Fairway Rollin' - Rahm and DJ’s Big BMW, Tiger’s Uninspired Week, and FedEx Cup Predictions With Jason Sobel

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

Joe House and Nathan Hubbard are joined by Jason Sobel to recap Jon Rahm’s dramatic win over Dustin Johnson in the BMW Championship this past weekend (1:15). Then they get into Tiger’s finish at BMW and the lackluster state of his game on This Week in Tiger (9:16), Dustin Johnson’s incredible stretch over the past month (29:35), and their FedEx Cup predictions (52:27). Hosts: Joe House and Nathan Hubbard Guest: Jason Sobel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome to this golf podcast, unlike any other. Oh, yeah, you've done it. We're back. It is. Fairway, roll in the golf podcast on the Ringer podcast Network. I am your starter, Joe House. We have literally been on a roll. My par-saving pal with my eagle enthusiast, straight from the recap of the BMW championship,

which Nate and I got up Sunday night into Monday, the tour. The Tour championship is upon us. There is a lot of money at stake. There is still player of the year to be determined. We had to get our homie, Jason Sobel, from the Action Network, from Golf Bet, from XM Radio, to come on and help us figure out what's what with the Tour Championship. The first tee is open. Our tour correspondent, Nathan Hubbard, myself, Jason Sober.

We're strolling over. We're going to throw a tea in the ground. Let's go ahead and try and hit a fairway with the boys. All right, my birdie buddies, it is not quite a major week, notwithstanding what some folks want to say about the tour championship, but it is a very, very big week for the wallets of the 30 guys that have all made it in there. And it's a big week for putting a bow on what turned out to be a pretty incredible season. Got to break it down.

We have the tour correspondent, Nathan Hubbard, of course, and our good pal Jason Sobel from the Action Network. What's up, Sobs? What's up, boys? Thanks for having me on. As always, good to talk to you guys. So I wanted to start the conversation now that we've had a couple days to digest what we just saw out of John Rom and Dustin Johnson with a little bit of historical perspective.

I just feel like we need to like put a smidge more shine on what those two guys have been up to since since the restart and put it in the context of each of their pretty different careers so far. But with Rom, this week marks his 100th official professional starts. So he has 99 under his belt. In those 99 starts, 11 wins. And in more than half of his starts, he has finished inside the top 10. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. There's a reason why Phil Mickelson,

I actually reported this, told this story a couple months ago, but Phil Mickelson, when John Rom was still an amateur, bet a fellow player, and fellow player happened to be cult-nosed, that John Rom would be a top-10 player in the world within a year of turning bro.

Phil was not guessing at this. And we have all known for a long time what the potential was for John Rom. and he's now realizing that potential. I know there's people out their house that'll say, John Rob, call me when he wins a major. Guess what? I might be calling you in two weeks.

It's coming and it might be coming very, very soon. That's right. Nate, what do you think? I think that what's most interesting about what Rom did this year is that he's 55th in shots gained approach. And so he's like 20th and putting fourth off the T. But that just says he's actually got some improvement still left in his game. And I watched his presser this morning at Eastlake and just was really shocked.

You know, he spent 20, 25 minutes. You listen to the young man speak. And he is, he's made some kind of leap in the last year in terms of his maturity. And we've talked about how it's been overplayed on the telecast that he's, oh, he used to have mental issues and they're gone. They're definitely not gone. And he talked about that today. When we say mental issues, we don't mean mental health issues.

We mean that he's got a temper and it comes out in a lot of ways. He's got that passion that he plays the game with. And he spoke about it in contrast to DJ today. But this guy has made a big leap. And we looked at his wins before last week, but really before the memorial. And you would have said, well, they gave him one at Zurich. You know, he hit the bomb at farmers. So who knows, you know, really he's one of,

and a half times not three. But now, after these two wins on what were definitely the two hardest set up courses, you look at this guy and go, he still has some ceiling left in his approach game and he's got these wins under his belt and all this confidence. You know, this is going to be a scary guy on the other side of the Ryder Cup team for a couple decades to come. Yeah, that's for sure. So, I mean, I don't imagine a scenario under which I leave John Rom off of any dance card for the, for the U.S. Open at Wingfoot. And I'm interested, Jason, I feel like, you know, much was made and properly so of how Olympia Fields played in a U.S. open kind of setup and that the conditions absolutely replicated an U.S. Open kind of scenario.

I think that everything that we just saw from Olympia Fields and ROMP's performance there carries right over to Wingfoot. Do you agree with this? Or are there notable differences between Wingfoot and Olympia Fields that make that a little bit wet? I tend to agree with it. There are going to be some differences. But for the most part, I do agree with that. First of all, House, I want to point out that Olympia Fields held the U.S. Open back in 2003. and everyone seems to like the revisionist history is just like ah that was kind of you know that was that was a throwaway US open it wasn't that great it kind of played easy it was boring you know the guys were shooting good scores they did for a couple days and then the wind switched and only four guys finished that week under par jim furek okay kind of took the drama out of it and stephen lini coming in second place doesn't exactly get you too fired up about watching on a sunday afternoon but we

tend to look back at that U.S. Open from 17 years ago, and we have ever since then leading up to last week saying, eh, Olympia Fields boring, you know, just a kind of generic place. Wasn't that good? I turned on TV last week on Thursday, and I said, you know what? We've been getting it all wrong for the past 17 years because this place is awesome. I don't know at what point and, like, who started it and how it started.

