ryan about them. But I'm also excited to talk to Ryan about the Super Bowl.

Before we get into my conversation with Ryan, I want to give a quick shout out to Cody DuBose, who won $100K on DraftKings, listener of the show. That is absolutely insane. So huge shout out to him. Hopefully we can keep it rolling this week. All right. I think that's all I got at the top. Let's bring in Ryan.

All right. Ryan Baroff is here. Golflandia podcast. Second time on for Ryan Genesis Invitational Week. It's a big one, man. Are you a fan of this tournament? I love this one. What's the best? I think the fact that it coincides with the end of the NFL season, right? All eyes are on golf. Field is great. And lots of new players in the DFS streets.

That's what I was going to ask you about because I think you've been at the DFS game way longer than I have. Do you really think that there's a huge difference this week in terms of casual players saying, hey, I'm going to try out DraftKings Golf this week? Oh, 100%. Yes. And same with NBA. There'll be people going, I don't play NBA, but there'll be people going to play NBA. Yes, you will see a lot of new names in the streets this week.

That's good to hear, right? That's good for people like us that are grinding over Doug Gim stats, right? I would assume so. I mean, maybe, or the people who don't know who Doug Gim is are actually at the advantage. Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I mean, not to get too much into the DraftKings side of it, but I was thinking maybe it's

probably a better strategy to join some of the larger contests this week because of that? Yeah. I always use this as, so I think when new people start playing different sports, all of them are going to flock. One, they're going to flock to the same resources, but they're going to flock to the same pits. So you're probably going to see some guys who you expected as chalk this week be extremely chalky. And we'll talk about those names, but I think you're going to see some very concentrated ownership and

It's a week where there's a thousand good plates. So it's a great way to be different. That's interesting. Yeah. I have a ton of, uh, I'm fascinated to see where some of the ownership shakes out this week because it's, uh, it's, it's quite the board. Well, all right, let's dive right in because we got some fun stuff to talk about at the end, but Riviera country club, Ryan, it's, uh, it's right in my backyard par 71, 7,322 yards. Um,

Poe Greens, Kikuyu Ruff, George Thomas Design. I already did a pretty extensive breakdown in my Sunday show already. So I'll just kick it to you. What are you kind of looking for this week? Yeah, I did listen. It was a good show. Some nice job there. Yeah, you know, RIV is one of those courses that we've seen forever, right? We have a lot of stats. We have a lot of course history. So I was laughing when you said that you don't really use comp courses for RIV. Kind of the same way, right? Yeah.

So you can look to Augusta and you can look to Kapalua and people will look to Mexico, right, where they're not playing anymore because there are some similarities there. But it's really its own animal, right? I think a lot of guys can play well here. Obviously, distance helps. These greens are impossible to hit. These greens are impossible to putt. And that's why you see the same names pop up every year.

Yeah, I think I said, I appreciate you saying that, by the way, because I listened back last night and I was like, oh my God, I was so dull and monotone in that one because I had just done the 11-hour round trip to Pasatiempo, which we were just talking about off air. And then I wanted to get it in before the Super Bowl. And I already had a lot of anxiety about Zander that day, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, I love this course. I think...

I think to harp on what you said, I believe I said it would be an insult to Riviera to compare it to other courses. There's definitely an Augusta connection you can make, but I agree with you. I think it's one of those designs where luckily we have a lot of data on it and a lot of the same players seem to pop up and

It's a real test, you know, hitters only this week and excited to see all the big guns pop out. So you ready to dig into the odds? Let's do it. All right. So I'm looking at DraftKings, Ryan. You can throw out whatever numbers you want, though. But DraftKings, so the guy's 25 under one, 25 and under. We've got Rahm at eight to one, Cantlay at 10 to one.

JT at 14, DJ at 16, Hideki 18, Colin 20, Rory 22, Xander 22, Scheffler 22, Cam Smith 22, Hovland 28, Zalatoris 28. Those are all the guys below 30. Where do you want to start? Go first. Well, I'll start...

where i want to start all right well let's not bury the lead when there's a two in front of rory mcelroy's name it's always going to attract people i didn't go there i went a couple other places but i cannot fault anybody who goes that direction you know it's a course that he's been fine at he should play really well here and talk about augusta you can talk about quail hollow whatever you want he hasn't won in europe but he's

He's blown back-to-back events there, like on the last hole. So obviously not very far off. I'll certainly be overweight on draft teams this week. I think, so the guys that I can't bet,

I can't bet John Rondon that number, even though I absolutely love him. Can't really bet anybody in a major field at that number right now with how deep the fields are. I can't bet Justin Thomas. I just, I still don't trust it. He's not driving the ball well. He still can't make a putt. I just don't know how you can win when you can't do those things. So I, I pretty much put,

all of my eggs in the Dustin Johnson basket. And I think everybody will. I think he'll be the highest stone on DraftKings this week. I think everybody will bet him, but course history, form, course fit, whatever you want to talk about, a POA, California, it doesn't matter what you look at. He's the guy. I agree. I bet DJ at 18 to one. I think you're kind of right about him being the highest stone guy. I mean, it

I don't know. Jon Rahm gained 12 strokes ball striking last week, and I know we'll get to a lot more Rahm later. That's the second best ball striking week of his career. Can you name the first, by the way? I'll give you a hint. It happened last year, and he also didn't win the tournament. Are you cheating? No, I assume it's Memorial. I think he got boned on those stats. I think they just disappeared into the metaverse. No, I don't know which event was it.

Northern Trust, which I was at, that Finau took, which we'll get to Finau later too. But I think where I net out on Rahm, I find him incredibly easy to look right past in the betting markets and incredibly difficult to fade in drafting. So that's exactly what I'm going to keep doing. I played Justin Thomas and Rahm at the top last week and faded basically everyone else. And that

had middling success. I'm thinking about doing a similar thing this week, except subbing JT for DJ and just playing ROM and DJ at the top and fading everyone else. Yeah, well, it's hard because you're not so fading ROM, right? It's not you betting against ROM.

You need two or three or four guys at the top who score more than him and who beat him. You happened to get that last week, right? You had Scheffler and Kent Lay and Xander Brooks. He still finished, what, type of seven, type of eight, whatever it was. He's going to do the same thing this week. Like, Rahm's not going to be outside of the top 12 or top 15. Like, there's no doubt about that. But it's how many of these other guys can score like him.

I want to go back to JT for a second. So you're, you're a former golf pro. I'm just like, I'm trying to figure, and that's what I would be doing with my time if I wasn't, if I wasn't doing this, but for all the shit that we give Zalatoris about the putting, like, I think I have less confidence in JT right now. Like at least Zalatoris is a really good lag putter, but I've been trying, I've been trying to figure this out and maybe you can help, help me out. Cause I don't know if, I don't know if you've noticed this too, but JT,

JT always misses on the amateur side. He aims to take the break out of the putt and then he putts to die it in. He's basically aiming like he's going to hit it

pretty hard in the back of the hole, but then he's actually like a diet and Potter and he always ends up missing. Right. So I, I think, I think, I think JT has gotten extremely technical with his putting stroke. And I know you play a lot of golf with your player.

Most of us, you know, we play for fun and we're not really even lining up touch or anything like that. But what happens when you get really technical, you leave the putt short, you don't hit them hard enough, right? Because you're focused so much on the stroke. And I think that's what he's doing. It's, it's, it seems all mental. Like,

He doesn't look bad. He looks like he's lining it up fine. He looks like he's comfortable, but he's not making anything. And then again, like you saw last week, the guy just hits it all over the map, kind of like Brooks is doing, except Brooks, he made every putt. But I just, I can't play a guy here who can't hit a fairway and who can't make an eight-foot-a-par putt. I thought Bones was supposed to help with that, no? He's got to be used to it, considering he's with Phil. I mean, that's the, except Phil could make those putts sometimes.

