BMW Championship Betting & DFS Preview
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Welcome. Episode 1, Inside Golf Podcast. Not really episode 1. It's actually episode 51. Episode 1 with the new title. Nothing changes at all. Same feed, same format, same episodes every Sunday and Tuesday. I just changed the name for a number of reasons that I outlined last week, so I'm not going to rehash any of that. But if you're new, welcome.

I've got some house cleaning at the top. Obviously, this is a weird week because this tournament is being finished up on Monday. Maybe.

I am still recording this on Sunday morning because I know what people appreciate so much about this podcast is being able to get a head start on their research. But because of these extenuating circumstances, I may have to do things a little bit differently. I'm not really going to have any strong early leans. I'll give you guys some guys that I think make a ton of sense and rated out really well for me. But

I think what happens on Monday at the Northern Trust matters too much. I like having all the strokes game data from the full tournament at my disposal. I like seeing how players progress or regress throughout the week. I like seeing how they're trending. So I need to wait before I tie myself down to anyone. The pick show this week with Boston Capper from the sports podcast Gambling Network is

It may be a little bit later in the day on Tuesday. We'll see. We'll still have the show, but it may just come out a little bit later than usual due to the delay in the tournament. Kenny Kim's going to get pushed back to Eastlake. So there's a lot of good stuff I've got planned coming up. By the way, I'm running this all through the fall. Like I said last week, I'm all in on golf. I'm not doing football content other than I'll tweet about the NFL sometimes because I love it. But

I'm going to hammer into all these fall events and I'm sure my numbers won't be as high and that's okay because football is King, but I know that there are still people that care about the fall tournaments because I've asked, and this is my niche. This is what I'm doing. So I will be with you guys all fall on these. And if you have the time to share the show on Twitter or tell your friends or

or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It really means a lot for somebody that actually quit their job to do this. I cannot tell you how much it means when you guys support me, and it makes all this ridiculous research extremely worthwhile to me. I'm still not great at marketing my

marketing myself or asking for help on that one. Just not a natural skillset for me, but I got to keep talking to Pat because he's the goat at this, but we will get there in due time. Okay. A couple of quick thoughts on the Northern Trust. I was there all day on Friday and Saturday. Shout out to all the people that reached out and had kind words to say about my travel situation. I was supposed to get back on Wednesday night

I was super excited to go to this tournament on Thursday. Me and Chris Powers had golf planned in the morning. It was going to be a truly great day. I love golf tournaments on Thursdays because they're the least crowded. But United Airlines, good old United Airlines, they had other plans. And let me just tell you, I've been pretty lucky travel-wise in my life. I've never had any real...

This sucks. Like you're in an airport for eight hours with no answers. Don't have any other flights. Don't have any information for you other than your plane has mechanical issues.

That's all we've got. Figure it out until this. And that will happen once in a while. So it's okay. But anyway, I was stranded in Denver for another night. And good thing this course was so hard to find information on because it really gave me something to do. But anyway, the reason I bring all this up, I ended up going to the tournament on Friday.

And it was kind of a blessing in disguise because I got to see my favorite player shoot a 62. Now I know that a 62 at Liberty national this week is like, you know, just another day at the office apparently.

And that round is going to be completely lost in time. Not just because Spieth shot the same score the next day, that day, but Cam Smith shot a 60 the next day. So I get it. I get it. No one cares, but I've been to a lot of golf tournaments in my life. I've been really lucky in that regard. And I've watched a lot of live golf and what Xander did on Friday was fucking sweet.

