Fairway Rollin' - The PGA Playoffs, the FedEx Cup, and the Northern Trust

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

House and Nathan Hubbard return to discuss the PGA playoffs and dive into a preview of the Fedex Cup and which players are looking to make the cut (00:40). They also calculate what Tiger Woods’s game plan will be coming into these two tournaments (18:06). Then they take a look at the key stat that will determine who will perform well at the Northern Trust tournament in Boston (24:15). Hosts: Joe House and Nathan Hubbard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome to this golf podcast, unlike any other. This is a playoff edition of Fairway Rule in the golf podcast. On the Ringer podcast Network, I am your starter, Joe House. On the line, as always, our PGA correspondent on the ground, Nathan Hubbard. It's a playoff edition, Nate, dog. What's happening? I'm ready. I'm still recovering.

from the Wyndham, but I'm ready for the playoffs. I still have to confess, I have a little bit of a PGA championship hangover. I have a U.S. amateur hangover, the U.S.M. abandoned dunes, which was extraordinary, plus a Wyndham hangover because we were drinking while watching your brother, Mark Hubbard, compete fiercely through the four rounds. Now, he shot an even par Sunday. 70, which had the effect of him kind of treading water while other guys kind of jumped up ahead of them. But look, if you said to us Thursday morning, would you accept a top 15 finish out of homeless hubs? What would the answer have been?

We would have said yes. The problem with the last round was he had six birdies. And so he was in position. Look, he's playing great. This is the tournament where he actually saved his career two years ago. He was outside the top 200 and not even going to get to play the Corn Ferry Tour Finals. And he finished T-24 and basically saved his career. It's nice to be disappointed with the T-15.

Exactly right. I mean, this tournament is always a little wonky in the sense that unexpected things can happen. You know, five years ago, Davis Love the Third won this thing at 51 years of age, which, you know, I'm very thrilled by. obviously. But you know, you got to have guys that might not normally want to travel to North Carolina in August flying down and competing because this is the last event on the calendar before the FedEx Cup playoffs kick off. And guys want to make it inside that top 125. I think the most noteworthy guy that was on the outside looking in and made his way in with Shane Lowry, whose good play over the week got him inside the top 125, which is, is, is, good just in terms of the overall quality of the 125 because, you know, this group that's going to go compete up in Boston this week is as good as any major field. I mean, we've been so blessed with these incredible fields, but this field is as good as any field. You want Shane Lowry, the defending British Open Championship champ, defending champ there, right? Yeah. And Zach Johnson

also played his face off to secure his spot. And it was an interesting view into into what pros do. Lowry and Zeej just had to play well to hang in. And they played great. Alternatively, Justin Rose and Brooks Kepka were playing this tournament to try to advance their standing. And they both missed the cut. So some interesting insight into the state of their games as we come in to this playoff stretch. But the craziest thing that came out of this weekend, and we were talking about Mark, he had a front row seat to it on Sunday, playing with Jim Herman,

who only two guys in the last year, over 40 years old, have won, and that is one Eldrick Tiger Woods, and Jim, as we called him on the podcast last week, Ghalm Herman, who now, first of all, shot, you know, he tied the lowest closing 36-hole score

for a winner, shooting 61-63. He has three wins on the people, TGA tour. He's got more wins than Can't Lay and Fienau combined, which is an insane stat. And it's just a reminder that the top guys, you know, the 125 best guys on tour are not always the most talented. The guys on this tour are not always the most talented. They're the guys who know their game well and they know what to do with it. And that's Jim Herman apparently, because he won at the Barbasol, sort of an, you know, an off parallel event last year. And we hadn't

heard from Jim Herman until basically Saturday, Sunday this week when he absolutely stoned his irons, made big putts and locked up his third victory. It's such a great point that you made in terms of, you know, that the idea of talent versus, you know, just competitive skill. And the two are not necessarily 100% linked up. Jim Herman had to make Bertie on three of his last four holes on Friday to make the cut. And then having made the cut, the competitive instincts kicked in, the homie got in his zone and just, you know, took took the whole thing over 61, 63 against a super duper field, a guy that you like, like you mentioned, in his 40s, it shows how razor thin the competitive

level is. I mean, Billy Horshull, a guy with a bunch of wins on tour, a guy with a tour championship and $10 million or $10 million bucks. He win $10 or $15. 10 in that one, I think. Yeah. An accomplished guy right there breathing down Jim Herman's neck at the very end. And Billy didn't get it done and Jim Herman did. So kudos to Jimmy H.