Yeah, good point. I will say this about JT, and I kind of net out where you do too, but he did start doing the thing on approach last week where when he's gaining five, six, seven strokes on approach again, he had his best iron week in 11 months, and I tweeted this out too, but the last time he gained this much on approach, he won the players the next week. So I do think when JT starts hitting the ball like this with his eye

He's deadly, but I just... I have such a difficult time with the putter right now that I'm not really sure. Hideki probably could go the entire week without getting talked about on one podcast, and I'm guilty about it too, but I think he's in the mix. And then...

Like, what are you doing with Colin? Because the same thing that you said about Rory with the two in front of his name, I think a lot of people, myself included, feel the same way about Morikawa. So, I mean, it's only...

845 on a Monday here and I've gone back and forth on calling six times. Right. I think again, if he's going to be low on day, I think you play some, I think you try and get overweight. But again, like breaking down this golf course, which he obviously hasn't played that much and he hasn't been great or anything like that. But one, you're picking him over guys like Rom and DJ and Xander. And it doesn't seem like a great idea. And two, like if these greens are hard to hit and these fairways are hard to hit, like that's taking some of his strengths out of here.

And of course he's won a lot, but it has to be perfect. Like he needs to have a perfect iron week. He needs to have a perfect putting week guy like Rahman DJ. They can win a lot of different ways. Yeah. The other thing I'd add about Morikawa and I get you're kind of grasping for straws with a lot of these elite players would like figuring out reasons to fade them. But the reason why I worry about him at Riviera specifically is he's just not, he's not a good bunker player. And I,

I know from anecdotally, Riviera just has really deep and difficult bunker players. So, bunkers. So, if you're looking for a reason to fade Morikawa, the situations with the bunkers really worry me over a large sample size. He's pretty low in sand saves compared to the rest of these guys. Xander had the best tee to green week of his entire career, Ryan. I don't know. Does that interest you at all? I mean, not as an outright, but I'm just...

I'm just never going to get there. And if I miss it, great. I actually played him last week. I was over the field on Xander for the first time in forever. I may do the same thing this week, but I have a feeling that he's going to get much more popular. Just again, the steps last week back in California, the word of Gus is floating out there. He's played this course really well. I just think he's got a lot of things going for him here.

I agree with you. What's interesting though is, and again, it's super, super early, so this could all change, but I'm looking at the early ownership and between when you go from ROM all the way down to like Hovland and Hideki, everyone is in between 13% and 18%. And I do think that you can almost...

kind of play who you want. I don't think there's going to be that because we didn't even talk about Cantlay who played this course at UCLA all the time and loves this course too. I don't think we're going to see a guy that's 25 to 30, right? No. And I think, yeah, I'm done fading Cantlay. Just done with that. Yeah.

I think ROM's going to go on drum. And I think it has nothing to do with ROM. I think it has to do with there are a lot of other good plays and people want to get two, three, four guys in the 9K range or like Cantlay plus one or two others. I just, I don't see how ROM can be more than 18 or 20% this week.

I agree, and I'm going to play him. I mean, I would play him at 24% this week too, but if he's 18, I agree with you. Okay, so I think we're kind of on the same page at the time. Play whoever you want out there.

Yeah, essentially. And then for betting, I bet DJ 18 to 1. Who would you say is your favorite outright? I bet DJ 18 to 1. Okay, perfect. All right, let's go down into this middle tier. So Zalatoris, he was 35. That got hit. It's now 28. Brooks is 35. Matt Fitzpatrick's 35. Sungjae, Spieth, Gooch, Henley, Bubba, Adam Scott,

Homa. We can even throw Sergio and Finau here. Who kind of in that next middle tier has your attention? Also Ben Zalatouris. Yeah, me too. And I wasn't going to overthink it. Like, I mean, you mentioned last week who was number one in the Serbian approach last week. It was Bubba. Yeah. He played great in Saudi out of nowhere. This is his favorite course in the world. Like, I'm just...

I think I got 45 this morning, 40, 45, but I'll just take it. And that's really it. Like you bet a DJ is Alatorre's above all. Like,

Probably not going to add anything else there, but I did consider Sergio Garcia. I think it's just an awesome course for him. He's been playing okay, but I think it's like the kind of okay that's very under the radar because it's like 24th, 13th, 18th. He's going to be in the top 20 this week, so I might just bet him that way. And the only other one that I have any interest in here is Fitzpatrick. Can he win? I don't know. And he's going to be exceptionally popular this week.

You think? I do. I do. People are betting him, and I think he's underpriced, and he's got a couple good finishes here. So I do think he's going to be like the number three guy, even number four guy in a lot of people's lineups this week. Okay, so I bet...

I bet Zalator's too. I also bet Fitzpatrick. I'm so confused about what to make of this. I come from the Nagel's school of thought where if the wrong people are picking your guy, you're doomed. I declared...

I bet Sheffler really early. That's probably the problem sometimes with putting out a show on Sunday mornings is you just, you plant your flag and then you don't know what other people are going to do by Wednesday and Thursday. I was like, there's a zero, 0% chance that Sheffler is winning. But, and I, and listen, I think there's an incredible amount of group think that goes on and engulf betting Twitter, but I,

I don't always know if we can say that's a bad thing anymore because I think the information used to formulate that groupthink is probably the strongest it's ever been because there's so many good data websites out there and there's just a pretty...

wide array, borderline oversaturated market of thoughtful and well-researched content out there. So I'm on Zalatorris. I don't know if I feel as squeamish about it as I would have had Scheffler not won.

Yeah, I mean, Zal's course is just really good. And like you said, I think you said it on your pod, but like talking about a guy who he played well here, he putted well here, right? And he's an elite long iron player. He struggles a little bit with the short iron sometimes, but he's an elite long iron player. He plays well in hard golf courses. He said he likes majors himself. He's a major guy, whatever. That means, yeah, why not? I don't know. I also think if he does end up being...

like 18%, 20%, like I'd pivot to Spieth. Like I actually think you can play. No, no. Why not? Why not? Well, you're just preaching to the wrong fire here. I don't know. He's played okay here for sure. But again, like I can't hit a fairway. I mean, he was fighting last week. He was. And Phoenix is, and Phoenix is fairly open in terms of where he can hit it. And he was finding, he was finding tactile that no one's seen before. So yeah.

Yeah, I think, listen, I think with Spieth, the reason I agree with you for the most part, I do think that there is a creative element

element to Riviera that Spieth has actually talked about before where it's really a shot makers course and I think that's part of the reason why Bubba's been so good here too is because you you have to play like different types of shots and there's obviously like an Augusta thing going on there so that's why I was kind of thinking Spieth but like Fitzpatrick was really the guy for me I'm kind of

worried now that you're saying you think he's going to be popular. I thought he was going to, I still thought that people would have seen Fitzpatrick at 40. Cause even his 10th last week and his six at pebble beach was,

not shown for one second on coverage, like completely off the radar back door. So I don't know. You're more of a Euro guy. Isn't that course that he won on in Spain a couple months ago? Isn't that like Spanish Riviera? It's like the exact same thing. Yes, but even shorter, even tighter. And again, you're talking about an exceptionally weak field over there. So it's hard to make John Ramos in the field.

Yeah. He's got a lot of pressure playing in Spain. And he's won that event twice. So if you want a pivot off his Alex Morris, because he is going to be expensive. You're looking at speed.