I started covering the game full time in 2004, so I take no blame for the, diminishment of Olympia fields, but the way that place played last week, it was awesome. And I don't know that it was just like a U.S. Open, but that is as close to a setup as we're going to see to give us an idea of what might happen at Wingfoot as we've seen, probably tied with Muirfield Village for the Memorial Tournament, the second of the two events that were played there this past summer. And of course, John Rom won each of those toughest setups, as you said, Nathan. So yeah, certainly he's looking good going into this one. And I think you start at the guys

who played well last week. If you're looking for guys who are going to play well two weeks from now with the U.S. Open. I've been targeting Bryson D. Shambo all year for the U.S. Open. I might be backing off that just a little bit. I like ROM a lot. It's hard not to like DJ. I think the main point here, though, is if we're going to predict and prognosticate the upcoming U.S. Open is that everything's changed. The entire theme of predicting a U.S. Open has changed in the last few years. This used to be the one for Jim Fiorek, as I mentioned, and Corey Paveen and Lee Jansen, guys that were plotters, guys that could grind out bars, guys that kept the ball in the fairway, didn't try to do too much, and could go out there and just par you to death and win a U.S. Open. Well, guess what? You look at the last four of them, we have Brooks Kepka, who's won twice, Dustin Johnson, and Gary. Woodland. What do they all have in common? Those are three of the most athletic, big hitting,

muscular players out on the PGA tour right now. And so the theory I've come to the conclusion of is that basically everyone is going to miss fairways at a U.S. Open. And you need the guys who can muscle it out of the rough to the best of their abilities more than the guys who, well, they might hit a few more fairways throughout the week. But in theory, everyone's going to miss. And so you need the guys who can hit it out of the rough. And so I'm starting with those types of players when we start talking about Wingfoot in two weeks where I'm looking at Bryson. I'm looking at Rom. I'm looking at DJ. Nate, I'm going to sidetrack us for one second because I think we can dispense with this topic pretty quickly. I agree with everything that Jason just said. And it leaves me with

an empty hollow feeling in my stomach as it relates to Tiger Woods. Tiger, Tiger, Tiger, Tiger. Tiger. So let's dispense with this week in Tiger Woods right now. Because what we saw out of Tiger at Olympia Fields was a guy still looking for his game in a lot of different ways. Off the T looking for his game from the rough looking for his game. Nate, what's your sentiment on L.T. Gray? Well, he's got two weeks to sit at home and think about it before he gets there. But the concerning part for me was the putter. we always have joked, you know, in the sort of casual golf games that the old guys all know

how to put still. They may not hit it as far, but they know how to putt. And Tiger's really struggling with the putter. And I don't, you know, more than we've ever seen in his career. So we talked about the restart and the few times that we saw him sort of counseling everybody to temper their expectations for what we're going to see out of this guy. The flip side is, he has set his entire schedule and his entire training regimen for exactly four events. And this is one of them. So I think we're going to see a passable tiger. I think he probably makes the cut.

But I just don't feel like we've seen anything since really the Zozo championship in Japan last fall that would lead us to believe that he is in a place with his game. I mean, physically he's okay, but his physical limitations are clearly having an impact on the smoothness of every stroke that he takes out there, including with the putter. So I'm not highly optimistic that we're going to get much out of him at Wingfoot. Yeah, I'm there with you. I think it's right to be optimistic for a made cut that he will have enough. And I was kind of buoyed by the news that he and, you know, I was kind of buoyed by the news that he and, and JT went out there and got a practice round in 10 days ago or so.

So that's good news. But, you know, I just don't. We haven't seen him stringed together enough successful golf holes to, you know, since the restart to feel like he can win anything right now. That's where my head's at. Sobel, how would you bet Tiger and Phil head to head in the open today, given all of it? Yeah, I need to look at the numbers. Tiger's probably a slight favorite in that one.

And boy, Phil's playing well. I mean, I get it. It was a PGA Tour Champions event that he won a couple weeks ago and he's going out there beating Rod Pampling and Woody Austin. But still, it was driving the ball 350 yards. I mean, it was mashing it. He was making puts. I probably bet Phil as a little bit of an underdog in that matchup right now.

Again, Phil's game is not perfectly suited for the U.S. Open, although we tend to, you know, we joke about Phil of the U.S. Open, it's really hard to finish runner up six times in the U.S. Open. You finish runner up that many times at a U.S. Open. Open. It does not mean you're a bad U.S. Open player because you've never won. It actually means you're a very, very good U.S. Open player who's gotten very, very unlucky. As for Tiger guys, I think the point to me made is that he's felt to me over the last few starts,

sort of like the kid that's got finals coming up at the end of the semester and says, ah, yeah, you know, my first. finals are coming up, but, you know, I'll start studying next week. And then the next week comes, he goes, yeah, you know what, I got a few more days. I'll wait a few more days. And then the morning of the test comes, yeah, she should probably start studying. I got a test this afternoon. You know what, I'll do it after lunch. And then lunch comes, you guys, goes, all right, well, I guess I'm just going to walk into the test and see how I do. Because it's not that Tiger's not preparing for it. It's just that I felt like you listened to him in a press conference and he kept pushing it back.

kept saying, well, I've got time. You know, and I don't need to step on the gas pedal here. I don't need to do it there. And granted, that might be just part of his mindset is, hey, you know, okay, wanted to play well with the PGA championship. It wasn't really anything special. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't great.

And maybe he's looking more towards the U.S. Open and the Masters than, you know, anything around the Northern Trust and the BMW championship. And maybe he's just not that torn up about not getting to East Lake. But it felt like he just kind of kept pushing everything back. saying it's okay. No rush. You know, there's no immediacy here. I can play well later on.

I'm just trying to peek later on. And so I'm not sure that, you know, it's hard to do. I think maybe Tiger 10, 15 years ago could say, hey, I want to play my best golf four times a year. And this isn't one of them. So I'll wait. You know, I'll have my A minus game this week and I'll wait. And a month from now, I'll have my A plus game.