We are going to set the stage with the playoffs. There's a whole bunch of stuff to cover. But I wanted to ask you, did you watch? I mentioned the USM at Bandon. Did you watch any of that? I did. Just as you say, to sort of come off the high of hanging in there through the wind,

um, uh, I thought it was great. I mean, first of all, there was some great golf. There was also some highly relatable shit show golf, which,

you know, it seemed like every guy on Twitter who's ever played Bandon felt like they needed to weigh in and be like, oh yeah, I was there. I was in, and for a while, it looked like any guy on Twitter was playing that thing.

But boy, did the golf get good down the stretch. Yeah, I loved all of that. Now, I've never been lucky enough to make it to abandon. Have you been there? I have been a couple of times. You son of a gun. And, you know, you mentioned the relatability.

I, just as a, you know, a regular double-digit handicap, my own self, seeing like the pressure of three-foot putts when the wind is blowing. And, you know, with those guys, you know, when I'm playing for my own stakes, it is so, so nuts. Obviously, I did not chime in. And it was highly hilarious. I mean, Amun Gupta trying to get out of a trap and finally just being like, dude,

what is going on? That's basically a standard Saturday afternoon for me. I mean, that's exactly right. Two slapys right into the face of the bunker and it's right back. Now that one, just to do a very quick deep dive on the USM, that felt like the golf gods,

sort of maybe imposing a little bit of a little bit of a, a viewpoint because Amman was down quite a bit to the eventual winner of the entire U.S. amateur, Tyler Strafachi. Congrats, Tyler. Amman was down quite a bit in that match and Amman battled all the way back. He came back from being four down. But some of his comeback included some gamesmanship that, you know, both the golf community on Twitter, the folks watching it on television, and perhaps the golf gods took note of

and didn't find all that satisfying. Did you see the moment I'm talking about? He was standing in a line, right? Yeah, like right behind him, like way too intimate. It was not even social distancing, I don't think. The argument is the golf gods were hovering off the coast in the marine layer. They see all, and they brought the pain when it was the most painful. I mean, it's tough to argue with the outcome.

Yeah, it happens. Don't fuck around on the golf course. Be a good guy. In any event, it was very good timing, even if it was lucky, to have that beautiful venue right after the beautiful venue in Northern California. We moved up the coast a little bit to Oregon, another beautiful venue, another West Coast competition where those of us on the East Coast could watch in primetime and just really, you know, transport ourselves. I don't know what we've done to earn this sort of parade of riches, but it's been wonderful. And now staring us in the face another set of sports playoffs.

We have hockey playoffs. We have basketball playoffs. We have golf playoffs. Only the golf is really on its own schedule. The hockey and the basketball, obviously they tried to fit into the weird calendar that we're dealing with now. But we're going to sort of set the stage a little bit with this. The one thing I want to observe right out of the box that I absolutely love about how this playoffs is going to play out.

The last round of the tour championship is on Monday, September the 7th, which is Labor Day. And it just makes me so happy to have sort of a major golf event coincide with a national holiday in that manner, in the same way that like the U.S. Open always falls on Father's Day traditionally. I just love when there's that sort of parallel. You know, the sporting public is the American sporting public, the worldwide sporting public is just sort of, you know, chilling out whatever. It's the end of summer. But golf has a primary spot on the stage. Am I over sentimentalizing this?