It was one of the coolest things I've seen in person. And maybe it's because the course wasn't very crowded on Friday. So I really, you know, got in there and I was like hearing conversations between Xander and Austin. And for someone like me,

I find that so fascinating to hear what their thought process was and to be that up close and kind of just watch how he put his round together from start to finish to see how hard he's worked on his short game after what happened at Phoenix, to see him chip in for Eagle from a downhill buried lie, and then just all the darts that he was throwing with his wedges. I think that wedge, I really think that wedge that he hit

to win the gold medal. That was like, okay, when I need to stick a wedge here, I can do it. So it was such an impressive performance in my opinion. And any amateur knows this, but a consistent baby draw

is like the hardest shot to execute consistently for an amateur with your irons, definitely. And I actually personally find it even harder to pull off with the driver. I'm almost a scratch golfer and it is really hard to hit like a five-yard draw on command with that club. And Xander, the only other guy that really does this is Corey Connors.

They're like the only two in the modern era right now that they're able to hit that so easily. It's nuts how beautiful the ball that Xander hits. It's nuts. It is butter. And every single person that I've watched Xander with in person has been like, yeah, he's better than I thought. The dude passes the eye test. He's legit.

Fourth ranked player in the world. And I still feel like I need to stick up for him. But all day, like all day, all I kept hearing was, well, Brooks would have shot a 60 if he made his putts inside 10 feet. Okay. Okay. Well, he didn't make them and Xander beat him. So I'm sorry. Forgive me for being a big scorecard at the end of the day guy, but how you engineer around and manufacture a score is,

That's a skill. And how Zander manufactured that round, it was so impressive because not every shot he hit was awesome. But man, it was a masterclass in golf course management. Shout out Austin Kaiser. So impressive. Just so impressive. Speaking of which, speaking of Brooks and Zander and

There was so much handing this tournament to guys at certain points prematurely. I have no idea what the fuck is going to happen tomorrow. I think Rom deserves to be the favorite. Man, some of the stuff we were saying on Thursday night, can we just get to the halfway point, please? Like I get that Rom and JT shot good rounds on Thursday. But from the second everyone teed off on Friday morning,

This tournament's been wide open. The leaderboard has been madness. It's been awesome. There's 16 guys within five strokes of the lead. 16. I have Justin Thomas, who's two back. I don't feel great about it. I watched some JT. Not a lot of JT. His numbers are really good. I don't know how much I trust it, though. I still don't. I still don't see peak JT right now. You can call me crazy, but

But just from an odds perspective, I think Finau's the bet at 14 to 1. I really do. Same odds as JT, both two strokes back, but JT's half that. Finau's been good, man. And I was all over that one. And I know some others were too. The dirt had just been piled on and no one wanted to touch him. And now he's 8.2 and still 7% ownership. It's like, what are we doing here?

So we'll see. I got a lot of horses that have been really good thus far. I'm really pleased with Lowry. I'm really pleased with Sungjae. I'm really pleased with Keegan and Ortiz and Gooch. And those are my guys. Did you know through three rounds, Gooch is third in this field in approach?

This is the best field in golf. Taylor Gooch, number three iron player in this field through three rounds. I was listening to my pal Wiley's podcast and he was like, what does Gooch do well? That's your answer. That's it. He's unbelievable with his irons. Unbelievable with his irons. Needs to work on everything else though. But really good start by my guys. But there is still...

So much that can happen tomorrow. Like how the hell is this course going to play? It's pouring in New York right now. I really wish the best to the grounds crew. They are not in an enviable position. In my opinion, how are they going to get this course in playing shape after like a monsoon? I mean, I just got home in time last night. It started pouring last night and it's

I don't know how this is going to work out. If they don't play and it's a 54-hole tournament, that'll be a very nice week for me. But I will sacrifice my hopes of JT closing. I'm okay with either. So as is tradition, I'm a stone-cold killer at the bottom of the board and a bit of a fucking mess at the top. I mean, maybe I shouldn't say a mess, I guess, with JT being right there. But DJ, man.