I just don't know that at 44 years old, he can do that anymore. So, well, you want to hear my conspiracy theory about Tiger. Yes. House, we never got to this a few weeks ago, but I just got to get it out there because the tour came back this week and they were lauded for the statistics that they released about the coronavirus testing that's happened, where we only had a few selection of players who've tested positive in the bubble.

And I think the tour has done an amazing job and they deserve all the credit. But there was one stat that they posted that sort of slid by that nobody really dove into. And it was that three tests, three people have tested positive outside the tour bubble at home. And that means that the tour was not responsible or obligated to say who those people were. And that those people were dealt with outside of the bubble. They presumably had to self-report to the tour that they'd tested positive. They stayed away from the game for a little while. But interestingly, the tour, because of CDC,

guidelines allowed any player who tested positive outside the bubble, as long as their symptoms didn't get worse and weren't accelerating, to come back in 10 days later, only 10 days. I think Tiger Woods was one of the three people who tested positive. And I say that because I stood next to him and walked next to him at the PGA championship. And he was sniffing and snorting and coughing and hacking the whole time. He played that whole round with a neck gator. And his whole crew that was there wore neck gaiters, masks, you know, fully up the whole time,

unlike a lot of other players and their staff and coaches and stuff who were there, I should say. So my little conspiracy theory is that perhaps Tiger caught it, had a mild case, didn't have to report, because he was out of the game so much and that maybe, just maybe, if you want to be super hopeful for Tiger, that he's been recovering from that

and that that's why we haven't seen him as much and maybe why he's taking it easy on his body. Wow. Now, Nate, two points I'll make after that. First of all, just to clear things up, he would have had to test negative to be able to play again. So, you know, it's not as if Tiger's going out there.

He's COVID positive and they're just like, yeah, just go play anyway because, you know, you're home for 10 days, so don't worry about it. you did have to test upon getting back into the bubble at some point. So that's the first point. Second point is Tiger gets sick more than any guy I've ever seen. For a guy who's in fantastic shape, for a guy who's a world-class athlete, Tiger's got what Jason Day would call the sniffles, like every single week,

whether it's allergies and sometimes we'll blame the kids. My kids are almost the exact same ages as Tiger's kids. They do not get me sick as much as Tiger blames his kids for getting him six. So yeah, I mean, look, I, it's just a conspiracy theory. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go on Twitter and report that conspiracy theory. Neither would I. Yeah, there's something to it. Yeah, we're just guys talking on a pod. Your point is, is a good one, though. So, well, I mean, this was the same kind of thing that Tiger pointed to for why he was not good at the PGA championship at Bethpage last year. He won the

masters in April and then he had some travel in between April and, and, and he clearly, he missed a practice day at Beth Page because he was sick. And then he seemed like he was sick through the first couple rounds. Well, here's an irrefutable point. Yeah. The irrefutable point is he did not play nearly well enough to make it to East Lake this week. And the best golfers in the world, for the most part, are going to be there. He's not in the conversation anymore.

He's not. And the question from here is, will he ever be again? Or are we starting to see sort of those, the, the, the, the, ultimate and an unstoppable decline of what used to be. Is this Jordan on the Wizards? Nate, how dare you? Say, and here's my reaction to that. First of all, Jordan on the bullets.

Sorry. Save the drama for your mama. That's what I have to say about that. Let's just let Tiger get back in the swing. He was extraordinarily deliberate since the break in March. And we've seen him kind of skisks. but it's not like fall off the cliff kind of performances. I mean, what do you think, Sobel?

You know, it's interesting in that we've seen Tiger, of course, the reason why we're talking about him right now, we've seen him at his most dominant, which is the most dominant player of all times. I always try to qualify that whenever someone says, is he the goat? Well, I don't know. Like Jack's got the most majors,

but Tiger was the most, so I can at least safely say, Tiger was the most dominant player of all time. I think that's fair. And so we've seen him at his worst, which is I'm eight, yards off the front of the green and I cannot chip the ball onto the green eight yards from here. And we've seen him with a complete and total two-way miss.

We've seen him shoot 85 before. I mean, we've seen Tiger at his absolute worst and it's way worse than it is right now. And what's interesting is that you're kind of right about it, House, a little bit. Like, he's just sort of been, eh. I mean, you know, I can't tell you guys how many radio spots I did after each of his starts over the last. you know, two months, going back to the Memorial tournament where he was 40th and then the PGA, he was 37th, I think. They were all kind of like just okay.

And, you know, my great takeaway from all of them was, eh, you know, it's just sort of like, what do you say? Like, I don't know. He was a guy who played in the golf tournament and he certainly wasn't great. He was a lot worse than a lot of the other players out there, but he certainly wasn't terrible. He was a lot better than a lot of the other guys. and so only because he's Tiger Woods is, are we talking about him?

There's no other reason to be talking about a guy who finishes in 37th place, 40th place, just kind of like middle of the pack, which is, I think the greatest takeaway from this is the fact that we've never seen this really from Tiger on a consistent basis where he's either been really, really good, way better than everybody else, or for a while he was hurt and playing awful and just, you know, mind was out of it. And, you know, we've seen him really bad where something, whether it was physical or emotional, was really bothering him. Now, we really haven't seen this in Tiger's career where it's like, yeah, he's okay.

And that's about it. Right. And that was the thing that's mildly alarming to me. We just haven't seen him stringed together even a nine holes to get everybody. I mean, he wished to, he did have an event. I think it was Memorial where he came out pretty hot. I mean, he's had a couple, like, decent starts, but he hasn't, like, strung it together in a way

where his name is at the top of the leaderboard, and at the end of the day, he's still hanging around there near the top of the leaderboard, and you get super excited about what's to come. I think we've done enough on the tiger, though. Look, that's all I can do to reverse jinx him. I came out with a coronavirus conspiracy theory, and I said his best days are over,

called him Jordan on the Wizards. If he can't come back from that and play great. That's very well done. And I honestly, it's a good segue to the next guy I want to talk about. I was going to say, house real quickly, by the way, if Tiger,

who, you know, famously works out more than any golfer in the history of the game and, and, you know, I'm sure he can't do as much as he used to, but he's still, he's running,

he's lifting, he's stretching, he's doing all this stuff. He's, you know, I'm sure he takes his vitamins every morning. I mean, he's doing things to help his body on a regular basis.