Yes, but it's absolutely the right way to think about it. I mean, look, the nice thing about these playoffs is, as you said to me earlier, they are falling when they're supposed to fall, right? For the most part. We pushed everything back a week. But, you know, now you're going to have them interlocked with NBA playoffs with hockey. So look, these moments when we're all around these screens and people are on Twitter, social media, they're fun as heck. And it just feels so good to be back doing that after the break. So I'm with you. I'm looking forward to that Tour of Champions. But I got to tell you, we got two awesome tournaments this week and next where a whole lot of things are going to happen to get us to that moment. That's right. And at two cool venues, I know that the TPC Boston has sort of gone through some ups and downs in terms of the players' affinity for it and, you know, some changes. Gil Hans was brought in to make some renovations a handful of years ago. And there was nothing competing. there, the last event competed there was in 2018. They didn't do the playoffs there last year. But there is something about this venue.

The quality of winners is high quality. Four of the last nine winners at TPC Boston are major winners. And let me just run through this list. Bryson won in 2018, the Incredible Bulk himself, J.T. Justin Thomas in 2017, Rory McElroy in 16, Ricky Fowler in 15, Chris Kirk, who was really trying hard, I think, to make the Ryder Cup, Henrik Stenson, Rory, Webb Simpson.

I mean, a bunch of quality winners at this venue. Nine of the 13 Fattex Cup champs, either one or a runner up here, and 11 of 16 times the winner's been ranked inside the top 15 in the world. So when you couple that with all 125 of the quality, are going to play this week, unless,

frankly, unless somebody gets sick between now and Thursday, it's going to be a massively powerful field with a course that, look, you know, the report from the ground is it's in amazing shape.

The rough is pretty benign at the moment. It's only Tuesday. But this is a course that's 7,300 yards, par 71. So this is a super long course. And the, and the, the stat this week to focus,

on is approach shots of 175 yards or more, because there are a bunch of them out there. The par fives are all reachable, but the fours are super long. And so we're going to see a lot of guys trying to make those long iron shots into the green. And you mentioned some of the guys who have won here before. One of the things we definitely got to do today is take a look at the guys who are going to try to be moving up and down in the FedEx Cup standings to get themselves into the top 70, which after this week is the only group of golfers who are going to be playing at Olympia Fields next week, only the top 70 will move forward, and then to try to get themselves into the top 30 to get to the Tour Championship. Because yes, first place is $15 million,

but last place is almost $400,000 the Tour Championship and you get into every major in the year to come. So it's a really big honor and a big set of goals for a bunch of guys who don't necessarily always get that opportunity. Yeah, just making that top 30 delivers all of those rewards. And it's, it's, you know, um, extraordinary for, for guys that, that may be on the outside looking in. Um, this event coming up is the last event with a cut, in fact. So there, this, this has, uh, top 65 participating in this event plus ties make the cut. So if you're, a guy like Jordan Spieth,

like Brooks Kepka, like Louis Oostezen, who are all outside of the top 70 right now, not making the cut is probably fatal to your opportunity to move on to

Olympia. Not probably is fatal to your opportunity to move up and get into the event of Olympia Fields, right? Yeah, almost certainly. I mean, I think the buzz around the players, is you're going to need about a thousand FedEx Cup points just to get to the Tour championship in two weeks. Now, one thing to note,

the FedEx Cup playoffs this year made a change. Usually these tournaments, the Northern Trust and the BMW next week, have quadrupled the points of a normal FedEx tournament. And in that case, you know, normal FedEx, if you win, you get 500 points. You win this, you get 1,500. all the way down. So these are opportunities to advance yourself on steroids. But as you said, there are some guys who are sitting outside the top 70 who, you know, really are strong.

