The Tour is back at Silverado Country Club for the Safeway Open.
Let’s see how the top-5 and anybody within 3-strokes of the lead last week’s odds to win:
1st – Sebastian Munoz (+6,600)
2nd – Sung-Jae Im (+1,600)
3rd – Byeong-Hun An (+2,200)
t-4th – Kevin Streelman (+8,000)
t-4th – Carlos Ortiz (+12,500)
t-6th – Dylan Fritelli (+5,000)
t-6th – Bronson Burgoon (+6,600)
t-6th – George McNeill (+50,000)
t-6th – Dominic Bozzelli (+20,000)
t-6th – Harris English (+6,600)
Silverado was re-designed by Johnny Miller. Miller has stated that he’s not that great of an architect, but I’ve always found his courses very enjoyable. Most of the Tour pros I’ve talked to like the course, although the greens can be a little frustrating as there are a lot of saddles and crowns which are always tough reads.
Most of this course is about ballstriking, particularly from 175-200 yards. Driving is a factor, although not a huge one. But, you don’t have to be long off the tee to be effective off the tee at Silverado.
Unfortunately, the last critical hole is the par-4, 465 yard 13th hole. There’s not much to the hole, but it’s fairly birdie-able and bogey-able. The biggest difficulty of the hole is the length combined with only about 52% of the field finds the fairway.
Projected Winning Score: -16
3JACK’S FAVORITES
Justin Thomas +650
Patrick Cantlay +1,000
Hideki Matsuyama +1,400
Sung-Jae Im +2,000
Bryson DeChambeau +2,000
Byeong-Hun An +2,800
3JACK’S DARK HORSE PICKS
Kevin Streelman +5,000
Charles Howell III +6,600
Adam Hadwin +8,000
Sung Kang +12,500
Here’s a new feature I wanted to add…looking at any player that finished in the top-5 last week and/or 3 shots from the lead…along with their odds to win at the beginning of the week:
1st - Joaquin Niemann (+2,200)
2nd - Tom Hoge (+15,000)
t-3rd - Brian Harman (+5,000)
t-3rd - Nate Lashley (+12,500)
t-3rd - Harris English (+15,000)
t-3rd - Richy Werenski (+20,000)
This can help explain why Niemann won by so many shots as the rest of the contenders were mostly massive long shots (sans Harman). And Niemann was one of the favorites to win.
The Tour comes back to Mississippi and the CC of Jackson for the Sanderson Farms Championship:
Typically the Sanderson Farms Championship has one of the weakest fields on Tour and has been mostly reserved for rookies and players with partial exempt status or guys that were in the 100-125 ranking in FedEx points in the previous season. Due to the change of the scheduling the field is stronger this year that it has been in the past.
The course has typically favored the players that are best at longer approach shots. However, this comes with the preamble of the event typically having weak fields and weaker fields typically mean weaker long approach shot play. Thus, if the field was as strong as say the field at the Memorial where more players are adept on long approach shots, the course might yield more strokes in a different part of the game.
The last critical hole of CC Jackson is the 330-yard, par-4 15th hole.
The hole is certainly drivable although there are quite a few layups. Birdies (red dots) were made from everywhere regardless if the player layed-up or went for the green. The data shows that going for the green is the correct play as a higher percentage of birdies went to those that went for the green and it puts eagle into play.
PROJECTED WINNING SCORE: -20
3JACK’S FAVORITES
Joaquin Niemann +1,400
Sung-Jae Im +1,600
Byeong-Hun An +2,200
Lucas Glover +2,500
Corey Conners +2,800
3JACK’S DARK HORSE PICKS
Emiliano Grillo +4,000
Sepp Straka +10,000
Sam Ryder +12,500
Adam Svensson +17,500
Tyler Duncan +25,000
The Tour comes back to the Greenbrier to play Old White TPC. Here's a cool preview from Steve Elkington on his Secret Golf YouTube channel.
Old White TPC is an old school course as it was designed by CB McDonald and not by coincidence it is a well respected course by the players.
It's a par-70 playing to 7,286 yards but is fairly wide open and forgiving off the tee. Expect low scores and most of the strokes gained or lost coming off Red Zone play and wedge play.