If Tiger gets sick, as much as he has over the last 20 years, which is, like I said earlier, pretty frequently, what hope is there for the rest of us, guys? Oh, man. I'm not, I can't even think about that. For anybody's this week's Fairway Rowland brought to you once again by our pals at Fandool.

We have this fantastic contest going right now. The ringer is back with the Fairway Roland Doe leaderboard series. It's four legs. We have the first leg already in the books. It was the PGA championship. Nate, I have you on here. I know that you put in a lineup for the PGA championship. Where did you finish for that one?

Why do you do this to me? I finished 5,329th thanks to my brother. Well, look, that's still on. The anchor. You were on the correct side of the top 50%. I finished 2,24th, and this is out of 11,9004, my $5 entry fee turned into $10. We have more cash prizes. So here's what's at stake.

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Nate, we talked on the show. We have some names. Give me a sleeper. See me a sleeper that you might sneak into your lineup. Well, Kevin Kisner's in my lineup. I feel great about kids this week. I mean, I'll put it out. I got I got Bryson.

I got JT. I got Rom, Fienau, Kisner, and Brendan Todd. You already have your lineup ready. I'm going. Well, look, everybody, we're going to post our lineup. Simmons is in this as well. The Podfather Bill Simmons. Fandul and the Ringer will publish my lineup, Nate's lineup.

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It doesn't matter if you didn't play the PG. championship. You can still win some cash this week. Listen to the Bill Simmons podcast. Listen to this podcast throughout the rest of the golf season to find out how you're stacking up against the competition and go to Fandle to enter the Fairway Roland Doe leaderboard series. Age and location restrictions apply my par saving pals. My eagle enthusiasts want to also talk to you about whoop. Whoop is, as you know, from this podcast. a fitness wearable that provides personalized insights on the performance of your sleep, how recovered you are, and how much stress you put on your body throughout the day

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That makes it personalized. And to help you make smarter lifestyle decisions, they have a journal function, it's a feature in there where you can. could input what you did throughout the day and kind of see what kind of impact it had, both good and bad, on your sleep, your recovery, and your training. Whoop automatically detects and categorizes your activities so you don't need to start and stop the thing during workouts or sleep. And my favorite aspect of this thing, no joke, is the sleep coach. It's custom tailored to you.

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historical marks that match up pretty well with Tiger. And I just want to remind us of where we were when the restart got going again. One of the interesting storylines we were paying attention to, Nate and I were talking about this, was DJ and Brooks Keppko were well outside of the, you know, making it to the Tour championship. And we wondered about the sprint, right? this the jam pack events starting in June and running all the way up to the moment that we're sitting at right now guys who are you know Brooks and DJ both were in well into the

hundreds in terms of their ranking DJ kind of took care of all of that pretty quickly up in Connecticut when he went out and and won the travelers and he's really validated the the quality performance that we saw there so in each of his last three PGA tour events, DJ has held the 54 whole lead or he's co-led. He's the first person to do that since Tiger Woods back in 2007, 2008. Now, the difference is Tiger won all three of those events where he had the lead or co-lead. And DJ's won one of those events, although, to be fair to DJ, what John Rom did this past weekend, in grabbing that golf tournament by the throat.

And, and, and, and, you know, like a, like a, like a lion with a giant gazelle and just putting it in his, in his lion back set, backpack. I mean, that, that's not one that I say, oh, DJ did anything wrong. John Rom put a lion on him. But, you know, the, the, it was also an interesting, these are some of these stats from our boy, Justin Ray at the 15th club, who was, you know, homie friend of the show. DJ losing in that that playoff, it's it snapped a streak of 10 straight PGA tour playoff victories by a player ranked number one in the world because DJ had had grabbed that

back after his performance in Boston. He begins the week with a two-stroke lead. He's the last guy that needs a two-stroke lead. His scoring average over the last four starts is 66.9. he's 53 strokes under par and he's gaining over three point almost 3.4 strokes gain total per round. And DJ himself after winning on, I mean, after losing the playoff on Sunday could barely contain himself. He looked so happy. He's like, my game is so good right now. It was the most like emotion I've seen out of like positive energy out of DJ and I've seen it a while. What do you think, You know, as a guy who makes his living now in the golf prognostication business, DJ is my worst nightmare. And not because he can't win, because obviously he can win any given week.

But you look at what he's done this summer. He goes from winning the travelers after being, you know, way outside of, you know, any sort of FedEx Cup season finale tour championship contention. And, you know, not even having the number one on his radar at that point to winning the travelers. shooting two rounds of 80 at the Memorial tournament, withdrawing with a supposed back injury, which, Nate, you want to get into conspiracy theories. Well, we talk DJ's back injury at the 3MO, but there could be a 30 for 30 on that someday

where, you know, you go from winning golf tournaments to shooting 80, 80, withdrawing with a back injury, and then all of a sudden, like, winning golf tournaments again. So to me, it's like, boy, I don't know what DJ is going to show up on any given week. And unlike some other play, I mean, you can parse Rory's words and sort of figure out if it's going to be a good Rory week or not when he's speaking on a Tuesday or Wednesday. You can kind of look into J.T.'s eyes and say, you know, he's got that fire right now. I kind of like J.T.