I mean, Fowler's at 88, Poulter's at 85, Tommy Fleetwood's at 89, Justin Rose is way back right now. I mean, if you look at KEPCA, just to get to 70th place, Kepka's got 110 points to make up on the guy who's in 70th. The guy's in 70th right now has 4754 points. So Kepka's got 110 points. Now, with the accelerated point things, that comes to about, call it at 25th, 24th. But he's got to do that relative to the rest of the field. So when you really look at Kepka, he's got a top 15 or better this week just to move on. And Justin Rose is in the same spot. Well, and there's nothing to indicate to us that these guys have a switch to flip because, you know, we saw their outstanding performance at the PJ Championship, you know, both Justin Rose and Brooks, even though Brooks faded. Before the golf gods got him.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's right. He ran his mouth and the golf gods didn't like what they heard. No. But those guys both flew to North Carolina from Northern California and promptly missed the cut. And the whole reason for them flying in North Carolina was to get themselves much better position. So they don't have to go up to Boston in this incredibly tight field and try and work their way in.

I mean, it's effing hard, Nate. And it's worth noting the rain in Carolina last week meant that they were playing lift clean in place. preferred lies the whole week. So not a lot of excuses for rounds over par outside of my game just isn't totally there. So it's going to be a very interesting week for guys like that. You know, there are also, as we look at guys who've got some momentum or some history, you know, there's some guys who are just sitting outside the top 70 who've been playing great. Harold Varner the third played pretty dang well last week. He's had a good stretch here. He's sitting at 73, right, Alex Noren, who has been everybody's favorite, sort of waiting for him to get that breakout.

He's sitting at 78. Zach Johnson, who, you know, was close to the lead in the PGA for a while. Last week, he absolutely, he had a crazy Saturday, we shot nine under. He's at 104. So a lot of those guys who are sitting on the outside who have some momentum, you know, you start to look at, you expect they're going to make a jump this week. If, indeed, they can leverage that good form into this now, speaking, of leveraging good form there we have this the the interesting and curious case of tiger woods

so let's do this weekend tiger woods tiger tiger Nate tiger's 49th right now and we we think that his goal is to get inside the top 30 we know he absolutely adores Eastlake you know he doesn't necessarily need to finish in the top 10. this week to ensure that he gets himself to Eastlake, but he's got to have a couple of finishes inside the top 25 this week and then

next at Olympia to get him, he's in 49th, to get from 49th to inside the top 30, got to need some quality performances out of him, some top 20 performances. What do you think we're going to see out of the Tigray? Well,

there's a couple of things. He's going to need to average a top 10, across these next two tournaments to get there. Oh, okay. So not just top 20 won't do it. It's got to be top 10. It looks like he needs about 400 points. And in this accelerated point layout,

that, you know, a top four gets you 400 points. Top 10 gets you about, you know, if you tied for 10th, you're going to get about 200 points. So that's what we're going to, that's the kind of quality golf we're going to have to see from Tiger. And on this course, you know, history is not the best judge. when he's teed it up historically, he's played great. He's got a win here. He's got a couple seconds.

But the last time he won was a long time ago. And one of the things about this course, we talked about the length. The rough this week does not look to be too bad. The buzzword that you're going to hear on the telecast, I'm sure, is they're going to talk about these chocolate drop mounds. That's going to be their word for the week, because they are all over this course. And what they really are is big bumps in the fairway that are sort of intended to be a hazard. It's a New Englandy thing in particular. But for Tiger and the way that he's been playing, you know, we saw the putter really not come through for him at the PGA. And these are bent grass greens. They seem to be in good shape. You know, again, it's a course he's played a bunch and is familiar with. I just think to ask Tiger

to make two top tens and get to the PGA championship, or excuse me, get to the tour championship is a lot to ask. There's one other thing we've got to talk about related to Tiger, which is that yesterday, for a 45-year-old guy who's supposedly got a bad back and who's been really pacing himself to get to this stretch of golf where he's got to play these three playoff events, hopefully for him, take a week off, get to the U.S. Open. He was at Wingfoot with J.T. on Monday playing a full practice round. So if that tells us anything, it's where his mind really is right now, which is that instead of going to Boston and checking out the course,

he went to Winged Foot on Monday, that tells me that's where his sights are set. We're going to see some decent golf out of Tiger. I'm going to be really surprised if he gets to the Tour Championship. Wow. How about that? Okay. So this is indeed where I wanted to go with you, which is the proximity in this schedule between the Tour Championship and the U.S. Open at Wingfoot. There's just two weeks between those two things. So the FedEx Cup championship will be concluded on Monday, September the 7th.