I'm going to give you another guy who's played this course well. He's a very good iron player. He's longer than Spieth. He has a short game just about as good as Spieth. He burned a lot of people last week. Is it Finau? It's Burns. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Absolutely nobody's going to play Sam Burns. He's got a top five here. I think he's made both cuts here. And yeah, you talk about a guy who's got a great short game. He scores. He doesn't play technical, right? He's just going to figure it out. He's going to get the ball around. I think he's going to be...

5% on, maybe 6% on. And if you want to pivot off of Zalatouris, I would much rather go to Burns at this speed. He's like 40-ish to one, two, right? I mean, it's pretty quick how these guys fall pretty quickly. That's interesting. I mean, he was a guy that people were feeling good about 18 to ones on Sam Burns a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I mean, that might be a good time to buy on him. I think he was, what, he was leading at...

like on the back nine on Sunday here last year? Yeah, I mean, look at his course history, and I like to see this, right? 2019 missed that. 2020, there's 23rd, and last year was third. Maybe he's figured it out. Speaking of course history and last year, I bet Tony Finau at 60-1. I think it's a pretty good buy-low spot on him. He did miss the cut in Phoenix, but the ball striking actually –

really came back for him on Friday. He had a really, really good tee to green week on Friday. I think people forget this. He was in terrible form before he won the Northern Trust. He was at a similar number. Once you get Finau in the 40s and 50s and he's 60 here, I'm not a quote-unquote auto bet guy, but I think that's kind of a lock for me. That was the first thing I did this morning when I saw the 60. It's a pretty similar situation.

run that he's on, right? Because like last summer, his ball striking came back for a few weeks and then he died, right? He went away for a month and he came back and won the Northern Trust. You're kind of seeing that now, but in the few times we've seen him at century at the end, he just didn't look good, right? We weren't seeing good shots. He's not making any putts. He's not scoring. I absolutely don't mind him for a draft teams pivot if he is going to be low owned. I just, I don't think he's ready to win. But again, that's

That's why he's 60 to one. So what about like this kind of group of Casey Leishman, Neiman, Coke, crack Peters, like these guys getting up into between 50 and 100.

Just bet your top 20s. That's about like you look at Paul Casey's course of screens, like made every cut here. And he's always like 29th or 30th or 18th. I think Kovac had one runner up finish, but he's the same way. Like he's going to finish type of 20th and 25th. And I think of those guys, Neiman would be the one who I had the most interest in just because his ball striking has been great. Played well in Saudi on this one over there.

he seems like he's ready to make the leap. Like we saw with Burns last year, like we saw with Shuffler last year. I think Neiman's going to have a year just like that. Yeah, I like Neiman a lot too. My first thought with Neiman was...

there's no way he could win at a course like Riviera because his short game isn't good enough, but numbers wise, his short game, actually it's not as bad as you think it is. Um, or, or it's not as bad as I had it in my head at least. And he backed toward that top 10 at, at Torrey and he gained, he gained a ton ball striking. It was his best ball striking performance since quail hollow, uh, which I think people like as a comp. So I,

I, yeah, I like Neiman. I bet Kevin Na 75 to one. I don't think Kevin Na is going to win. He's more of a win. The Shriners are a Sony guy, but I do think that he can really compete here. I mean, he, he has almost one here. He's multiple top fives, but listen, I know what I'm getting with the short game and putting and the irons are starting to look really good too. And I,

Listen, I think especially if you think that Fitzpatrick is going to be popular, I think you could get like 87% of Matt Fitzpatrick at a better price with Kevin Na. Yeah, I agree. I don't think Na's a bad player at all. My only concern with him is that while the irons are back,

the putter hasn't been there and he hasn't put it these greens that well. I think he's number one in surfskating around the green here at rib, but not so good on putting. And if he's not making putts, I mean, you're screwed, right? Yeah. That's a miscut, but yeah, he seems like if it's firm, if it's fast, if it's playing difficult, like I could see him, you know, eighth place or 10th place or something like that. We're not going back to Hanley. Are we? I don't think so. No, I think, I think he had his run. He did not get the win.

I think we're moving on. What about Leishman though? I really like Leishman. Like I was, I was really close to batting him this week. I ended up going with female and sad, but I could easily see Leishman winning this tournament. I mean, he's a, he's a good long iron player. He's good on Pella. He's, he's good out of the bunkers. He can win in good field. So I think he's a, he's definitely a good option.

Yeah, for sure. I think there's a lot of things working in his favor. He's been really underrated good for the last, call it four months, five months or so. I mean, not that there's a ton of tournaments in there. I think I kind of put him in that Paul Casey thing, though. Like, all right, he's going to finish 15. I'll use him on draft games. I don't think he can win them. So...

What's your take on Peters? Because my theory on Peters is I think he's going to be a really buzzy name this week in our community. But like we talked about at the top, this is the first tournament of the year where I think the general public is really getting involved because there's no football. And I just don't see any casual DraftKings players clicking Thomas Peters' name. I think you're right. Yeah. I mean, he's certainly not going to be double digits or anything like

But I mean, just looking at the names around him, if he's 8% and Cameron Tringali is 3%, who are you playing? I think Peters, but I hate Cameron Tringali. Me too. I had all of them at Pebble Beach too. No, but I mean, I like Peters. I mean, he's been really good for about the last year or so. The ball striking just continues to be great. He's putting better. He has a lot of confidence. He's kind of...

you know, he's at that new stage in life with all these guys. Like he got married, he had a kid, he took some time off. He came back and won. It's like kind of starting to career over again and obviously has, has really good history here. So yeah, I will have some viewers for sure. I'm going to float a working theory towards you. Okay. What if Tom Hoagie is like just really good? I mean, he is, he's been ball striking like the top five player in the world for decades.

The last few months. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. You see guys go through, like we're seeing with Seamus Power, kind of the same thing. These guys just go through a run. We saw it with Jason Kocrak, who was probably better than them anyways, but the guy couldn't win, and then, bam, he rattles off three wins. Yeah, Hoagie's been really impressive. I don't know. He probably...

Probably should have contended last week. He hit a ball in the water. Yeah. He was up there. He was, he was right there. Yeah. Yeah. And now he's priced down. Like I know he hasn't played this course very well. It's just, are you clicking Tom Hoagie over Paul Casey?

Or Patrick Reed. Is anyone clicking Patrick Reed? Are you clicking Patrick Reed? I'm not going to click him. No, I think people will bet him just because if he's 90 or 101, people just like to bet Patrick Reed. But no, he just hasn't looked the same. I think...

It's pretty obvious. He is messing with equipment. He went from PXG. He's playing some other stuff. I just don't think he's very confident in what he's using right now. Yeah. I bet Corey Connors at 28 to 1 like a month ago. Now he's 100? Yeah. Now he's 173, 7.3, and I think he'll be sub 5%. I just...

I could see him getting in like a bunker here and we don't hear from him for like three years. Same with Kokrak kind of, although Kokrak has played okay here. But yeah, I mean, it's some of these guys like the Connors and the Reeds at these prices and these ownerships would normally be guys that I would be all over in this specific spot. But I don't know. I'm having a difficult time.

I'm the same. Like, like you look at what Conor's did last year. I mean, one of the best, um,

i think one of the best ball striking years ever right made it for championship just awesome year um i think it's hard to come back from that like you have that great year you pretty much accomplish everything you want to accomplish you qualify for all the majors and you start a new year and i think he's going through that run he's got a couple miscuts wasn't so good last week but i think it's a good course for him ball striking wise i just i cannot handle shot track with him

over four or five six-footers this week. It's not going to happen. So now we've kind of opened up. Now let's kind of just open it up to everyone in the sixes, any bombs or top 20 guys. You can take it anywhere because I have a couple guys in the low sevens and the sixes that I want to throw out, but you go first. I actually have a ton in the sixes, which is a problem. I think in the low sevens, and I think you mentioned it, Monta is going to get some ownership this week. Yeah.