You look into Dustin's eyes and you just get him staring right back at you and you're like, I don't know. I just don't know which Dustin Johnson is going to show up, the guy who could absolutely dominate him. that thing and win it going away or the guy who's like shrugging his shoulders and shooting 80 and he looks other than that emotion that he showed you were right because he was pretty happy after losing which it's kind of interesting although i guess if you lose on a 66 foot put that you know drops into the hole in the first playoff like you're kind of like it wasn't me it was him he made me i didn't lose it so i mean he wasn't like distraught or anything but for the most part DJ looks exactly the same on wednesday before winning

as he does on Sunday after losing or whatever the case is. He just, the emotion doesn't change. The rhetoric doesn't change. And for guys who are trying to figure out who's going to win a golf tournament, you look at DJ and you're like, I just don't know. Like, give me a sign.

Give me a little hint. Can we have like a password here where it's like, hey, you feel really good. You know, you say the word banana in your Wednesday press conference. We're like, all right, okay, DJ's got it now. But I mean, you know, this is a guy who, one of my favorite quotes ever. Maybe my favorite quote ever from any player.

This was after DJ wanted the old WGC that was played at Firestone for so long, it was probably three or four years ago. And we're always as writers and guys who cover the game, we're looking for something. Okay, DJ's won so many times. You're going to write the story.

Okay, DJ won. DJ's really good. Give me an angle. And so DJ kind of let it drop about how earlier that year it started hitting a fade. he'd, you know, been hitting a draw, and he went to a fade. And so some of the other writers kind of, their ears perked up.

And they're, oh, well, tell us about that. What was the process like for you? We've heard, you know, Tiger took me a year and a half to change his swing. And other guys have taken them forever to go from one swing to the next step. How did you go about that process? And Dustin said, well, I was hitting a draw, and then I wanted to hit a fade. So I decided to hit a fade. And that was it.

That was like, how long did it take? you. Well, the next shot I hit, it hit a fade and it faded, so I was good. And like, that was it. That was the whole thing. And so he's just not going to offer you any clues into anything, which is great. That's probably what we like about. Well, he left us one clue last year at the Tour Championship that counters some of the stats that House flew throughout, which is that he finished DFL last year. He was terrible on this course. Now, different time. But, hey, the FedEx Cup playoffs have been somewhat maligned by the, you know, Twitter-a-a-a-commentator community. I think they've been great, not just this year, but the reason that I'm really, I think they're

important is that every other big tournament allows a player to take a week off or plan their schedule so that they can really peak for that event. And you can't do that in the FedEx Cup playoffs. You have to play this year three, you know, previous years, maybe. three of the four. You got to play them all and you got to play them well. DJ is going to be trying to do something that we've seen none of the other best players that we've talked about, all the people in contention for player of the year. We've seen none of them maintain this level of excellence over a three-week period, right? JT's had moments where he's disappeared on us. You mentioned that, Sobel. Rom, you know, he's been in and out. Bryson has not totally fully

shown up. He's not in a conversation of player of the year. But even WebSense, Simpson, right? So the question for me is, if DJ can do this three weeks in a row, it's going to be a pretty unprecedented, you know, feat. And he certainly will have earned the title. But when we get to who we're picking for this week, Sobel, this is a guy who, you know, when we look on fan, like, he is priced higher than anybody else, right? His odds are super high. It seems pretty hard, actually, to take him and separate yourself from the pack. You wrote a great piece this week sort of rooting for chaos because that's the way that this board is going to get upended

and you might be able to find some value. But DJ's left us some breadcrumbs, which is that, hey, he has struggled on this course before. B, like he's been on a massive heater. This doesn't just happen. This isn't what normally happens with golf. So as you look at him from a value perspective, this week. Is he in your six, six player fantasy lineup? And if so, why? And if not, how do you think about

what other people should do with DJ this week? I have made Nate, a bunch of DFS lineup so far, and I do not have DJ in any of them. I know. Wow. Wow. Part of the reason is to go contrarian. Part of the reason is I just don't like them. Let's think about it. First of all, last week, what did we learn about last week? And we talked about it earlier. Olympia Fields played like a major championship. What do guys want to do after a major championship? They want to go to have a couple of beers, take a nap, and not go anywhere near their golf clubs for a week. They don't want to go play for $15 million. And so I found one guy who this guy has skirt the system and don't hate the player, hate the game, because a lot of

people are saying, how can Webb Simpson skip the second playoff event? You can't skip the a FC championship game and go to the Super Bowl. Guess what? He did it. And he dropped all the way from third way, way down the points list. And he's going to start in fourth this week. I mean, it just, it doesn't matter. He would have been seven under or he would have been eight under. No, excuse me, seven under starting in third place and said he's going to be six under. Guess what? Go go bird to your first hole on Friday morning and you make up for it. It's just, it's no big deal whatsoever. And so every player in this 30-man field just dealt with major championship conditions for 72 holes last week,

except for Webb Simpson, who laid on the couch last week, played with his 23 kids, and just had a good old time at home, and came out refreshed and relaxed. And I think ready to go out and win on what is a course that really suits him well. He's got three top five finishes and seven career starts at East Lake. And one other point that I want to make, Nate, and it's very, sort of, it's been sort of in vogue to just bash the FedEx Cup. I mean, it's been 14 years now, and people, especially on social media, wow, playoffs, come on.

These playoffs are silly, you know, it's not as good as a major. Playoffs are great. Okay, well, first of all, yes, it's not as good as a major. It was never supposed to be. Secondly, what would you prefer in a little history lesson here? Back in 2006, the Tour Championship was held in the middle of November. It was three months after the most recent relevant golf tournament on the schedule. And that last one, Tiger and Phil, who were by far the two biggest drawing cards on the PGA tour,

they didn't play, didn't show up for the tour championship. And as I recall, they didn't even bother to like make something up. You know, it was like Tigers like, eh, my back, I tweaked it a little bit doing something. So I really just want to be safe and not play. It was like, yeah, guys, there's football on. I'm not going to Atlanta. It's just like, no, come on, it's November. I'm not playing golf.