I mean, I don't want to be a prisoner of the moment or make any bold proclamations, but wow, I keep thinking this dude has like an on-off switch and maybe he doesn't right now. It's definitely an intriguing buy low spot for him this week if you have the balls, but

But man, there is not a golfer you will find who is more terrifying to your DraftKings lineups if he's not in contention. He missed a four-footer to make the cut. It wasn't even close. It didn't even sniff the hole. I made a joke that it was because Paulina rented a place in the Hamptons for the weekend and he wanted to make the most of that. I was like half kidding. There's something going on there. He's not...

locked in right now for whatever reason. And I'm silly to think otherwise because I bet him in Memphis too. So bad pick by me. And then with Rory, I just got too excited. I feel less stupid about that one because the numbers were so strong with him. Whereas DJ was more gut. Rory's irons have been terrible this week. Terrible.

He's lost like four strokes on approach through three rounds. What the fuck? My whole argument was that Rory hasn't hit the ball this well in years. And I could give you a million numbers pointing to all these trends with Rory's ball striking. And he just nosedived out of left field this week. It is bizarro world. Like,

Is Rory just trolling us? Because I have never seen a player in my life make more birdies on the hardest holes on the course and more bogeys on the easiest holes on the course than Rory McIlroy. I don't even know if I have a take on it because it's so hard for me to wrap my mind around. There was a million things pointing in his direction this week, and I didn't watch him at all.

I just looked at the numbers, but you could have told me a million things would happen this week. And Rory losing 10 more strokes with his irons compared to what he lost compared to what he gained last week. I don't know if I would have ever guessed that ever.

But whatever. We'll see with this guy. I don't know. One last thing. Okay. Shout out to all the people I met at this tournament as well. Seriously, when I meet someone and they tell me that they listen to my podcast and that it really helps them.

I can't tell you how awesome that is for me. Seriously. And shout out to degenerate 75. This is a guy. He's like a real pro DFS player. And he was in the draft Kings final where they flew everyone out to Liberty and they put them up in a nice hotel. And he got interviewed by Reed Fowler and the winner gets a million dollars. These are like the best DFS players in the world. And again,

He listens and values my opinion and asks for advice. I think that's pretty fucking cool because I spend a lot of time deep diving some of this stuff and

I fucking love that it helps people. So just a lot of great people that I got to meet. I had an awesome time with Owen from draws and fades. Check out that podcast. If you haven't already phenomenal guy, dad's awesome too. There were a bunch of people that I got to meet for the first time. I've been talking golf with Mark golf bets, one-on-one every day, pretty much for the past year. Finally got to meet him briefly. I also met, this is the coolest. I also met some like

Real Xander fans, like real Xander fans. I didn't know those people existed outside of me and Nagel some Legion. Like I didn't even know they, I didn't, you wouldn't know they existed from Twitter. By the way, last thing, if you don't think that the Olympics fucking matter, you're out of your fricking mind. The amount of people that knew who Xander was,

And we're talking about him and we're talking about how he's a gold medalist and screaming America and cheering this guy on. I followed him for two days at Torrey. Totally different chatter and vibe around the guy this time. And he's from San Diego. I think that Olympics win is going to age like a fine wine.

And each year more people are going to care. I think Riviera 2028, we're going to be talking about Olympic qualifying like months in advance. Want to know why? Cause guess what? The players care. It matters to them. And if it matters to them, it should matter to us. If it doesn't matter to them, it's not going to matter to us. It's a trickle down effect. If the players care, they're,

Everything else follows. And the players really fucking care about the Olympics. JT was like, this is bigger than the Ryder Cup for me. And he didn't even contend. But I digress. That's enough. That's enough Xander stuff. I told you, even with the rotoballer buying this podcast, I'm still going to talk Xander for better or worse. Okay, that's enough. Let's take a quick break and then do the BMW.

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Okay, BMW Championship. This is the second leg of the FedExCup playoffs. It's a no-cut event. Only 70 guys in the field. We don't know who exactly those 70 guys are going to be. Like I said, I think a lot can happen tomorrow.