I ate it at Pebble Beach with a high price. Much more comfortable paying this for him, so I will go back to Lonto. I'm going to keep playing Keegan here. It's not enjoyable, but I'm just going to keep playing him. And then I would probably play some...

I'll play Bez. I think that would probably be the only other one. Really good short game, big ball striker, plays well on hard golf courses. One at Valderrama, which you've already mentioned that as a potential course to look at. So yeah, Bez is probably one name. That'll be again, 2% on something like that. Yeah. I actually like all those guys. The only other guy that I would throw out too is...

This guy, Matt McNeely, right? He's 25-1 at Pebble Beach. We're still on the West Coast. It's still POA. It's two weeks later. I get it's a better field. His dad's probably a member here, if I had to guess. He's basically finishing top 30 every single week, whether it's a good field or a bad field. And he's actually doing it with decent ball striking. So I like Matt McNeely.

Yeah, I mean, I can't fault you. Again, he was, what, 9,800 at Pebble Beach and made the cut, played fine. He withdrew. I'm curious as to why he withdrew last week. Probably just needed a break. I hope it's nothing in you related, but that would be the only thing that we tend to look into.

Yeah. We didn't talk about that with Zala Taurus either is the COVID thing, but I'm just going to, I'm just going to assume that, that that's fine. All right. So let's, I have some more guys. You want to just go back and forth on a couple of 6k guys. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Doug Gim, probably my favorite guy down here. He just gained 6.2 on approach in Phoenix. Really great mid to long iron player over a large sample size. Kind of an underrated short game. He's 12th in this field in sand saves over a large sample size. Hopefully putts well on Poa. I think he's a great play.

Yeah. I'm not a dug in guy, but I think I'm going to play some industry. He kind of faded a little bit last week, but score, right? I think he had multiple eagles last week. Obviously a great iron player, West coast. Sure. Let's play some Doug. Yeah. We're going to go all the way down to the gross now. Just dive right into Patrick Rogers. Yeah.

I mean, I think he threw people off the scent last week with a miscut, but gained off the tee, gained approach. On the number two, miscut on the number. I love miscuts on the number, especially when you get the ball striking. He's coming back to rims, obviously played here a lot, played really well here.

Still has an underrated short game. And I think these are the types of, like Patrick Rogers is not going to make 28 birdies, right? That's not who he is. He doesn't putt like that. But you get him here. Maybe we get the firm greens. You get the wind and minus 13 wins. Like Patrick Rogers could get close to that.

He was my next guy. So I'll pivot to the guy I had after that. Munoz, who had a very quiet T23 last week in Phoenix, gained 7.3 strokes ball striking, just could not putt. I think my biggest holdup with him is that he's had so much more success on easier golf courses than harder ones. I always find it really funny that Munoz is consistently at the top in birdies or letter gains and at the bottom in bogey avoidance. But

But I don't, listen, you're not going to find a guy that's hitting it better in the sixes right now than Munoz. I mean, 7.3 ball striking. I think he was pretty even like three and a half off the tee and three and a half on approach too. So I'll take my chances. I'm with you. I mean, my main concern with Munoz is when I click his name, he sucks. And when I don't, he's good. But yeah, this is, I kind of put it in that same group with Johnny Vegas a little bit higher, but like,

The guys vomit. Both of them, I mean, they're not good putters, but they can putt. And they make a lot of birdies. Like, probably a better showdown play, probably a first-round leader bet. But, yeah, I'm there with Munoz. The other one, I don't even want to talk about this guy because I'm really not trying to jack up the ownership, but I think the cat's out of the bag on Taylor Penderith. Yeah, it could not be a better coach for him.

He plays hard golf course as well. It's an incredibly far, he was already quoted this week as saying he loves this place. It's just, yeah. Yeah. So I was looking at him too. I think we're safe. I mean, I, I have some very loyal listeners, but I, I don't generally, I generally don't know how much of a, an impact I have on the market. I had him circled too. I agree. And he is, he's long off the tee and he actually like,

he can putt. The irons are obviously hit or miss, but I think there's a pretty big history of guys who've been able to just spend really long off the tee and have a good short game, be able to do well at Riviera. So I like that one. This next guy, this guy really fucked me last week.

So, they really fucked me. Is this James Hahn? No, it's not. He fucked me too. But, oh man. So, Ricky Fowler is 6,600 now. He's 200 to one. He missed a cut on the number last week. And he basically made zero putts outside of like eight feet. Now, I get that this field is better. But,

I, and I'm doing this offhand, I didn't actually calculate this, but like he dropped from 7.6 to 6.6. Like a lot of the guys that missed the cut, like they dropped $300, $400. Gooch finished like 25th and went up in price. Yeah. I just like 6,600 for Fowler. Like, I, I don't know. Like that feels really low.

They're our worst place. Yes. I'm certainly considering Fowler. My only... Because, yeah, the irons were actually okay. The short game was okay. He didn't putt well, obviously. Still struggling off the tee. It's been kind of holding him back for a while. I wish we were at a course where he had shown any signs that he could play this golf course. I think he had a top 20 last year, but I just wish that he played this course better. But if he is going to be 4%, 3%, like...

I can double the field and feel okay with it. Okay, you go. I've only got one more guy. Yeah, no, I've got about 100 more, but just sticking with the mold, right? So I mentioned Kendrick, you know, bomber, clutch swell. Another guy who's been really good and kind of fits that same mold is Cameron Young. He's basically...

he's basically Wyndham Clark without people knowing who he is, right? So you can also play Wyndham Clark for the same dollar, right? They're guys who vomit, they hit the ball a mile. They can get really hot with the putter. Clark is like actually a good putter and has done it here, right? Played really well here last year. But I think Cameron Young, Wyndham Clark, Penrith, they're all kind of that same mold. I would definitely be sprinkling all three of those guys in this week.

I have this joke with your co-host where it's just, it's always Wallace, but he's putting that to the test this week. I think he lost like 10 strokes ball striking last week. The guy was, I think he had two shanks last week. Yeah. Did you see his tweet? He tweeted that. No, no, no. Just from Shot Tracker. He was going back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. He tweeted, he was like, two cold shanks in a two-way mess, but we're grinding.

Hey, he stayed after and was working on the range. So whatever. Yeah. I mean, I like Wallace from a macro view. He just has not been good at all. Show nothing. So I don't know. Yeah.

Okay, the last guy, he might be seven, so I'm going up. But Carlos Ortiz, I think in general, he's just a pretty underrated player. I think the Irons turned it around last week, and he's played pretty well at Riviera and specifically putted really well here. In four of his five appearances, he's gained over two and a half strokes putting. So that's pretty encouraging. I'm probably going to have some Ortiz.

Yeah, no, for sure. I have a little star tissue, so I was chasing a

a four, four, four, four mega ticket, uh, last week, Saturday showdown round. And I kind of went back and forth on playing Higo versus Ortiz. I went with Ortiz. He had opened with 69, 67 ball striking was great. You know, he's played that course. Well, he sucks and shoot 74. And the next day he has an ace and then an Eagle and he shoots 500. So it was horrible. Um, but yeah, I think, I think it's a great course for him. Um,

He does putt well, which is great. He scores. And I think he's right at that price point where he's just not going to be that popular. Preston Pysh : Anyone else that you're burning on that you want to throw out? I think that's probably the all, I mean, I could talk about everyone down here, but I think those are probably the guys I'm actually going to play. Jason Lowery : No, I mean, I think we squeezed all the juice out of Marty Laird last week, which is great. Preston Pysh : Yeah. I feel the same way about Hadwin too. Jason Lowery : Yeah.

