What’s Left?
Five events left, with three of them paying some big money. You are not out of this! You just need to find the winner this week and be the only person who picked him! Seriously though, this is the map, plan ahead, work backwards, look at who you have left and don’t forget that the final two fields are determined by FedEx Cup Points! Only the top 50 will make the final event, plan accordingly. This is also your final chance to burn a LIV name, and it appears that Rahm could again be a popular pick.
Remaining Events and Purses
The Open Championship $17,000,000
3M Open $8,400,000
Wyndham Championship $8,200,000
FedEx St. Jude Championship $20,000,000
BMW Championship $20,000,000
Half of the decision this week is made for you based on who you have left, but just for the hell of it, we’ll look at some stats anyway.
Cutmakers
Past year, sorted by the top 20%. Most of the usual suspects, but that’s how it goes at a big event. A couple of interesting names for those of you who’ve burned all the top players already. Taylor Pendrith, anyone?
Links Golf
The obvious and easy temptation is to look at performance playing links golf. The underlying issue is that the sample is small and you need a big time frame than with most thing, causing issues like showing the Cam Smith is good. The following data chart is there full years back, only links and hybrid links courses. Something likely better is to watch a short video Noonan made looking at non-links comp courses for Royal Portrush.
GIR %
I wasn’t sure where to go with approach, but with the small greens here (especially compared to last week in Scotland), i did want to look at greens in regulation percentage with the filter for small greens on. I also filtered it to strong fields to get rid of some of the lower end events that might sneak in here.
The Open Championship One and Done Suggestions
A ton depends on positioning and who you have left but…
USE A BIG NAME! If you have someone at the top of the board you like, you only have three more spots where they fit, especially if it’s Rahm, Hatton, or Bryson.
Other names to consider if you’re cupboard is bare
Russell Henley
Justin Rose
Shane Lowry
Patrick Cantlay