Projected Winning Score: -17
3JACK'S FAVORITES
Joaquin Niemann +2,200
Marc Leishman +2,200
Sung-Jae Im +2,200
Byeong-Hun An +2,800
Russell Henley +3,300
3JACK'S DARK HORSE PICKS
Russell Knox +6,600
Kevin Streelman +6,600
Andrew Landry +8,000
Nick Watney +10,000
Tyler Duncan +20,000
Coming off Gary Woodland's big win at the US Open, the Tour moves onto the Traveler's Championship at TPC River Highlands in Connecticut. It also marks the pro debut of this guy:
A lot has been speculated towards Wolff's future pro prospects. Statistically speaking, the college phenoms that have not lived up to the hype have usually been cases of players that were not very long off the tee and dominated the college game thru superior putting and short game play and likely being more mentally mature than their counterparts (i.e. Knost, Wittenberg, Molder).
Even with Matt Kuchar's overall success on Tour (including his fantastic 2019 season) his pro career did not start off all that great. Kuchar had one Tour victory in 2002, but basically went in a drought afterward as he lost his Tour card after the 2005 season and didn't become an upper tier PGA Tour player until 2010. Kuchar was another example of a dominant collegiate player that did it thru his putting, short game around the green and guile.
Lack of distance and ballstriking prowess is not an issue for Wolff. He'll keep his ball speed in the 185 to 190 mph range and he will do it with 11* launch and 2,500 rpm spin. He just absolutely bombs.
He putted pretty decent at Scottsdale (+0.373 strokes gained per round) and that's a course with greens that are much trickier than they appear.
I liken Wolff to Magic Johnson. If there was a PGA Tour draft, Wolff would easily be the #1 overall pick like Magic was 40 years ago. Magic wasn't a prodigy, but an incredible high school player that dominated the college game in 2 years and left for the NBA where he quickly dominated as this freakish 6'9" athlete that could handle the ball like a point guard, rebound like a power forward and score like a swing forward. Watching Wolff smash 340 yard drives that don't move an inch offline and are at the perfect trajectory and spin is roughly the equivalent. And if Wolff can have the PGA Tour equivalent career that Magic had int he NBA, it's going to be a real fun ride.
TPC River Highlands should be a good fit for Wolff. It's pretty wide open and generally favors driving. Mid length approach shots are big here as well.
3JACK'S FAVORITES
Brooks Koepka +700
Patrick Cantlay +1,000
Paul Casey +1,600
Justin Thomas +1,800
3JACK'S DARK HORSE PICKS
Emiliano Grillo +5,000
Byeong Hun-An +6,600
Adam Hadwin +6,600
Jason Kokrak +6,600
Matthew Wolff +10,00
Abraham Ancer +12,500
The course will play to 7,075 yards at a par-71. The 2nd hole is typically a 516-yard par-5 and they are making it par-4. In Tiger's historic win in 2000, the course was played as a par-71, but the yardage was 'only' 6,846 yards.
Generally, Pebble Beach is liked by the pros, but the AT&T Pro-Am is often not on the tops of Tour players' list because of the long rounds and questionable weather.
Pebble Beach has usually been the ranked the #1 public course in the world consistently over the past 25 years. I've never played Pebble, but over the decades I have heard that it was underwhelming. The typical response is that the great holes live up to the hype, but the other holes are very bland.
The good news is that Pebble's conditioning has improved tremendously over the years and it's probably at the best condition it has ever been. It's far more plush than say in '92 when Tom Kite won:
Or in the 2010 US Open when McDowell won:
That's probably going to be the story here. The fairways will be soft and the greens should be receptive with all of the rain they have gotten in California this year.
And that favors the longer hitters more. But, based off the data of past US Opens it's still an approach shot course.
The 14th hole is going to be a Critical Hole. Here's a video showing the difficulty and strategy of the 14th hole where most of the difficult is on the 2nd and 3rd shots along with a difficult green to putt on:
The Tour returns to Colonial Country Club for the Charles Schwab Challenge:
Colonial CC was created by Marvin Leonard in 1938. Leonard was infatuated with bringing bentgrass greens to Fort Worth and managed to do so thru spending a ton of money with a lot of upkeep and a designing of the greens by John Bredemus and Perry Maxwell to make them very flat in order to preserve the grass.