I think Laird is cheap enough that I may still play him this week. I'm not sure about that, but I think we got what we can. The only other guy that I would play down here, just because I play him every week, is Sepp Straka. And again, he's been really good. Has not been good at this ball, of course, but I mean, obviously a really good ball striker. He's improved his putting. It's not great, but like, do you want a guy who can randomly shoot 64? Like that's what he can do. And he's down here basically at the bottom. So I might play some Straka.

All right. Well, let's give a quick little recap before we dive into the second half of this episode. I'm going with DJ at 18, Zalatoris 35, Fitzpatrick 45, Finau 60, Kevin Na 75. That's going to be it for me. I feel pretty good about those guys. What about you? Yeah, pretty similar. So also DJ 18, Zalatoris 35, Bubba at I believe 45.

Cool. All right. Well, okay, Ryan, let's talk a little bit about Jon Rahm. Yeah. So...

And to me, this is, you know, it's a kind of a discussion about John Rahm. It's also a discussion about like what strokes game means and stuff like that. But just so people have some context, I went on the golf gambling podcast with my good friends, Boston Capper and Twitterless Steve, shout out to them. And I basically talked about, I'm going to give the very quick recap because I talked for about 20 minutes on him. But the very quick recap is,

how I think that the pendulum has swung just a little too far in the other direction with advanced analytics and that ROM at this point is actually a little overrated based on the way he gets talked about versus what he's actually accomplished on the golf course, which again, that's not me making a prediction about how much ROM will win. I think he'll win plenty, but

it's me just saying, hey, let's stack up the actual resume here with what he's done and talk about that. Now, I would say, Ryan, that 97% of people completely understood the gist of what I was saying, even if they disagreed with me, which I think you did partially. And 3% were just like, oh, you think Rahm is Rudy Gobert? No, dude, you're completely missing the point of what I'm saying. But we started talking about it on DMs and I was

basically just say this a good back and forth. You're actually listening to what I'm saying, but you're also providing solid counterpoints that I think are really valuable and doing so in a thoughtful way. So let's take this to a podcast because I think this is something that people are pretty interested in. So we can go wherever you want with this. I guess I'll just throw it to you. Like what, what I guess was your main gripe with my ROM stance or what do you think I was maybe missing or failing to acknowledge with him?

So I don't think it was anything mom specific. I think one of the things that you had said, I think you were poking holes in strokes game, right? Which any stat has holes. But I think strokes game is the best of what we have. It's not proximity. It's not greens and regulation. It's not total driving. It's a stat that measures guys on the same types of shots, right? And I think in that context, when you have somebody who is so far and away better than everybody else, right? In multiple categories, right?

And it's a stat that you can backtest, right? Who's the best iron players? Colin Morikawa. Yeah, we all agree with that. Who's the best iron player historically? It's Tiger Woods. Who's the best driver? It's Roy McIlroy. All those things, I think they pass that test when you go and actually backtest what these stats mean.

So I think that was the main gripe is, hey, let's not throw polls in strokes game. If you want to talk about Ron not closing on Sundays, right, we can dive into why all of that happens. And I did. Like, that was one of the things that I looked at in terms of, you know, is he not performing on Sundays? Is he not putting well on Sundays? Is there something in the data that would explain why he probably hasn't won as much as we think he should win?

Did you find anything? Because I looked at that. Okay, go ahead. Lay it on me. Yeah. Well, so I think the first thing that I did, right, is I wanted to look at kind of his career up to this point. He has 27 years old, right? This is not a career. He's just getting started. Yes. We were spoiled.

by Rory and we were spoiled by Jordan Spieth. A couple of guys who won at a very high clip at a very young age. I think at the age of 27, Rory had won 20 times. Ron's at 12. Spieth was also at 12. Preston Pysh : He's at 11. I'm so done with the Zurich Classic thing. Come on. Robert Leonard : Call it 11, whatever you want. I'm not counting the tour championship that he actually won.

So call it a better. Spieser 12, Rory was at 20 at this age. Obviously Rory started much younger, right? He won a European event very young. He started much younger. And then he spoiled us with all the majors that he won in pretty significantly weaker fields than we had. But when you look at how many events it took them in terms of them reaching that number,

12 or 11 wins. Rory took the longest of those three. He almost took as long as Dustin Johnson, who was a bit of a late bloomer. Spieth was actually pretty quick in terms of getting those wins. Rahm has really been pretty quick. I just think, again, Rahm, he's always there. He's always in the top five. He has about the same number of made cuts as those guys, pretty similar rates when you look at top 20s. But when you look at top 10s and top fives at this point in their career, Rahm is so far above those guys. Only Tiger is above them.

I mean, in terms of how many top fives. So I think the fact that wrong is always there.

has spoiled us because you're like, all right, he's got 18 top fives, but only one win. Why is he not getting there? And there was a very interesting thread on Twitter from Brandon Gadula, the guy from Numberfire, right? Yeah, I saw that. Right. And so I kind of started working off of that, but essentially he looked at all those weeks where like the ball striking was there and the putting was there, right? Where Rahm was in the top 10 in both of those categories for the week. And obviously he's going to play well those weeks.

And I think there were nine instances where Rahm was in the top 10 in putting and tee to green for the week. And he won one out of nine. There's nothing wrong with the play. If you look at that same sample for Dustin Johnson, he won eight out of 10. Most guys were winning more than 50% of those flips. So why did Rahm win one out of nine? I don't know. He's playing hard events. He's playing strong fields, all of those sort of things. But

I think what I noticed when I look back at that, right. Is one of the things that I did was I looked at his putting ceiling. Ron is an elite ball. He drives it well. He is also an extremely underrated putter, right? He's a great putter. He's way better than Rory was like way better than Rory was Dustin Johnson, like all those guys. Um, and I looked at his, his top 14, cause I sort of by a certain, but his top 14 performances in terms of strokes game putting, and guess how many events of those 14 he won.

It's probably a very low number because I was looking at this a little bit too with like he is, he had his second best ball striking week of his career last year and he finished 10th. Maybe, I don't know, two? No, zero. It's zero. He's won zero out of 14. And he has the same sort of rap as a guy like Rory where, okay, if he puts well, he's going to win, right? I looked at Rory's best 14 putting performances. Guess how many he won?

Eight. Eight. Exactly. So that's the discrepancy. Rahm is wasting his best putting weeks. And it's funny because even the last two or three weeks, he threw it away with crap around the green. He's got a good short game. That doesn't happen that much. So

He's just blowing winds because he's wasting these high-end putting weeks. He's doing stupid stuff. If it's stuff around the green, maybe like a random bad iron week, but he's playing the fields and the majors and the events where there's just no margin for error.

There's a lot there. You said a lot of good stuff. I think the first thing that I want to respond to is the historical context because I'm so fascinated about... Part of my argument was looking at pace. What pace is he on and what does he have to actually do to be one of the greatest golfers of all time? And I think you touched on it a little bit too. I'm going to reveal something

pretty nerdy about me to you and the listeners. But I started this back when Phil won the PGA because I was so...

I was just fascinated by the historical context of that. Like what is Phil winning the PGA mean? Does it make him a top 10 golfer of all time? Does it make him a top eight golfer of all time? Does it make him a top 12 golfer of all time? So basically I put this all together where I made this list based on resume. I spent way too much time on this and I'm always updated it, updating it, but of the greatest 50 golfers of all time and their resume. And basically,

I want to ask you the question because I want to stack up what some of these guys have done. Like when it's all said and done, where do you think Rom falls? Like, do you think he's cause you're right. He's early in his career. He has at least 10 more prime years. And I think another argument that you can make with Rom is, um,

He has the type of game that is going to work in his mid forties, right? He has a very repeatable swing. It doesn't seem like he gets injured a lot. He has that glum foot thing, but he stayed relatively healthy. So where do you like, what do you think? Do you think Rom has the ability to be a top 20, a top 30 player of all time? Because I think you'd maybe be surprised about what he would have to do to get there over the course of the next eight to 10 years.