Two weeks later, they're up in New York, Mamarineck at Wingfoot. Wingfoot and Tiger, you know, it's a rare site where Tiger doesn't have any, anything sort of noteworthy where you look back and say, oh, we have a Tiger Woods performance at Wingfoot. Now, you know, his own life history has played a major role in that. The last time that this championship was, the U.S. Open Championship, was competed at Wingfoot, Tiger missed the cut back in 2006 because his dad, dad had passed and it was the first, his first tournament back, and he just wasn't ready for major championship golf. I'm not expecting that he's thinking about anything other than wingfoot

right. The guy doesn't need money, you know, I really think he's probably thinking I'm going to play Northern Trust in Boston. I'm going to play Olympia in Chicago, outside of Chicago next week. probably, unless I play really great, I probably don't make the Tour Championship, in which case I have two weeks off to peak for the U.S. Open. And that feels like a schedule that he probably had thought a lot about. We knew he skipped Memphis before the PGA. He obviously was going to skip Wyndham. So that feels like where his main focus is.

That said, you know, the guy has routinely surprised. us as, you know, the big comeback win was at Eastlake. And so his heart, a piece of his heart is certainly there. And we'll see how he performs. I just was really surprised that in the week before the playoff event in which he really needs to play well to advance, that he chose Monday to go play practice round with JT, you know, up at Wingfoot. Yeah. Well, I mean, he's got his site set we have seven majors in, you know, 10 months essentially.

And every one of these is an opportunity for him to, to, you know, continue to, you know, just build out the, the Tiger legacy. So I guess I'm, I'm not that surprised, um, considering sort of all, all of the competing motivations and factors.

You, you mentioned with Tiger and I want to sort of set the stage a little bit, um, for who we anticipate might play well at this event, the Northern Trust up in Boston. And this is coming from our good pal, Pat Mayo, the Pat Mayo experience, a couple little data points about attributes that matter at the TPC Boston.

The strokes gained approach, which Tiger is very good at, and strokes gained putting, which Tiger has not been very good at, good at have had over the course of this event double the influence on the top five finishers over strokes gained off the T and four times the influence over strokes gained around the green. So that means your second shot, and especially that yard did you just mention, 175 plus, and putting are what really distinguish the guys who come in, into this thing and kick ass from the guys that can't get it done, right?

Well, and if we drill into that stat approach shots over 175 yards, which I really do think is the key stat this week, look at who the leaders on the tour are in this category, approach shots between 175 and 200 yards. You got Taral Hatton is second. Yolkin Neiman is fourth. Justin Rose pre-equip. swap out is 11th. But there's two guys who stand out when you really look at how they finished from that position relative to par. In other words, if you had 175 to 200-yard approach shot, how did you actually score from there? And Colin Maracawa, who is seventh in terms of proximity to the hole, he's 17 under to par. We just keep talking about the dude. I mean,

that his name keeps coming up for a reason, Nate Dogg. And Bryson DeCambeau is also 17 under to par. For comparison, JT's only two under to par from that distance. Rory's five under to par. Everybody's darling Victor Hovland is plus eight to par from that distance over the course of the season. So they have beaten everybody in the field from that distance in with one exception, and that's Joel Damon, our boy Joel, who play great at the PGA. And as somebody you got to look at with these stats this week.

But those two guys, if that's really going to be the stat, those are the two guys who shine coming in this week. And, and, you know, not surprising, both of them were at the very top of the leaderboard at Harding Park. We mentioned this particular stat. That distance is being a crucial distance, accuracy from that distance. Both those guys delivered it. Bryson had a chance to fight his way all the way up into, you know, potential playoff. Morikawa closed that door with his drive on 16. It was not a shot.