Now with modern bermuda grass strains like Championship Bermuda and TifEagle, that's not necessary as they can withstand the heat and still roll exceptionally well.
Colonial is fairly well liked on Tour except for the bombers as the course is so tight and treelined that many bombers will have to keep the driver in the bag throughout the week and lose their advantage of distance off the tee. That's why many bombers avoid Colonial altogether. And the event doesn't have the purse size nor the amenities of more of the top tour events. Combined with the re-scheduling of the PGA Championship, the event just doesn't draw as much interest these days which is a shame.
The course is mostly about quality, accurate driving but more importantly Red Zone (175-225 yards) play.
The final critical hole on the course in the 17th.
It's only 375 yards and most players will hit a tee shot that is roughly 230 yards off the tee. Below is how to play it off the tee assuming 250 yards of carry.
However, the real key to this hole is finding the fairway more than having less club into the hole as players that miss simply do not make birdie on this hole. And there may be a lack of confidence in hitting a 3-wood with accuracy compared to a long iron/UDI/Hybrid off the tee. And the front left and back right pin locations are very difficult locations to putt to.
Projected Winning Score: -15
3JACK'S FAVORITES
Jon Rahm +1,100
Jordan Spieth +1,100
Justin Rose +1,100
Rickie Fowler +1,200
Paul Casey +2,000
3JACK'S DARKHORSE PICKS
Emiliano Grillo +5,000
Matthew Fitzpatrick +5,000
Abraham Ancer +7,000
Sung-Jae Im +7,000
Andrew Landry +12,500
After a nice vacation in Southern California, I’m back to doing my weekly picks. This week…the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black.
A shout out to all of the people that made for a great time in SoCal. I got to see the awesome people at Fujikura and we got squared away on some new shafts and clubs fitted for me. I won’t give away what they are until I do my next WITB post. Hopefully, that will be in about a week or two.
Fujikura is now in a new facility in Carlsbad, coming from nearby Vista. This puts them next door to OEM’s like TaylorMade, Cobra, EVNROLL, etc. It’s really fascinating to see so many manufacturers in one small place. I got on their ENSO machine, the top of the line 3D motion capture for fitting golf equipment.
One of the gazillion things they measure with ENSO is the hand speed and the club head speed throughout the entire golf swing. We talked about some of this last year, but I had some of the numbers mixed up…
The hands for every golf reach max speed when the trail elbow connects with the body in the downswing. This can also be called P5.5
After the hands reach this point, the hands slow down into impact. On the other hand, the club head continues to accelerate into impact (once the head hits the ball, it quickly decelerates).
They compared my swing to JB Holmes’ swing into impact. The good news is that my hand speed and club speed was slightly faster than JB’s at this p5.5 location. However, Holmes decelerated the hands less and accelerated the club head much more into impact. If I recall correctly the numbers looked something like this:
I relate it to two hot rods taking off and me slightly winning the race, but at the very last second I slow down way more than JB. And that leads me to the next day and my lesson with George Gankas.
***
Kind of a big swing update here. I had an in-person lesson with GG about a year ago. After that, I struck the ball really well for a month, then struggled badly the next month. Then I hit it really well for about 6 weeks and then struggled for about 3 weeks. And so on and so forth until about November when I started to really get p1-p5 down quite well
The problem was that I still had some issues in the downswing. In mid-March I started to work on them only to find that all of the stuff I worked on from p1-p5 went to hell. The biggest issue was my hand were not getting deep enough at the top of the swing (p4). I was still shallowing out the club, but not as much as I would like to because of the left arm being jutted out too much at the top of the swing.
So for a month before my lesson with GG, I worked like a dog on my swing. I would get it the hands deeper at p4 here and there, but nothing substantial. In the meantime, I was hitting the ball pretty well and shooting good scores. But, I felt like it was hanging by a thread.