Anytime you have Cam Smith shooting 11 under, but on the same course, Jordan Spieth can shoot one over. It's just a really high variance course. So we do not know who the 70 players are going to be, but we have a pretty good idea. All of the elites will be there. And then at the end of the week of next week, the top 30 will go to Eastlake and Jordan

positioning really matters at Eastlake. What we saw with Dustin Johnson last year, Xander was unbelievable, but I think that he started seventh in the FedEx Cup, and he's just too far back. I think you've got to be in the top five entering Eastlake because when you give the best players in the world...

that much of a staggered scoring start. It's just tough. Like if Rom has strokes on the field at Eastlake, that's going to be really tough.

And so it's a really huge week for positioning. Second thing, this used to be the Western Open. This is like the Chicago Midwest event on the PGA Tour schedule. It was held at Cog Hill for many years, Medina, Conway Farms, Cricket Stick, all Midwest. Sometimes it'll go all the way to Denver for Cherry Hill, sometimes Pennsylvania for Aronomic. But usually it's in the Illinois or Indiana area. It's in Baltimore this week, though.

The former winners of this event, John Rahm, won in 2020 in a playoff over Dustin Johnson at four under at Olympia Fields. Justin Thomas won at 25 under at Medina in 2019.

Keegan Bradley won in 2018 at a Ron Mick at 20 under over Justin Rose in a playoff. Mark Leishman in 2017 won at 23 under at Conway Farms. 2016 Dustin Johnson 23 under over Paul Casey at Crooked Stick.

2015, Jason Day at Conway Farms. 2014, he was 22 under. 2014, Billy Horschel, 14 under at Cherry Hills. 2013, Zach Johnson, 16 under at Conway Farms. 2012, Rory McIlroy, 20 under at Crooked Stick. 2011, Justin Rose, 13 under at Cog Hill. So very similar to last week. This tournament has been won by really good players.

for the most part. And typically, if you look at the final scores, of course, it's been at a number of different courses, but they seem to like to set this tournament up pretty easy. And that's kind of the early rumblings on Caves Valley. Every single one of the last 10 years,

except last year. The winning score has been 13 under or lower. Olympia Fields was the lone exception where it played extremely firm and fast and difficult. John Rahm won at four under par.

So maybe that was the start of a trend where they want this tournament to play difficult. Or maybe Olympia Fields was a bit of a one-off and we'll revert back to what we've seen historically here. The four winners prior to Olympia Fields had to get to at least 20 under par. So we'll see. I will give my prediction on how I think it's going to play when we dive into the course.

Caves Valley Golf Club. It's located in Owings Mills, Maryland. It is a private club in a Maryland suburb. It was designed by Tom Fazio in 1991. Bank grass greens, from my understanding. And this is from Wikipedia. It's known for its fast greens, rolling fairways, and water hazards. Okay. Sounds good. Sounds good. Here's where things get fascinating for old Caves Valley.

So according to Wikipedia, the scorecard online, it is a par 71 measuring 7,226 yards. But if you go to the website and you look through all of the holes on the website, they don't have a scorecard on the website, but they do have all of the hole descriptions and pictures and videos. So I added up all the holes and I took a bunch of notes on the holes.

And I was like, wait, this is a par 72 that actually measures 7,500 yards. But on the scorecard online, the 11th hole, which is actually going to play as a second hole because the nines are reversed this week, it's a 463-yard par 4. But on the website, it's a 584-yard par 5. So that second hole, I can't figure out. But I'm actually going to go with the website.

Because I just think if they have the opportunity to stretch this course out, they will. Whether it plays as a long par four or a long par five, I don't think it matters that much or changes the character of the course that much. Maybe it changes the winning score from like 12 under to 14 under or whatever. But, you know, half a stroke difference over a four-day period. But again, what's so strange is that on the website, they're

They don't even have it as a short par five. It's like 584 yards. That kind of works like a three shot hole. But if I find out Monday or Sunday evening that it's playing as a long par four, I'll probably just tweak my model a little bit and do a little bit lower on par five scoring and maybe a little bit higher on par four scoring. But that's it. I don't think it matters that much at the end of the day. Okay.