It was not approached shot from 175 plus yards for Kalamorikawa that won him the tournament. But not surprising, Bryson, the last winner at this venue, the last time this event was competed. And he said this morning that he thinks he's found something to straighten out the driver. So you got to be scared. There's a drivable par four on this course. there might be two if you're Bryson DeCambo, but boy, in a moment in which the story of the spring has basically been those two guys,

it's no surprise that coming into this tournament and this first one, that the stats all lean towards both those guys. And as you said, Bryson is the last guy to win an event on this course, and Moracow is the last guy to win a big tournament. So it's going to be a super interesting week. head given the strength of the field. Yeah, I agree with you. Now, let's talk, let's try to, try and name some names. Let's start first, if you, if you don't mind, how's, how's Mark Hubbard feeling? Mark Hubbard feels great. I mean, he's playing awesome. He's making a lot of

birdies and, uh, he's playing golf. He's played, you know, he's, he's turned a couple of top fives into top 15s since the restart, but, you know, he's played the weekend with some winners. and, you know, there's no shame in saying the goal is to try to make the tour championship, and he's sitting at 42 right now, and it looks like about 300-ish points gets you there. So that's been a goal all year and physically feels great. And, you know, this course, it's long, which isn't necessarily awesome for him. But, you know, he's been, I don't know if you saw him walk into the driver off the deck. he hit on 15 on Sunday to 22 feet.

But, you know, he can hit it, he can hit it from far away too. Yeah, well, the biggest thing that caught my eye from the weekend down in North Carolina was how he was rolling the rock. I mean, he was rolling it beautifully. Does he feel like there is a correlation between the greens that he was just on? Now, obviously, Boston hasn't had the same weather that North Carolina has. So the greens are going to be in slightly different, you know, firmness, but I think they're both bent, bent grass. So is he feeling any similarity there?

Yeah, he loves Northeast Golf. He thinks it's super underrated. This time of year, the courses are super lush and beautiful. And this is the kind of course that he loves Hartford and, and some of the others in the area. So this is the kind of course that he really thrives on. Yeah. Well, speaking of a course that guys thrive on, we're just going to start naming some names. and giving some interesting data about Dustin Johnson, the only player with top 20 finishes in each of his past three starts at TPC Boston. There's a lot of great players that have had great finishes in two of the most recent three, but not top 20 in all three.

That's just DJ. And we just saw a really interesting performance out of DJ at the PGA championship. any feeling for DJ at this point? I mean, he's kind of an enigma. I have no feeling for DJ. He really is exactly what you said. I mean, we felt like the PJ was a big letdown for him. That's a tournament that it exposed what we've all felt like

was a lack of killer instinct in DJ for a long time. At the same time, we know the guy wants to win. Amanda Ballionis came on this podcast and told us after she interviewed him when he won in Hartford, that that one really meant a lot to him. Even though from the interview she gave, we were asking her, does he even care? So I think there's a lot of ducks feet moving quickly beneath the surface for this guy. You know, he already got his one win this year. I think I have seen enough from him up and down this year to believe that maybe his

consistency isn't fully there for these playoffs. I'm much more interested to see how he plays wing foot in a few weeks. Oh, wow. Sure, right. Speaking of legacy and a guy that, you know, the sort of golf community, the golf sporting public is so ready for him to validate what we all think has been there for over a decade. You know, for a long time, he's been the only guy on tour to win multiple events, you know, year and a year out. He's the only guy with, you know, a victory in each calendar a year for, you know, an extended stretch.

He's got all 21 tour victories and in instantaneous Hall of Famer. It feels like there should be five majors. Oakmont and Wingfoot. If he got Wingfoot and he has those two U.S. opens, that would be kind of enough for me. I mean, that, that really is something, would be something. Well, listen, he's at 18 to 1 to win this week. Morikau is 20 to 1. Jason Day, who's been playing great, it's 25 to 1.