GG first saw me hit balls and while my swing was not what he typically prescribes, he said that the matchups are very good and that’s why I was hitting the ball well. In fact, he compared my swing and matchups to Brooks Koepka’s.
One of the many things I’ve learned from GG is that I do believe if your hands are not deep at P4…you’re better off playing a fade. Unfortunately, I play a draw and that’s how things go a little haywire at times. If I was younger and had GG as a coach, I would favor a fade since my tendency is to not get the hands deep enough. But at this age and with less time to work on my swing, I think it’s better to work on my backswing to get the hands deeper than trying to ingrain a fade.
GG told me that he thought that while I was hitting the ball well, I’m not quite reaching my potential. I agree with GG on that point, but knowing my swing as I do the bigger issue is that I felt that while I was hitting it well…my ballstrikign was basically hanging by a thread and it was going to get very bad, very soon unless I changed some things.
***
My issue with the golf swing is that while I’m good at spotting the major issues, figuring out the minute stuff that is causing those issues tends to elude me.
I knew from my MORAD days that if the hands are not getting deep enough at p4 that there is some type of rotational issue. Once you stop pivoting in the backswing and you have range of motion left in your arm swing…your arms will go more vertical instead of more around your body.
But the big thing GG worked on was my lack of left lateral bend/tilt in the backswing. That was causing me to not be able to turn more from p3-p4. I actually contemplated the lack of left bend/tilt in the backswing before my lesson, but only found success with it getting my hands deeper for 1 range session. What I didn’t recognize is that I had too much extension of my left hip and my left knee in the backswing, so even when I tried to get left tilt/bend I was not doing it properly.
We also worked on some downswing drills, but that will be saved for later when I get my backswing more in line with where I want it.
I knew a lot of people would ask me what a lesson with GG is like and what he does that other teachers don’t do.
Probably the biggest thing I noticed was that GG doesn’t deal with ‘feels’ in his lessons. He demonstrates the motions he wants, what it looks like, gives checkpoints so the student can make sure they are doing it right, gives them proper drills to attack the issue and how to troubleshoot the issue along with demonstrating and explaining how everything works together in the golf swing.
He doesn’t even try to get the golfer to develop their own feels. And I greatly appreciate that with his teaching because feels are so subjective and if you get into feels too much…you end up chasing them.
Other than that, he gives a metric ass-ton of lessons. He’s very self aware of his teachings and what works, doesn’t work and everything in-between. He had the knowledge of golf mechanics, but also the understanding of how to develop golfers. As I wrote about in a GolfWRX post not too long ago…while it’s great to see golf instructors get with credible scientists to research the swing, the big concern I have for the golf instruction industry is that many of these instructors are giving very few lessons and thus the application of the research in teach can fall flat.
For instance, one of the things I first found in research of statistics and the game was how strong of a correlation there was between driving distance and par-5 scoring average. Thus, my conclusions were that golfers should not only go for par-5’s in two more often, but be unafraid to hit the driver as long as they possibly can on par-5’s.
It wasn’t until a couple of years later of working with various Tour players and mini-tour players and some low handicap amateurs that while the research data had merit, the conclusions were flawed. I then started to research expected score values from the rough vs. the fairway from different distances to the hole.
The end result showed that expected scores rose dramatically when a player was in the rough vs. being in the fairway on shots from 175+ yards. I then tried to apply the difference of hitting a 3-wood off the tee on par-5’s vs. driver and found that swung the balance more towards hitting it longer instead of hitting it shorter and finding the fairway. In the end, I found the best balance on par-5’s to hit driver and be fairly ‘aggressive’ in going for par-5’s in two. But, the driver swing should be the ‘stock swing’ with a focus on making good contact and finding the fairway instead of ‘letting the shaft out.’
None of this would have been possible if I had not tested this on players and was not self aware enough to see that there was some issues with my original conclusions.
Anyway, here’s a drill GG prescribed that I worked on this weekend:
I also got to see Jake Leadbetter and Johnny Ruiz (who just made it to sectional qualifying for the US Open). Johnny hits it very long and very straight. He had a rough season on the Web.com last year, but he has the potential to be a winner on Tour.