So I think there's a lot of ways you can look at it, right? If you're looking at this in terms of just wins, right. Or in terms of just majors, he's going to have a very hard time getting, right. Uh, there's a lot of, there's a lot of really good players, hard to win majors. He's going to win a couple more. There's no doubt about that. Oh yeah. Um, is he going to even get to four word warriors probably, but that's not a given, right. Is he going to get to where Nicholson is at six or no, probably not. Um,

But yes, I think where Rahm's going to fall is I think he's going to end up probably borderline top 10, top 15 player, but he's going to be more known for the longevity and the consistency, which you're seeing now. He's probably going to be in the top four in terms of weeks spent at world number one by the time he's done. He's going to have more DJs, he's going to have more than Rory. He'll be behind Tiger and behind Greg Norman, but...

He might be number three on that list for weeks spent at world number one. And I think in this era, I think when we look back on it, that will hold a lot of weight, more than even the wins, maybe even more than some majors. Yeah, that's also the other thing that you kind of have to figure out is...

How do you rate wins versus majors? Because like, for example, Brooks Koepka has nine wins. Four of them are majors. Like what is, what is it better? I have him ranked at 38 currently, but he's right next to Lloyd Mangrum who has 36 wins, but one major. So it's like Padre Heron.

That's a perfect Brooks Tom. Just so you know, he's not going to win as many, but Patrick Harrington went on that run where he won three majors in two years. Very much like Brooks did, out of nowhere. I have Harrington as 43. Yeah, so they should be pretty similar. Yeah. So what's interesting to me is, I look at someone like Ernie Els, right? And I think...

I look at someone like Ernie Els and Vijay Singh. Yeah. Vijay Singh has 43 wins. 43 fucking wins. And I also think you didn't really get into this, but you kind of touched on it. I think you're so right about the era thing. And listen, Vijay had to compete against Tiger, so that's obviously its own different thing. But I just think that the top is... There's just a lot of parody in golf right now. But...

I look at somebody like Vijay. He had 43 wins in three majors. Ernie Allen. Playing against Tiger Woods.

Playing against Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, 41 wins, four majors. So we'll say Rom's at 11-1 right now. Is Rom going to win 30 times and three more majors? And I'm counting world, like, there's no fucking way he's going to win 30 more times. No, I mean, he's going to keep winning a lot of these Euro events, right? He'll probably win one Euro event a year for the next decade or so. I mean, I think Rom is probably going to finish in the same realm in terms of wins as, like,

davis love i think he's probably like 25 ish maybe where our dj is now is probably a perfect example because dj picked off a lot of wins from 2008 or whatever until now um yeah i think that's where he'll he'll fall but if rom ends up with one major it's going to be a huge failure for him if he ends up with four he's going to be a top 10 player of all time

Well, I mean, Phil, I'm just going to give you the top 10 tiger, Jack Nicholas, Ben Hogan, Gary player, Walter Hagan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Jean Sarazin, Tom Watson, Phil Mickelson at 10. So I don't think there's, I don't think he has any shot to have Phil's career because Phil went, Phil won 47 times and he has six majors. So Rom would need to win 36 times in five more majors. I don't think there's a shot in hell. I don't think he's going to get that. No.

No, I think again, it's going to be what you look at. Like, so I'm going back to BJ for a minute. Like I think what was more impressive, I mean, yes, the wins, yes, the majors. I mean, he had nine wins in a year. He spent almost a full year as world number one in the middle of the tiger era. Yeah. Yeah.

Like that's absurd. Even David Duvall spent a few months as like, I mean, those guys were good, but there was just no depth. Like the VJ, Goosen, Ellis, David Duvall, Nicholson, like that group was great and they pushed Tiger. But if they weren't there and they weren't playing well, Tiger would just slap up the field. Well, you, you kind of brought up another thing that I kind of wanted to talk about. And I want to give, I want to shout out my friend, John, because he was the first one to float this theory, but he,

What I think is missing a little bit with ROM, where I am having a little bit of a harder time with like the greatness thing is, do you remember that six month DJ stretch from, I think it was June 20, June, 2020 to January 21, where he won five times, including, including the masters, the tour championship. He won a FedEx cup playoff event by I think 10 strokes, uh,

He also had a playoff loss and two other seconds. So in this six month stretch for DJ, uh,

Five wins, a major, a tour championship, three runner-ups. I just think that's on such a different stratosphere than anything Rom has gotten close to in terms of domination. But the reason why DJ Stroke's gain number isn't ever going to look like Rom's is because right before that stretch, he shot back-to-back 80s at the Memorial. And he shot like 70 years at TPC Twin Cities. But it's like...

Who cares? Like who fucking cares? He won five times and was so dominant. And I think what I kind of, what I have a difficult time with is like,

strokes gained is a measure of a player's floor and, and trophies is a measure of a player's ceiling. And, and I, I kind of want to see with Rom, I want to see that like six months stretch where he like wins three times. Well, so I know you don't want to hear this, but he might've had it last summer. If you give him,

the Memorial win, and you give him the tour championship win, which he won in short play, that is three wins. And I think six or seven events. Plus a major. Major. Ninth at the BMW, a third at the Northern Trust, a seventh at the Scottish Open, and a third at the Open Championships.

So like, I think that was a shorter stretch and of course he doesn't get three wins. He gets one, but obviously I think we have to talk about Memorial. He was going to win that by nine shots. Uh, he did win the tour championship. So I think there's going to be spurts like that, but, um, I don't even know if, if I know you're younger, but like if you were watching Jason day when he did this a few years ago, Oh yeah. Right. When he went on that run, uh, and he won six times in 18 events or something. Um,

He got a major. He was winning playoff events. He was world number one by a mile. So I think those ranges of dominance are going to be harder now. But I think Rahm had one last summer. It's just he only gets credit for one win. Yeah, that's fair. And I'm like, listen, yes. Was he going to win the Memorial? Of course not.

I push back a little bit on the sense that like, listen, man, like the Denver Broncos were starting guys like Kendall Hinton at quarterback and fucking NFL games. Like COVID affected absolutely everyone. It affected everyone. And it just like there, I cannot imagine the amount of, I cannot tell you the, as an NBA fan and an NFL fan, the amount of teams that just got so fucked.

Like so fucked. And no one really felt sorry for him and not for those teams. I agree. Rom got fucked in that situation. Right. But that's just kind of part of sports and COVID. So yeah, but getting pulled at the start of a tournament or like before an NFL games, a lot different than, you know, being in the league when you, yeah. Yeah. We built a six shot lead. How much was it? He was up by six. He was up by six. Had Henley blew five and nine holes a month ago.