Like, it's just sort of like, this is ridiculous. And so we've gone from a point where the best players in the game weren't showing up in November because they just didn't care to, hey, we've now got a finality to the season. I get that the next season starts four days after, three days after this one concludes. And it's kind of ridiculous. But at least there's some finality to it. At least we get something. Is it ever going to be a playoff? just like the NFL has a playoff,

just like the NBA has a playoff. No, it's a different kind of sport, but it's probably as good as it's going to get. Yeah, I will say, I think that they have done an admirable job of continuing to, in the first case, get player buy in, get player support, and, you know, get the best players playing in the events

for the most part, which, you know, pre-pandemic, they kind of owned August. The PGA tour, you know, kind of smartly, you know, built their, their, you know, entertainment product and created this stretch where they owned a month on the sports calendar where they're not really competing with anybody else. I mean, baseball poses a little bit of competition in August, but things aren't really starting to get going with baseball until September.

I love sort of, I have come. I have come to love what the FedEx Cup, you know, is presenting to us. I like very much the variety of venues. I like, you know, especially right now. I liked going up to Boston two weeks ago. And then I liked going to go to Chicago last week. And I'm going to be enjoying this visit to Atlanta because I can't effing travel right now. And I'm not going to effing travel.

So I like seeing these other parts of the country in different weather. I absolutely adored seeing San Francisco. at the beginning of August and seeing everybody dressed up and long. I mean, Nate, it was so cold there. You had on a winter hat and, you know, jacket, the whole thing. I saw you all geared up, brother. I looked like I was going skiing. Right.

But look, so we're on the precipice of a very cool event here that, again, kudos to the tour. I love the Friday to Monday on Labor Day weekend. we have a major, not, not, it's not major in the sense of golf, but we have a prominent sporting event happening on Labor Day that will end in the evening. That's fun. That's good. It's good for the PGA tour to catch those eyes and to have their very best players, uh, playing. Now, I, uh, have a lot of things to say about Webb Simpson because, um, my, my confession to Jason, I deliberately did not read your column this week. It is always one of my research tools. And,

I steal liberally from it. I wanted to hear the thesis live because I didn't want to have reaction. This is the piece of paper. I'm holding up and showing at you. These are Web Simpson stats coming into this. He is at the top of my dance card this week. In addition to the things that you mentioned, he absolutely adores par 70 Bermuda Green golf courses.

The last five times he's played under those conditions, he's gone first, first, third, third, 12th. I think that's a good stretch. He is inside the top 20 over his last 24 rounds in everything that matters. T to green, he's eighth, putting, he's ninth. Off the T, he's 18th, approach, he's 11th. I mean, his resume speaks for itself. There's also a shout out to our homie, Pat Mayo, who was on last week,

he noted this correlation, a strong correlation with the Wyndham and with Sejfield. the Donald Ross course down there in North Carolina. And, you know, the names that you see in the top five there are names that are that are absolutely, I think, good, good candidates for this week, Billy Horsesell, Webb Simpson, Jim Herman. Not Jim Herman. But in any event, you know, one guy, speaking of the very best guys that I need to get some feedback from you two guys on is Rory.

what are we going to do with Rory this week? We're going to fade the crap out of them. That's what we're going to do. Look, my favorite matchup bet of the week so far is Xander Schoffley, I believe he's about minus 1 18, minus 115 against Rory. And guys, I love bets that give you two chances to win. And you don't find it too often. There's not too many reasons why you'd ever have two chances to win.

But first of all, Zander might just play better than Rory. Zander has a win, a second, and a seventh in three career starts. at Eastlake. He really likes this golf course. And oh, by the way, he's one of the best players in the world. And yeah, so just, hey, they're both really trying hard. They're both really into it. Zander might just beat Rory anyway. And so you've got a chance to win there. The other chance you have to win is Rory plays two holes on Friday and gets the call. And kudos to the McElroy's, first of all, congratulations to them. They're expecting their first child, a baby girl, quote unquote, any day now. But kudos to Rory for keeping this a secret.

for apparently eight months and three weeks where it didn't get out publicly. It got out last weekend, and he has said, and rightly so, you know, it's a golf tournament. If I had my first child coming, I'm out of there. And good for him.

Go ahead. But we can take advantage of knowing that because if he tees off on Friday morning and he's on the second hole and Eric calls and says, hey, my water just broke, he's out of there, which means that as long as Xander Shoffley

winds up his week, upright and breathing, we win that wager. So anybody, whether it's Shoffley or anybody else, if you can get them at a decent price against Rory this week, I say fire. Well, Nate, you and I talked about Rory and the fact that they kept the news private for so long, and we were amazed by it.

I mean, congratulations, just like you said, Jason, to Rory and Erica, both on the baby girl coming along, but also like on keeping the news completely under wraps. And, you know, we were kind of mystified since the restart about, you know, what was going on with Rory.

And he, you know, acknowledged that the lack of crowds might have, might be impacting him. But with him having on his brain, the fact that he's about to, you know, have a major change in his life, he could have told us that earlier.