So I don't know that DJ's my favorite bet this week, albeit, you know, we are on a bomber's course and in the Northeast, and, you know, the closest TPC to this one is in Hartford where DJ just won. So you got to take a look at him this week, but, you know, the flip side is we didn't talk about him at all coming into the PGA championship.

We just, he had been playing terribly. And lo and behold, He really, he had a 54-hole lead and had a chance to win that tournament up until the last few holes. Yeah, I mean, he basically took himself off the radar, you know, with the performances he had in Minnesota and I'm not remembering the other place where he shot. Oh, the Memorial, where you went 80-80 over 80 twice. Yeah, exactly. Anyhow, well, that's enough on DJ. Interesting, always interesting. Always, you know, a guy that we like. I am, speaking of interesting, taking a look at Patrick Reed this week.

I think it's a great call. Has a really nice track record at this venue, even though it doesn't really sort of fit his strengths. He has a top 10 finish in three of his past four starts here. and the last two weeks, you know, Patrick Reed showing some form. Tied for 13th at the PGA championship, sort of a quiet top 15.

And then tied for ninth last week, you know, the putting attribute is the one that's sort of the hardest to forecast. But for whatever reason, Patrick Reed puts on these greens outstanding. He's gained over three strokes in each of his past four performances,

putting at TPC Boston. He is a great short game player. And it looks like the rough this week is going to be significantly higher around the Greens. It looks like they've tried to really, as we talked about, put a premium on those approach shots. But Patrick Reed is great around and on the Greens. And, you know, he's sitting, sneaky sitting sixth in FedEx Cup. He's not that far behind. He jumped to number one with a win.

So Patrick's a good guy to look at, especially with his odds. sitting down around 28 to 1 right now to win. I mean, he's also a guy that it's clear that juices get flown when it comes playoff time. Playoffs mean something to Patrick Reed. He is a gamer if nothing else. Yeah. Tell me a guy or two that you have your eye on. You know, I, it's, for me, it's hard to bet against Bryson Deschambo this week because he's won

at this course. He's longer and better overall now. And I just think a bunch of the stats. play in to his hands. There's a couple of guys. For me, I'm looking at momentum now and the guys who have really extra incentive to move this week. And so I look at Harold Varner, who I wouldn't bet to win, but he's sitting at 73. He played great last week in the Carolinas. We saw him play pretty well through the course of the restart. He's going to play well this week, I think. You know, Justin Rose has a second place here. And, you know, the last time that he played this

course. I didn't love what I saw from him last week, but he showed the signs of what he can do at the PGA. And Justin Rose is another guy who is pretty deadly accurate with his irons from 175 to 200. And so he's had a little bit of time here to try to figure it out. You can't overlook him given where he is. He's going to be fighting for something. The other guy, you know, I mentioned. Joel Damon played great at the PGA. He's 38th in the FedEx Cup. He's got incentive to play really well here. We know Joel Damon loves money, and he plays for money.

He's unabashed about that. But, you know, he has figured out that he's a really good golfer, and he's talking like it, and he's playing like it now. This course sets up well for him as you think about those long iron shots. He leads the field and score relative to par when he's coming in from 175 to 200 yards. So he's 150 to 1 to win out there, but he really sniffed it at the PGA. There were some holes in that last round on Sunday where he thought, I got a chance to win. You know, he made a couple bad swings and then realized he was just playing for money.