***
Saturday thru Monday I played golf and played fairly well despite coming off a lesson. I got to play Rustic Canyon with friends Jason Pettersson and then Preston Combs (www.prestonputting.com). Rustic Canyon is in the Simi Valley and was designed by Gil Hanse and Geoff Shackelford.
I’m more of a parkland design fan. Links and ‘dunes style’ golf usually has too ridiculous of green contours for me and the open air tends to lose the acoustics of a crushed driver or flushed iron shot that you get with parkland golf. But, Rustic is a solid track. And it’s also very peaceful and serene. The greens were completely different than what I’m used to coming off playing Orange Tree for the past year and you really have to play it a few times to get a feel for it.
Wood Ranch is more to my liking and the type of course that makes me such a fan of SoCal golf. Rolling hills with nice sightlines and fair, but compelling shots. Georgia is just as hilly as SoCal, but the designers there fail to use the land like the designers in SoCal (most prominently William Bell).
***
Now onto the PGA Championship.
Bethpage Black plays to 7,468 yards at a par-71. It has a slope of 155 and an index of 77.5. This would make it one of the most difficult courses in the country. From my experience, Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course plays noticeably more difficult. There also used to be a course in Canton, GA called Laurel Canyon that played tougher although it’s a ridiculous design. Kiawah can be a ridiculous design as well given how hard the wind blows there frequently. That’s what makes Bethpage such a great design and I don’t think you’ll see players bitch about the course. It’s cruel, but it’s fair.
This is a driving course first and foremost. The median fairway width is only 25-1/2 yards. And with the long rough nearby, missing too many fairways is too problematic. So, that’s why I don’t think the more effective drivers on Tour that do it by hitting the ball obscenely long and don’t hit many fairways are more likely to struggle this week (i.e. Cameron Champ).
The course should be soft. On most courses this favors the long hitters. I think it will favor the long hitters here given how the course has favored long hitters in softer conditions before. The one course where soft conditions tend to help out shorter hitters in Augusta, but that’s because the greens are reachable and it’s more about the greens being soft enough to receive lower landing angle approach shots. But here at Bethpage, the length of the course and the elevated greens tend to make for a different situation.
Will that help more erratic drivers of the ball like Tiger?
I tend to not thing so. The fairways being so narrow it’s not an issue of the ball rolling out of the fairway but more of an issue of the ball starting offline. In essence, if Tiger drives it pretty well he’s got a great chance to win. But, it’s hard to rely on him driving it well. He won’t get the opportunities he had at Augusta to miss the fairway badly and still have a good look at the green on the approach.
The 16th hole, a 490 yard par-4, is the last critical hole on the course.
16 doesn’t look overly daunting other than it’s a very long par-4. However, the fairway is only 25 yards wide. The diagram above shows where a player with 280 yards of carry should have their target; roughly at the corner of those trees. Those longer than 280 yards of carry will need a target that is further left and those short of 280 yards carry will need a target further to the right.
From there, the green is only 69 feet wide. For the average Tour player that has roughly 200 yards into the hole from the fairway, they’ll hit the ball to roughly 36-feet to the hole on average and be roughly in the neighborhood of 29-feet offline (left or right of the target, so a total of 58-feet of range). Thus, it’s a hole where finding the middle of the fairway and the middle of the green is generally the best strategy regardless of pin location. Players just have very little room to use targets that are further away from the center of the green.
BTW, I like the move of the PGA Championship to May. It not only keeps a nice flow of big tournament golf from March thru August (September in Ryder Cup years), but it allows for more courses to come into the fold as they don’t have to deal with that insufferable August weather.
3JACK’S FAVORITES
Dustin Johnson +1,000
Brooks Koepka +1,100
Rory McIlroy +1,100
Justin Rose +2,000
Xander Schauffele +2,500
Patrick Cantlay +4,000
3JACK’S DARK HORSE PICKS
Gary Woodland +5,000
Paul Casey +5,000
Matthew Fitzpatrick +12,500
Abraham Ancer +20,000
Corey Conners +20,000
NOTE: 11 players were picked as Dustin Johnson and Gary Woodland were dead-even according to the algorithm.