It's a wonderful thing. I'm thrilled for him. Nate, I have a question. for you because I heard the no laying up guys were talking a little bit about this earlier this week. My question for you, there's a kind of a thought that the birth of his baby girl and his change in family and the resetting of priorities that happens to all of us the first time that we're lucky enough to have a kid might have a liberating effect for him.

and we might see Rory McElroy once the baby girl's born and once everything's kind of settled down, he might go on an absolute tear. What do you think about that, Nate? I read this week that Bryson has done the math on first-time parents and figured out that they have a better chance of winning, that they win disproportionate amounts of the time

after they have a baby. And I just keep thinking about if Bryson plays with Rory, like Rory makes it through the weekend. Bryson plays with Rory on Sunday. And on that last green, Bryson grabs the back of Rory's neck after Bryson wins. The way that Payne Stewart in the same damn hat grabbed Phil's

neck at the U.S. Open when he went and says, you know, it's being a father, you're going to be such a great father or whatever, even though Bryson, it has no kids. Like, I know we're just moving towards that. I think it is, listen, I don't want to speculate.

I think Rory has always kept parts of his personal life super private. And I think guys like that who are just world stars are entitled to it. And I do think there is some little flip or change in his mental approach to golf that is required based on what we've seen since the restart because he's just too good to not be getting the results. So if this does it, I hope he has 10 kids like Webb Simpson, according to Sobel. for anybody also want to talk to you about zip recruiter when it comes to scoring great hires for your business

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go to ZipRecruiter.com slash rolling that ziprecruiter.com slash R-O-L-L-I-N. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way. to hire. All right. Well, look, we've been talking around it. Let's go ahead and start naming names. I know that I'm on Webb Simpson.

I know that Sobel's on Webb Simpson. I like Billy Horshaw at a kind of a lower price, a guy who's gone first, second, and seventh at this venue, and also has very great performances at the Wyndham. So those are just two names. Nate, who do you have circled this week? Well, this is a tough one to pick, especially if you're picking a group of guys, because obviously you're not going to get value at the high end.

You've got to look at maybe the first three or four guys. Sobel, you've got to flesh this out. My strategy was this. I got to look at the top three or four guys and decide which maybe two of those I think are going to play the best. And by the way, this week, I think for the first time, we are going to see the winner of the tournament who has a lower aggregate score than somebody else. I think this will be the first time where somebody goes on it. heater but doesn't win the tournament, right? And then I looked at the guys in those various tiers, who's starting at even par, one under, two under, three under. And from those groups, I picked a

couple of the guys who I thought I could get value from because they're playing great. So for me, Kisner finished T4. He played great at the Wyndham. And, you know, he's starting, I think he's starting at one under, but he really has been, you know, this is, this is a, in a lot of ways, a home game for him. So I really love Kisner in from the lower ranks. And I know you're going to I know you're going to hate this, but I just can't see how top five Tony doesn't top five this week. He, he showed us some signs of life last week. This is the kind of course that he plays really well on. So those are the sort of value picks for me. And then, you know, Sobel convinced me to stay the hell away from DJ. So at the upper end, we've seen some of the best players to take.

a couple weeks off and come roaring back. And so I really think J.T. has been sitting outside the conversation, remembering last year when he did not handle going in to the start of the tournament with the lead well at all. He's been talking about his mental approach to the tour championship for almost a month now. I think we're going to see JT come out on top.

Wow. I love it. Okay. So, but what do you got? Okay. So first of all, guys, it is important anytime you place a wager on anything to know what you're wagering on. I think that we could all agree on that.

This week, in terms of the tour championship, it's really important to know what you're wagering on because I've had people, I go out, I play softball on Tuesday nights, then we all go out for beers, and my buddies are all hitting me up, so this was last night, and guys are like, hey, who should I pick this week?

I go, well, it depends. Are you betting on the tournament with the handicapped strokes leading into it, or are you betting on everyone starting at even part like they do normally? And the books, most of the books, most of the books this week will have both options available. And I had guys look at me going, I don't know, just tell me a guy.

And I said, well, I can't give you a name unless you tell me what you're betting on. And so I've said already that if it's based on the strokes and based on the way the PGA Tour is doing it, I really like Webb Simpson for all the things that you mentioned house earlier about par 70 golf course and Bermuda Greens and certainly having the week off and not playing a major championship-like venue last week. And so it doesn't mean that, I mean, if you're doing a one-and-done pool, if you're doing something just an office deal where you're like, hey, pick a guy to win, yeah, you might want pick Dustin Johnson. I'm not saying I don't like Dustin.

I just don't like Dustin at plus 200 this week. I mean, two to one to win a golf tournament, no thanks. John Rom, three to one, no thanks. Justin Thomas, five and a quarter. Getting there, and I don't hate it. it's still just a little too low for me. And Webb Simpson at 10 or 11 to 1, that's where I like to start the card this week.

And I honestly don't hate it if you want to play a Colin Moracawa or Daniel Berger outright, but I probably wouldn't go any deeper than that. I just don't think that the guys who are three under, starting seven back, really have a legitimate chance to catch up and pass all of those guys in front of them. As for prop bets, Brendan Todd is a guy that I have not given enough respect to this.

summer. I will readily admit that every single week, I look at him before a tournament and either say, the field's too good. You know, there are too many good players this week. Brandon Todd's not going to compete with all the big boys. Or I say the golf course just doesn't suit him. It's a place where you got to bomb it all over the place. He's a guy that finds fairways, but doesn't hit it anywhere. Well, this is finally a golf course, and he has proved me wrong all summer. He's played great. I know he's, he's faltered in a few final rounds, and, you know, he hasn't won, okay, but he's, He really has played very, very well for the last two or three months. And so I look at Brendan Todd this week and I say, he lives in Atlanta.

I don't know if he's sleeping in his own bed this week or not. I don't know, you know, there's a big place, but he's at least familiar with the surroundings. The golf course should suit him really well, Bermuda Greens. And I think he's probably more motivated. You know, there are going to be some guys who are, I mean, I'm an eighth place going into the weekend. Yeah, okay, I'd like to make some money, whatever. But, you know, it's a long season I'd like to get this over with. Brendan Todd, who was basically out of golf a few years ago,

is going to look at this and say, I can make how much money? Like, let's go. I may never play as well as I'm playing right now. I can make a few more of million dollars based on the fact that I have one really good round this week. And so I love Brendan Todd for top fives. And the last one, guys, real quick,

if you're looking at it from everyone starting at even bar, and then like I said, you can bet that in the books too. My chaos theory extends beyond Webb Simpson, which will just annoy the hell out of people if he's able to skip a playoff event and go out and win the golf tournament and win the FedEx Cup.