This course has never hosted a PGA tour event before, but it has hosted the 2002 U S senior open and the 2017 senior players championship, as well as a bunch of amateur events and collegiate events.

Here's a nice deep dive for you. They had the 2005 NCAA men's golf championship here. Brendan Todd finished seventh. Chris Kirk finished 13th. Kevin Kisner finished 13th. DJ of Coastal Carolina was... He didn't play well. Neither did Webb. Webb actually really didn't play well. He shot like 78 both days. So I guess...

Kisner and Kirk Todd's not going to be in the field, but Kisner and Kirk played well here 15 years ago. So do what you want with that information.

But here's a deal with Caves Valley, in my opinion. There were a couple things that I noticed from the hole-by-hole descriptions. So water comes into play on five holes on what will be the back nine, but zero holes on the front nine.

There are six par fours over 450 yards. So there's a fair amount of long par fours. Seven, actually, if the 11th is a par four as well. And three of the par threes measure above 220 yards. And the other one measures 165 yards. There's a lot of bunkers on this course, especially fairway bunkers, which...

Looks like this is a pretty difficult driving course if you're short and a pretty easy driving course if you are long, which I will explain right now, actually. But I just I got the sense from a lot of these holes that distance might really, really matter here. Like I said.

It looks like a pretty difficult driving course on the surface. Like there are a lot of fairway bunkers and some trees and a lot of dog legs and a couple hazards off the tee. But I just got the sense from a lot of these holes that

If you can carry some of these fairway bunkers and cut the corner on some of these dog legs, you are in prime position here. And these are just direct quotes that I'm pulling from the website for a number of these holes, like hole number one.

longer, I quote, longer hitters who try to be aggressive will be rewarded with an easier approach. Hole number five, the longest hitters can carry the left bunkers. Hole number six, the longest hitters can risk taking a straight line over the bunkers and are left with a short iron into the hole. The list goes on, right? There's like 13 holes that in some way insinuate that that distance could matter here.

So the biggest thing that stood out to me, and I made a joke in one of my golf chats that, you know, a week in advance, I'm calling my shot that Bryson wins, which is a joke, by the way. I'll have to see how I feel about Bryson. But I do think that distance really matters here. And I do believe that you can at least somewhat overpower this course off the tee. And I'm always hesitant to give any credence to driving distance as a valuable stat because

But I just keep looking at this course, and I think if you have the length to carry all of those fairway bunkers and cut the corner on some of those dog legs, it's just offense mode. Whereas if you're in some of those fairway bunkers, I think it could be a little tougher to score than some would expect.

Okay. Let's dig into these stats. Actually, let me do, uh, let me do my Fazio thing first, because I think this is important. So Fazio is an awesome modern designer. I love Fazio. He's done a lot of great work on a lot of great PGA tour courses. He's designed Congaree host of the Palmetto championship earlier this year. He did a massive redesign of quail hollow. I think quail hollow is a really good comp by the way. And

way and shout out to my buddy Patrick McDonald he is a golf writer for NBC Sports Edge he lives in the area he knows some members he's played it before he's going to be there all week and he confirmed to me that Quail Hollow checks out actually he said according to the members he said Quail Hollow with less trouble off the tee which kind of falls in line with a lot of the stuff that I was thinking and

I digress though. Like Conway farms is another Fazio course. It's hosted the BMW championship in 2013, 2015, 2017. That's another really good comp. In my opinion, Fazio has also done work on Riviera. He designed shadow Creek. He designed Carson Creek, which is one of my all time favorite golf courses ever. It's like the Oklahoma, uh,

state golf course. It's like their course that they play at. It's thought of by many to be one of the best, if not the best collegiate golf course in the country. If you're wondering why Oklahoma State has such an elite golf program, shout out Taylor Gooch. Look no farther than Carsten Creek. That place is absolutely awesome.