He's, he's Russ Henley. And he was trying to hold off Godzilla. No, you're right. I, I agree with you. I think the, I think that stretch, I don't know. Were you more scared of him during that summer than you were during that DJ stretch? Like that's, I don't know because he didn't get the words right. I think if we had just been beaten down and he's holding up trophy after trophy, I think he would have, um,

But I love DJ. He's like my favorite right now. So I love the dominance of DJ. I still think when everybody is at their best, I would take DJ. I would take DJ over Ram. I would take DJ over Rory because he just, he has that extra gear of, he doesn't give a shit and he will hit the driver everywhere. And when DJ is driving it the way that he can drive it, it's better than, I don't care what you say, it's better than Rory off the tee. It's better than Ram off the tee. It's better than anybody off the tee. Yeah. So,

All right. There's a second part of this conversation that I want to bring in, which is Colin. Yeah. And here's my question. I guess here's my question to you. So Colin is 24, six worldwide wins, DP World Tour Championship, and a WGC two majors. And I think I said this to you on DMs where I said,

if you ask tiger or Rory or DJ or Jack Nicklaus, like any of those guys, if they'd rather have ROM strokes, gain number and, or, and all of his top tens or Collins extra major, I think we all know what people would, what, what those guys would say. And what I'm curious about with, with Colin is, um,

I mean, the fact that he's won 20% of the majors that he's played in, that is so incomprehensible to me. Did we talk enough about the fact that he never played a round of links golf in his life and he won the British Open? You can't fucking tell me that that's not more impressive than Jon Rahm winning at Torrey Pines, which was perfectly designed for him, and he'll tell you the same thing. So the question that I have for you is,

Why do you think that Rom is getting it right now? Because I think in a different era without strokes gains, people would look at what Colin has done in a shorter period of time. And they would look at the trophies and say, this guy's the greatest player in the world. This guy's a prodigy. What he's accomplished at 24, he's in a different class. And so,

What I kind of have a difficult time reconciling is like, have we gone a little bit too far with the strokes gain data where this guy that's 24 years old and is actually on pace to get to that, uh, that win number and that major number that we talked about with the top 10 players of the world, I kind of feel like he's a bit of an afterthought, man. And maybe that's my echo chamber, but I just, I don't know. What do you think about that?

I do think Morikawa is a little bit underrated when you look at the historical context. It's hard to say historical. He's been on tour for two and a half years. But I think a PGA championship at a

quiet corner at harding park and then a open champion it just didn't raise the fanfare of like you're right cory pines and rama's been doing this for four or five six years now um if colin can continue this i absolutely think he's gonna get there right he's gonna win tournaments he's gonna win majors he's he's gonna be a rider cup player for the next 18 20 years um

But I think also it's kind of skillset. Colin, he has a skillset, right? It's not flashy. It's bogey avoidance and awesome iron play, and he's going to beat you to death with those darts. And it's just not flashy. People don't like to talk about it. And he's just not, I don't know why he's not more popular. I think he's a young American up and coming, but I think we have those, right? People have speed. They

They have JT, they had Ricky Fowler, they had Brooks and they had Bryson. Like, I think there are other guys there. So, um, yeah, but he's awesome. Like the iron play, you cannot, yeah. You can't talk about that enough. He's literally the best iron player since tiger. There's, there's no comparison with anybody else.

do you think, do you think likability is a part of it? Like, do you find, do you find Rom likable? Like, are you, would you call yourself a Rom fan? Have you ever followed him in person and watched him up close, by the way? I have not caught him in person. Um, I am a Rom fan. Yes. Uh, I'm a Rom fan. I think, uh,

I think he's smart. He gives great interviews. I think he's honest. I think he's really good, right? Like, I like watching guys who can hit a lot of different shots. Ron can beat you in any way. He can make pussies. He can get up and down. He can beat with the irons. Obviously, you know, he drives the ball great. Yes, I'm a Ron fan. Yeah, I was...

I was trying to figure this out because I followed him at Torrey Pines, um, up close for the first time. And he's, he's amazing in person. Like he is the sound that he makes coming off the club face. It's just, it's different than a lot of the players out there. I don't know, man. I don't know if I agree with you about the interview part. Um,

I think he gives a really good interview. I think he's really thoughtful. I think he's a student of the game. I think he cares about history. Like, I don't think he'll ever go to Saudi or anything like that because I think he cares about his legacy and his head's in the right place.

He's kind of a dick too. I'm just going to be honest. I don't know if you... There's a lot of stuff that the cameras aren't ever going to catch, but his body language on the court... Listen, I get it. I played junior golf my whole life. I understand it, and I've lost my temper on the course too. He did this one thing with Sung Jae that really rubbed me the wrong way at Torrey Pines, but what I have this difficult time with is I think that...

I don't know. I know that in our echo chamber, you've got me and Nagels as the Zanders guys, and everyone loves Scheffler and stuff like that. But you look at the broader media, and it's like, dude, Kyle Porter, Justin Ray, No Wang Up, all those guys, they are falling head over heels over Ron. And I'm curious if you think it's because of he's...

likable. Um, and he's someone fun to root for, or if it's the stats. Yeah, I think it's a combination. It's not the trophies. I also think, um, um, I think one of the things, you know, no bang up did kind of their up and coming and trying to find their niche is they would latch on to the young guys, right? You see it, they brought home on the podcast. I assume they had a Sihith on there at some point. Um,

I think Ron was one of the first guys, amateurs who they brought up and they had on the pod and they kind of helped bring him up as a child. And then he did the thing at Phoenix as an amateur, right? Put on the Arizona State jersey and all of that. Like, I just think there are a lot of things that happen. And then he became the best player in the world. So just a very easy guy to root for.

I think they're all dicks. They can all be. Rory, very clearly, Rory can be a dick. There's no doubt about it. Justin Thomas, no doubt in my mind, that guy's an asshole. I think it's been captured on camera before, but there's no doubt in my mind that guy's an asshole. Even Speed, when these guys aren't playing well, they're not going to be nice to anybody.

So, yeah. Okay, Xander's not, though, by the way. And I know that from people that know him personally. Maybe that's why he doesn't have any trophies on his shirt. That was a layup. No, I get what you're saying. I do. And I actually do think that...

like if you watched Rom in person and you were a kid that was trying to get into golf, I think it would be, I think you'd look at Rom and you would, I think you'd maybe be more attracted to watching the way that he hits the ball than the way versus the way that Colin hits the ball. So I, I totally get that side of it. Yeah, for sure. But look, I, I,

I like you. I like the history of the game. I hope Morikawa wins one of the majors. I like to watch those. I hope Spieth wins the Grand Slam. I hope Brooks wins the Grand Slam. I hate that guy. He won't. I'll be rooting for him. So,

Seve, he's a good comparison because he was Spain. Seve has 52 wins in five majors. That's nuts. That's fucking insane. Yeah, he was sober. I have Seve as the 12th best golfer of all time. But I think just to go back to the original conversation is,

Maybe I overrate wins. Like maybe we've reached the point where, um, maybe I just need to, you need to focus a little bit more on being consistently awesome. And that's,

I basically like wins is how golf gets remembered historically, but maybe that changes, right? Like we didn't, we didn't have strokes gained when Nicholas was around when Hogan was around. So like maybe I'm fascinated to see how it goes down because I think if you just put up a blind resume test of John Rom versus some of these other guys, you wouldn't be able to say that he's the greatest player in the world right now. But if you looked at the strokes gained, it would tell a different story.

I think so. Yeah. And I think, again, this is one of the reasons why the Nicholas versus Tiger thing will go on forever, right? Like Tiger has more wins. Nicholas has more majors. How are you going to weigh those? Like,

I mean, Tiger only has nine more wins, but Nicholas played way more events, right? And he has way more majors in Tiger and he has way more top threes in majors in Tiger. And then you go back to, okay, the strength of field wasn't there. And I think that's where strokes gained would have been helpful, right? Because I guarantee that the discrepancy between Tiger's strokes gained over the field would be dramatically higher than Nicholas's strokes gained over the field. And I'm

And I mean, maybe not because the fields were so weak, but the way the tiger dominated fields, you know, he was a full shot and a half better than everybody.

Every tournament he teed up, shot and a half better. And that was like an average, right? Usually he was two, three, four shots better than the field every single week. And I'm glad we have the stats from a few of his years because you can see what the discrepancy is. And then even Morikawa, he's very clearly the best iron player, but only by like 0.3, right? Not a shot and a half per round like Tiger was. So yeah, I think you have to look at it

In these chunks, in these different eras, there's never going to be a good way to compare Tiger and Nicholas or Rahm and Hogan or anything like that.