But we're going to see Joel Damon play well this week, I think. I like it quite a bit. I'm looking sort of down the ticket a little bit for folks that might need some lower-priced guys to fill out a fantasy lineup or, you know, to make a D.F. F.S. play. And I want to mention a couple names to you just to get a reaction. Brendan Steele has been

on a pretty nice tear since the restart. Three finishes of 22nd or better in six starts. And he's a very good ball striker. A 20 second on the season and strokes gained

approach. Plus, you know, accurate off the T. He's a guy that's sitting 43rd right now on the point list, very close to homeless hubs, Mark Hubbard. And he's never qualified for the tour championship. So that's a guy that, you know, if you're trying to build something out, the pricing should be kind of reasonable for him. That might be, you know, a good guy to sort of have an eye on and insert into the lineup. I'm also taking a look at Russell Henley, who has been on a ball striking tear. It's his putting that has really been bad for him.

He doesn't have a great track record at TPC, but he does have a runner up there back in 2014, it was a long time ago. But he looked to be sort of coming into form. So another guy further down the card that might be interesting. How about you? You got any guys that fit that category? Damon certainly is in that category. Yeah, Damon's definitely in that category.

I think, look, those are great folks to look at. A guy to look at is Charlie Hoffman, who has won here before. He's sitting there at, you know, 1-11 in the FedEx Cup. I don't think he's going to make the Tour championship, but Charlie Hoffman could be playing, you know, in a comfortable environment, you know, to get to BMW and all the guys that get to BMW, there's no cut, and so you never know. That's right.

It's funny, we've gone a long way here, and there's a guy that's been off the radar, frankly, since the restart, and he's been off of our radar, but he has a terrific track record at this venue, and it's Rory McElroy. Is there any possibility that Rory, you know, he won here in 2012,

he won here in 2016. Is this in every four years kind of the opportunity for Rory McElroy? I have been trying to ride Rory McElroy to victory all spring and it just hasn't happened. I mean, he just, he's

finishing, he's struggling to make top 30s and he's playing decently well. Look, as you say, all the stats about the course suggests this is where he's played great. He strikes the ball terrific from 175 to 200. He is, you know, he's the all-time earnings winner here. So this should be a course for Rory. We just have not seen him get on the horse and go since the restart.

And at some point, they are who we thought they are. And so for me, this is a guy that I'm afraid of this week. and if you're doing your DFS lineups and trying to pick value and you always have to balance some of the good guys with some of the value guys, Rory's just a guy I'd be a little wary of

until we see him step it up. Yeah, I know. We've been waiting. I honestly have no feel for whether or not we're going to keep waiting. But yeah, it's a buyer beware kind of deal.

Well, I think we've covered all the bases, given out a handful of names, some interesting guys for all of our birdie buddies out there to take a look at and think about for their dance cards. Nate, when we get back together next week, we'll have a winner of this event. Some of the shuffling that's going to occur on the playoff rankings. We'll know who the top 70 are. We'll see, you know, how the top 30 is kind of coming into view.

And we're going to a major championship venue in Olympia Fields outside of Chicago. That's where Furik won his U.S. Open back in the early 2000s. So we're just, again, I mentioned earlier, kind of the beautiful riches that we're enjoying and professional golf right now. We have a lot to look forward to, my friend. And as we talk about all these stats and you talk about Jim Furich, let's just remind everybody that Jim Furich led the tour this year in driving accuracy and greens and regulation and missed the Fed. X-Cup. So what do we know? Nothing has always. We know nothing. So let's see what we learned this week. This is going to be a fun, fun stretch of golf. We got, you know, just three intense tournaments. Then they go to Napa. A few guys will go there. And then we get the U.S. open. So it's going to be an

awesome, awesome month of golf. We're going to learn a lot. Look, player of the year is up for grabs. That's really, in addition to $15 million. That's certainly what's it's. And we got, you know, four, five, six guys for sure who, depending on how they play down this stretch, are going to come out with that, you know, with that title this year. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait. Nate Dogg, as always, thank you, my brother. Let's go homeless hubs. Let's do it. There we go, my eagle enthusiasts.

Get your playoff dance cards ready. It's golf playoff time. Nate and I are coming back every week through. the playoffs through the Tour Championship right on into the U.S. Up, and we're back next week with a review of the Northern Trust and a preview of the BMW. Until then, my friends, let's head up straight out there.