But Fazio has also designed Lake Nona, which is a course in Orlando where a lot of tour player players live and play out of. He did work on Firestone Country Club and Kasumi Giseki, of course, where we had the Olympics. So Fazio had his footprints all over that course, too. But here's the main thing with Tom Fazio. When I think Tom Fazio is.

I think beautifully manicured golf courses with deep bunkers, elevated and undulating big greens. That's like Fazio staple. Lots of bunkers, big undulating greens with lots of slopes and hollows. And I think the courses that you would want to look at here in terms of comps,

I like Conway Farms. I like Firestone. I like Quail Hollow. I like Kasumigaseki, definitely, and a little Shadow Creek, too. I don't think Congaree, really. That's a Bermuda course with a lot of runoff areas. This is obviously a Northeast course with a lot of rough around the greens. But remember with Congaree, the thing that everybody talked about was

Was like, you can kind of bomb away. Now, did that mean that all of the longest hitters rose to the top of the leaderboard? No, not necessarily. Of course, like Higo isn't crazy long by any means. Neither is Chesson Hadley. Johnny Vegas, though, who I remember because I bet him three putted 16 to finish second. He's someone I think you would always want to look at on Fazio courses because of how much of a weapon his driver is. Tyrell Hatton,

Also plays really well on Fazio courses, just off the top of my head. He finished top five at Shadow Creek and Congaree. But I digress. We can talk more about some players later, but that's kind of what I would focus on with Fazio is undulating, elevated greens, lots of fairway bunkers, and...

Deep greenside bunkers. He usually designs courses, in my opinion, where bombers or great drivers of the golf ball have an advantage. It is not, trust me, it is not a coincidence that Rory McIlroy has been so awesome on his courses. So there you go. That is my Fazio rundown. I hope it helps. Let's go through the stats that I think you want to look at.

I love my model this week. I just want to say that at the top. It went really well last week too, but I think I've got this Caves Valley place figured out thanks to my stay in the Denver airport. But okay. So approach. I have about 30% of my modeling is a weighted combination of approach and proximity from 175 yards plus, which is a little bit lower actually than I usually do on approach. I almost threw...

Some wedge distances in there too. And I do think that that's not a bad idea if you want to look at that, but we know that iron play is so important on every course and Fosio courses. I tend to think more off the tee and putting sometimes, but I look at this course and yes, the greens are bigger.

But these greens have so many quadrants and you can really put yourself in a bad spot if you are putting from the wrong place. And the reason I wanted to look more at long iron play than wedge play is three out of the four par fives, maybe four out of four, depending on how long you are, you should be able to reach into with a long iron. Three of the par threes are over 200 yards and six of the par fours are

are over 450 yards. So I would lean more towards mid to long iron play here as opposed to wedge play because, you know, there aren't a lot of short to medium length par fours. There's a lot of long par fours and then some really short ones that could even be drivable. But when you add the par fives and the long par threes to the mix, I just think this is another week where you want to kind of be looking more so at that 175 plus range.

Off the tee. Okay. I put off the tee like almost as much as I did with approach here. And a lot of the time I have approach a ton more than off the tee, but I did this for a couple of reasons. So first of all, I was looking back at my Wells Fargo model.

And I had off the tee really heavy at Quail Hollow for some reason. And that was also the week where I hit eight of eight top 40s, which I still think I've only done once in my life, all at plus money. That was like a plus eight unit week for me. So the perception I had of Quail Hollow was,

I did something right at Quail Hall. And I still think that is the best comp that we have to this course or one of the best. So I went heavy on off the tee again. I did a combination of strokes, gain off the tee, driving distance and fairways gained. And I think about with Fazio courses, the one thing that always really jumps to mind is

a lot of dog legs, a lot of fairway bunkers. And if you have the ability to drive the ball well, if you are long and straight and you can carry some of these fairway bunkers and carry some of those dog legs, like I mentioned before, it's you are in total attack mode. Whereas if you aren't driving the ball well on a Fazio course, you're

Good luck. I think it's going to play a lot harder than people think if you're not long and straight. And that's why I mentioned Rory. Like, why do you think Rory, one of the best drivers of the golf ball to ever do it, has had so much success at Quail Hollow and Kasuma Gusecki and Firestone? He can really pick apart these courses with his driver. When Rory's at his best, he's gaining a ton of strokes off the tee. And the

The reason why I also have fairways gained in there is because if you don't have the distance, I think you better be straight.

