Cognizant Classic: Trend Table
We must be cognizant of who is playing well.
The Finau & Hojgaard fades worked wonders last week. I’m still incredibly salty about Keith Mitchell’s three bogey start on Thursday because it cost him a chance to be in contention. He lit it up after that ended up finishing about 5 Draft Kings points behind Finau after missing a 5’ birdie putt on his 72nd hole, presumably because he knew he was toast, but the theory was right there & saved us a lot of dough for other golfers instead of dumpster diving and we did it at half the clicks as the rest of the field.
We’ll continue to apply those theories and identify other spots using all of the tools in front of us.
The Florida swing starts this week with Cognizant (formerly Honda) and the PGA National Resort Champions Course is frequently one of the tougher tests the players see over the year. It’s not an overly long course, but it requires elite approach & ball striking capabilities and not being a useless putter. There are water hazards everywhere, so accuracy is a plus, but due to forced layups and layouts and length, it isn’t always a driver off the tee course.
Without further ado, let’s take a peek at who is trending where. And as a note for new readers and gentle reminder for long time readers, the trend table is just getting an idea of whose recent form is playing above baseline and who is playing good golf - not an end all be all. I also won’t touch on every player in the trend table, just a handful that stick out to me and we dive further into players when we actually chop the field down into our player pool.
Not shocking to see a lot of the names here, especially up top, given performances at Mexico or a recent win, such as Pavon’s case or Valimaki’s second last week.
Doug Ghim is very high up and I can see him potentially steaming on clicks - we’ll have to monitor that. But, his last three tournaments have seen a 13th at Farmers, 12th at WM Phoenix & an 8th last week at Mexico. I suspect that’s why his clicks will climb especially given salary. If digging into course history, he’s… subpar, to say the least, never having made a cut. If he steams up, he’s an easy fade candidate, but we’ll have to see.
Hoge has been playing lights out golf as well - no shock to see him rate highly here. His recent form has everything we’re looking for in a putter, accuracy and approach/ball striking. Terrible course history as well, but hasn’t played here in two years. It will come down to clicks as he’s trapped in the $7,900 no mans land range.
Straka broke my heart at Genesis, but he has amazing course history here and is still solidly on the right side of the trend table. Even more in the no man land range than Hoge at $8,600, we’ll see where he comes out.
Kirk won here last year.
I can already tell I’m going to write about Greyson Sigg and probably play him, so my blood feud continues unabated. (He did well in Mexico and finished strong).
Poston & McCarthy seem like they’d be good course fits here with good iron play, great putters & good accuracy.
A couple of the guys showing zero we may just not have enough data on to accurately tell where their game is, especially the rookies or KFT guys.
I can see Eric Cole steaming up here especially given his performance last year and course fit. Nothing overly concerning, but he’s definitely trending on the wrong side of where we see people.
Tom Detry is super, super cheap this week and I can see people heading towards him - had one of the worst golf outings I’ve seen a player have, especially at price, last week in Mexico.
Conners, Hossler & Min Woo Lee are pretty well known names, so fade candidates if they show double digit clicks.
I think there are a lot of cautionary tales down here - this is the danger range. We’ll see how it plays out, but some of the names that stand out to me as potential fades (and we’ll cover if they make the player pool) are List, Eckroat, Tom Kim, Benny An (Byeong Hun An), Matt Fitz (good course fit, though), Russ Henley, Sungjae Im, Tyler Duncan (high finish last year), and the popular on Twitter Michael Kim.
Holy cow how bad has Rickie Fowler been?
See you tomorrow for the player pool.