I think I covered most of this stuff. Do you have anything else? Do you have any other talking points you want to bring up or anything on it? No. I think it's just going to be an ongoing conversation. I think the only other thing that I noticed when we were just talking about strokes gained and is it a valuable stat or not, the last two years, ROM was number one in strokes gained either way, back-to-back years.

That hasn't been done since Tiger in '06 and '07.

Right. So like even that one stat, which again, Strosky and Tito Green really does tell you over the course of the year who the best player was. Even with all the great players that we have, like no one has led that category back to back years. Rom's going to do it three times because he's going to win again this year. He's going to lead it again this year. There's no doubt in my mind. I also think the floodgates are going to open. I think Rom wins probably three times this year. He is going to get another major. So I think we'll have a different conversation come tour championship time. Yeah.

I agree with you, by the way. Like that was the, and there was, like I said, like 98% of people completely understand what I was saying. But I think this changes. I think this conversation completely changes if Rom wins three times and another major. Because say Rom does that. Say Rom wins three times and another major. And now he's at 14 and two majors. Well, if you're at 14 and two majors, you're already hovering around like,

the 70th best player of all time. Like, cause I mean, and maybe I'm a, maybe I'm overrating majors, but I just think that like one more major that completely changes the entire complexion of, I mean, like, look, DJ has two right now. And I think DJ is, I have him right as the 30th best player of all time where he stands right now with 20, 27 wins in two majors. So, I mean, it can change quickly. We just need to see it.

Yeah, I mean, Ron could pick up as many cheap Euro wins as he wants, right? He does not play over there very much. And he's won six times there and only five times here, right? And those are elite events, right? He's won the Irish Open, Spanish Open. He won the DP World Tour twice. So he's going to pick up 12 probably European Tour wins over the next decade. And then it's just a matter of what he can do in kind of majors and things like that.

I'll push back on the, I mean, you're a Euro guy more than I am, but like, were those, were those elite wins? I've just got the Wikipedia page pulled up and I'm looking at the guys that finished second in those events. Well, I'll say, I'll say elite when you look at other Euro four events, he's not winning the Scandinavian Masters, right? Um,

But the Spanish Open, like that means something to him. Yes, he's best player in the field, obviously, but to win that event twice, he won the Irish Open, which is a Rolex series event. And then he's won the Tour Championship twice there. So like, like that's what Colin won. So if we're going to give Colin credit for that, we're going to give Ron credit for his too.

Here are the, just because I think it's funny, here are the guys that have finished runner up to John Rahm in the Euro Tour events. Richie Ramsey, Matthew Southgate, Kier Dash Afro Barnrot, Paul Dunn, Andy Sullivan, Bernd Wiesberger, Rafa Cabrera-Berro, Tommy Fleetwood. There you go. Murderous row. At least people you know.

Richard Ramsey won a USM. I think the last thing I'll say too is golf, and you did such a good job of illustrating this at the beginning with the randomness of being able to match your putting weeks with your best ball striking weeks, but golf is basically just

about it's a highly variable sport where you're basically just trying to like how can you peak at all of the right things on the right time like how can you get the most out of um a given week and just randomly spike in certain categories at the right time and no one is better at john rom than um

the bad weeks, right? Like his bad week is better than anyone else's bad week. And to somebody like Colin, he has weeks where he's going to lose seven strokes putting and he like, that's just going to happen. And that's going to have a big impact on his overall strokes game data. But he's been, he's been for some reason or another, and I don't know really how to quantify this. He has been really, really good at timing.

timing it up and getting the most out of it. And that's kind of what golf is about. Yeah. Well, I think, again, you can't play defense in golf, right? What Colin has won, the PGA Championship, I mean, you remember watching that. Nobody was taking it. He chipped in on, I don't know if it was 14 or 15, and then he drove it on 16 Mediago. He had to hit some shots, but nobody took it. The Open Championship, guys, were not going crazy low there. You want to talk about

like Rom just getting screwed out. Rom just shot 33 under in the Champions and didn't get a win. I just feel like he's just running bad at this point. He could easily have 16 wins and nobody would bat an eye, right? And probably multiple majors. It's coming, but I just feel like he's been running bad. The putting shows that, the Tournament of Champions shows that, and Memorial last year shows that he did something to piss Scott off and he's just running bad. Preston Pysh : I will say this about Murakawa that is impressive.

You know, cause just, this is just a, well, I remember some of this too, but Wikipedia, just looking at the guys that Colin does beat on Sunday, JT, DJ, Hovland, Brooks, Spieth, Rory. So, you know, I think there's something to be said for, for whatever. And you know, this as somebody who plays a lot of golf, like,

I, for example, I, when I'm start out around and I'm like, even through nine or one under through seven or something, something happens in my body where I am like, this is uncomfortable. You need to make like a bogey right now. And or a triple or a triple. Yeah. Or something. And I think for whatever reason,

Rom is not... He's won plenty. But for whatever reason, when he gets kind of close, Colin's been a little bit better at closing. And I think there is something that I don't know how to measure yet about being able to time it up. Like,

Like is Rom having all of his best ball striking weeks on bad putting weeks, bad luck, or is it him saying, man, I'm hitting the ball really, really well right now and not making the putts. And then when he's hitting the ball less well right now, he grinds and makes a ton of like, is that making any sense? I did not verbalize that well. Yeah. I mean, I think so.

And I think it goes back to the skill set. Like when you are in the hunt, right? And maybe it's a match play situation and it's just you versus one other guy. You're in a playoff or something like that. Like what Morikawa does is he demoralizes you because he splits the fairway. He hits it to eight feet and puts a lot of pressure on you. Ron can of course do that, but Ron is also much more likely to spray one or, uh,

or he hits a wedge to 40 feet, right? Or something like that. I found it really interesting. I believe looking back at this, Rom is the best right now in the few stats we have this year in bogey avoidance. And he also led the tour last year in bogey avoidance. And in 2020, he was second in bogey avoidance. So like,

I don't think it's anything that like bomb is making too many bogey throwing things away. I just really think he's just gotten beat sometimes. He got beat by DJ. He got beat by Cam Smith. I just think he is just due for some wind regression in a very good way. Preston Pysh : I think that will do it. Ryan Baroff, tune in next week when me and Ryan compare the careers of Jim Barnes and Jimmy Demerritt to Jon Rahm.

uh, for golf history corner, but Ryan, thank you so much for joining me. This was a blast. I could have talked to you about this for a couple more hours. And I think the listeners will really enjoy this. Tell everybody where they can find you this week before we get out of here. Yeah. Sounds good. That was fun. Um, we'll do the golf landia podcast this week. That'll be out tomorrow. Uh, can always find me on Twitter or bear off four to seven. The M's are open and, uh, let's have a good week at riff. Ryan. Good to see you, my friend. All right. You too, bud. Thanks.

All right. That is it for the show. Want to thank Ryan Baroff one more time for joining me. You can catch me tomorrow, 12 p.m. Eastern on the scramble with Rick odds. Checker article should be out Tuesday afternoon.

I think we went 3-0 last week. So we're really crushing these round one three balls. I'm having a ton of fun writing those up and they provide a really good sweat on Thursday. And in my opinion, you can actually really find some edges there as opposed to the first round leader market, which I think is a lot harder to win at long term. And then we've got the odds checker midway report as well on Friday night and the scramble again with Rick on Saturday morning.

Best of luck with all your bets this week. I will be at Riviera Friday, maybe Saturday too. So come say hi if you're there and have a great rest of the week. We'll see you next time. Cheers.

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