Because you're hitting in between all these fairway bunkers, sometimes water on every single hole. And this is definitely a driver course like most Fazio courses. There are holes where you can club down on. It's not like overly long by any means. But the par fives, the long par fours, and even the shorter drivable par fours, I think driving to ball well is kind of your golden ticket this week. Okay, short game.

Short game is important on Fazio courses, even though his greens are pretty big. Um,

you're still going to miss greens here, especially if you get yourself into trouble off the tee. I chose to do a 15% weight on strokes gained around the green and sand saves. I put sand saves just as important as around the green because there's so many green side bunkers on this course and they are very deep. So I do think that sand saves is going to be really important here and probably the most important around the green metric that you want to be looking at is sand saves.

And then putting. I'll put a little on putting, on bat, and three-putt avoidance. About the same as short game. Not a ton, but I do think that

a stat like three putt avoidance, which I was pretty heavy on, uh, for quail hollow on a Fosio course and Donald Ross courses too. I think it matters because the greens are a little bit larger and very undulating. I actually, like I was looking back, I looked at putting a lot at quail hollow for some reason. And I think it's because there's some real character to these greens. They're typically really fast and,

and really well manicured on a Fazio course as well. So there you go. Three putt avoidance, sand saves. I think those are the two ancillary short game and putting stats that you want to be looking at. The last thing I'll talk about, or second to last thing I'll talk about, strokes gained par fives and par four scoring 450 to 500 yards.

I have just about a 12% weight on par five scoring and long par four scoring, uh, long par fours and par fives make up 10 of the 18 holes at caves Valley. Um, I'm going to adjust this based on whether this place is a par 71 or a par 72. Like right now I have more on par fives than I do on long par fours, but I just think you really got to take advantage of the par fives here. There are a lot of tough, uh,

par threes and a lot of tough par fours and where you just kind of got to hang on for life. And I think you really got to make birdies on these par fives. And then the last thing I looked at was a weighted course history from Firestone, Conway Farm, Shadow Creek, Kasuma Giseki, and Quail Hollow.

all Fazio courses. I think if you've had some success on any of those courses, it's definitely worth looking at. I kind of waited it around. So quail hollow is more important than shadow Creek because I think that's a little bit better of a comp, but when I kind of mashed it all together, here were the players that it spit out who have just been awesome on Fazio courses, Jason day,

Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama, Rory McIlroy, Aaron Wise, Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey, Victor Hovland, Carl Schwartzel, Webb Simpson. Interesting. And then all the stats that I talked about pre-course history, the top 10 for that were John Rahm, number one.

second week in a row. Xander Shoffley, number two, Colin Morikawa, number three, Daniel Berger, number four, Jordan Spieth, number five, Charlie Hoffman, number six, Keegan Bradley, number seven, Brooks Koepka, number eight, Paul Casey, number nine, Victor Hovland, number 10. So the guys that really ended up checking the most boxes for me statistically were Rory

Hovland and Casey Brooks to a certain extent, uh, ROM obviously to a certain extent and definitely Bryson to a certain extent as well. Again, I don't want to commit to anyone until I get the full picture from the Northern trust, but the guys that I actually really think that I want to play this week are Bryson Hovland and Casey and Bryson.

has hit the ball great at Liberty National. He's been putting terribly, and his short game's been terrible. You could get him at nearly 30-1 last week. If he finishes middle of the pack this week with really good ball striking numbers, I know it's a smaller field, but I still have to believe that anything close to that number, anything over 25-1, I think I'd be in on Bryson.