But how about the fact that Abraham Answer is one of the best players on the PGA tour who hasn't won? He can go out there on a golf course that I think suits his game really well and play four rounds in fewer strokes than anybody else in the field and still not have a PGA tour victory

and still not have a trophy. So I'm rooting for chaos in another way. And I would like answer it. 66 to 1 in a 30-man field, I think that's a great number on him this week. That's fun. So let me ask you a question. If Brendan Todd wins this week, who's the player of the year? That is such a good question.

You can ask me that question. If Brendan Todd doesn't win this week, I don't know. I mean, Rom said in his press conference, he listed all the guys have won more than once. And he said, I think player of the year is whoever wins. But I thought, well, Brendan Todd, but maybe Brendan Todd. Here's what I can tell you guys from years of having this conversation at the end of seasons, is that you guys and myself will think about this, we'll talk about this, way more than the guys who are voting on it.

The guys who vote on it are the players. And the players tend to have a lot of recency bias because they'll get a ballot in the mail next week. And they're not sitting there going over. Well, so-and-so had a really good November last year, like early in the season. they're going to go, oh, that guy won the FedEx Cup last week. I'll give it to him. And that's what's going to happen. So I tend to believe that whoever wins this golf tournament this week

unless it's way out of left field, whether it's DJ, ROM, JT, Morikawa, Webb, that guy's probably going to be a player of the year this year. Why do we give a shit about that award? I don't know. I don't. Yeah, who does? It's just a funny thing to talk about. It's for us to talk about.

It's for Sobel and Collins on their XM radio show. to yell at each other about. It's for us on the pod to make fun of the players. That's all. Nobody cares. Every year we argue about this. We argue rookie of the year and we go back and forth. And then they announce it.

And 10 minutes after they announce it, we've all forgotten it ever happened. I mean, it should come with money. Well. Yeah, that's what these guys need more money. Yeah, that's right. I have one other name before we break. I want to just give a quick shout to Tyrell Hatton

because I like to reward guys that I played in matchups. Now, I did pretty good. I went 5-1 and 3 in my match-ups last week. Tyrell had an over Harris English was one of those matchups last week. Sneaky run of success since the restarted out of Tyrell. He started out with two top threes at the Heritage and then at the Rocket Mortgage up in Detroit. And then he kind of scuffled a little bit. caught something. I don't know what he found in his game, but he shot a 63 up in Boston

a couple weeks ago. And only DJ went that low because DJ went that low for every round. And then Terrell tied for 16th last week at the BMW slash US Open, you know, US Open light. And, you know, his, he's a good putter on Bermuda. He won on this. surface at Bay Hill, which was, you know, the last big victory before everything got shut down. So I'm going to play him in a head-to-head and I'm going to play him on my DFS cards and fantasy. I'm not suggesting because he's at like three under or something. He's too far back to win under the handicapped system. But I do like him on the dance card.

Hall of Fame miced up guy too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. as long as you can get them to agree to it. I want Tyrell and John Aram miced up together when they're both like just shooting 87s and just as pissed off as possible. How good would that be? Well, guys, thanks very much. Nate and I will be back Monday night for a recap of what went down.

Let's all get a little return on investment. Check out Jason Sobel's column, multiple columns, on. golf bet, which is the tab under the action network that you can click on. You can also go directly the golf bet, can't you, Jason? Sure, why not? Yeah. And all his stuff is up there. The XM radio show, I know you and Collins were on for a bit earlier today.

What are you doing for the rest of the week? Oh, what am I doing? I have no idea. I've got some more XM radio stuff. I've got, I'm not doing segments. By the way, guys, the PJ tour, I'll pull back the current. a little bit. They probably won't like this, but about a year and a half ago, I was

at a point with the PGA tour. I've been covering golf for a long time, ESPN and the Golf Channel and back to ESPN. I've had a credential for a long time. The PGA tour said, you know, we really don't like the betting stuff that we're doing. You know, we might wind up pulling your credential. You know, I got mad and I

kind of, my boss said, don't, you know, don't talk to him about. We now, with Golf Bet and the Action Network have a partnership with the PGA Tour, and I'm now not only welcome to go cover events when the world is right, we can go cover events again. But I'm doing segments for PGA Tour Live. So I'm waking up early in the morning and going on PJA Tour Live, their streaming

service to get betting advice for every round, which is a little bit of a turnaround from where we were just 18 months ago. It's been, it's a miracle. I mean, I saw they announced another partnership. I don't remember with with who this week, but we have draft kings. We have Fan Duel for you have four partnerships, right? Yeah. Four of the last month, official betting partners.

of the PGA tour. I love, I mean, this is, it's, it's, it's no wonder that the PGA tour is my A number one. Well done, PGA tour. All right, guys, thanks very much. Great preview and strong return on investment out there to all our birdie buddies. All right, my birdie buddies there. We have it. Some juicy insights, hopefully for you as you build your DFS lineups. Get on that fan duel fairway rolling dough contest. There is cash to be won, my par saving pals. My thanks as always to our PGA tour correspondent,

Nathan Hubbard and Jason Sobel from the Action Network. Nathan and I will be back right after the tour championship wraps up. Monday night, we're going to break it all down, see who won that 15 million bucks and see who fared well in the Fairway Roland Doe contest on Fandul. Until then, My part saving pals.

Let's head them straight out there.