He's not playing bad at all. He's just been terrible around the greens. And I think with, with bigger greens here, he may not run into all of those short game problems that he was having at Liberty national for Hovland. He's been hitting the ball unbelievably well, Liberty national. He actually could win. He's only three strokes back. And I'm actually really hoping for a quiet Sunday out of him because if he's on the TV coverage the whole time, uh,

Even if he loses by one or two, he's going to be a guy that everyone is going to go to because he was awesome at Quail Hollow this year. He was good at Shadow Creek. And I know that's a small sample size, but man, this course makes a ton of sense for him on paper. I worry about the bunkers just a little bit and the short game a little bit. But again, I think bigger greens and I just want guys that are so dominant off the tee. And then the reason I like Paul Casey is

Second best iron player in the world behind Morikawa. Second best in the world on par fives behind Jordan Spieth. Unbelievable mid iron player. Best long iron player in the world over his last 36 rounds. Plenty long off the tee as well. Very underrated in terms of distance. My one concern is that his short game has been really good, but he hasn't been great out of the bunkers. But again,

his irons are so good that that could be mitigated a little bit. Um, he contended at the Olympics on a Fasio course, fourth, fifth, and 12th at quail hollow. Um, he's gained over four strokes on approach every single time he's gone to quail hollow 27th, 17th, 16th, fifth at Firestone, um,

Gained on approach every single time there. 33rd and 23rd at Conway Farms. That's fine. 13th at the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. By my records, Paul Casey has never lost strokes to the field ball striking on any Tom Fazio course in his career. And these are great fields.

playoff events and WGCs and majors. And again, like Bryson, he's a guy who hit the ball great at Liberty, but finished middle of the pack because he couldn't putt. So maybe we can get a bit of a break on the price compared to all the guys that were in contention last week because it's such a quick turnaround. And, you know, we get some prisoner of the moment thinking. And like, as far as the longer guys go, yeah,

I think Aaron Wise is going to be the trendy guy or a trendy guy because he's been so good at Quail Hollow.

I hope that people don't catch on to Keegan and Sanjay, who I got at 10% last week in the sevens. Both are top 20 in this tournament while losing strokes putting. So maybe that's wishful thinking that I can get them again like that. But that's how good Keegan and Sanjay have been. Like I said, I'm probably not going to get them as under the radar as I did last week. But we'll have to see. I'm probably...

Out of luck with Keegan because he's won on Firestone before. He's number one in this field in average strokes game per round at Firestone. He's been pretty good at Conway Farms too. And he's just hitting the ball so well right now. Same with Sungjae. Like we saw the ball striking thing coming. He's been awesome. And for some reason, he just can't putt right now, which is crazy. But this has been the best he's hit the ball all season. And people think he's only good on short Bermuda courses. And no,

I just don't agree with that at all. I think you're really selling him short. He showed up at Augusta first time ever and finished runner up on bank grass. He's just a really good player. So I like, yeah, those are kind of the guys I'm looking at. But again, we'll see. I don't want to make any commitments until we see what happens at the Northern trust. But I think that will do it for me.

Stay tuned later in the week. One more show might be coming out a little bit later on. It's definitely coming out. I just don't know whether it's coming out Tuesday morning, afternoon, or at night. That will be my full picks and my betting breakdown. I'll have all of the numbers at my disposal. I will be committed to guys, and I will talk about them. But until then, thank you so much. If you are not following the Inside Golf Pod on Twitter, I

It's the same account as the pick the pup was. I just changed the handle. So maybe you are already following, but please give that a follow so we can try and grow that account. And you can find me on Twitter at ADP Wax Sports. Have a great Sunday. Stay safe out there if you're in the Northeast and I'll catch you next time. 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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