Player Pool: 3M Open
The golfers head to Minnesota
I am writing this piece and the following pieces Monday night, FYI. I head out on a quick 3 day family vacation tomorrow and if I brought my laptop to discuss golf while on said family vacation, I think my wife would call the authorities on me and nobody needs that. So, that being said, PLEASE use caution and monitor any WD’s from the field as I will likely not be able to update anything if any of these dudes in this list WD.
TPC-Twin Cities is a really cool course that will yield plenty of birdies and an absurd amount of water balls. Water comes into play on an incredible amount of holes and will claim victim to many a Titleist, Taylor Made and Srixon over this week. It plays just over 7,200 yards, where it falls right about the middle of the pack distance wise. Because of the extra length rough, the multitude of water hazards, etc, length is not a requirement at TPC-TC. It won’t hurt, but it’s also not a distinct advantage. Again, I’m looking for fairway finders who can dial in with their mid irons. The greens are among the easiest on Tour to gain strokes on putting, so it was one of the last things I considered. Taking advantage of scoring opportunities will be a requirement - -21, -19, -15 and last years -17 were the winning scores in the four previous iterations of this tournament. With three par 5’s and several accessible par 4’s, those who can simply take care of business on the par 5’s and find a handful of birdies elsewhere will find themselves in contention so long as they aren’t posting large numbers from finding the drink.
Weather doesn’t appear to be any sort of factor this week and something I rarely consider anyway, unless it is an extreme circumstance. The only thing that I will be factoring in for my thought process is potential jet lag for players returning from across the pond. Have they been over there for both The Open and the Scottish? Did they make the cut at The Open and fly back sometime Sunday/Monday? I certainly think it’s something to consider — not saying eliminate them from the player pool, but fatigue may well be a factor.
Right off the bat, Lucas Glover remains a top end presence. He’s really turned his game on. I think he could thrive here at TPC-TC. He’s placed a 4th at Rocket Mortgage, a 6th at John Deere and a 5th at Barbasol. He’s not coming from across the ocean and has been in the Midwest for the past month. Extremely accurate, incredible approach and ball striking numbers, Glover has also revived his putter. My biggest concern will be how many clicks he gets as he is severely mispriced comparative to his recent performances and ranks 6th in my full field trend table. (Brian Harman was 5th last week, as an FYI.)
Cam Young, Sepp Straka, Grillo, Hideki and Gary Woodland all played in The Open and made the cut. They were all still there Sunday evening and working on traveling home. All good plays on paper this week, potentially something to just monitor fatigue wise.
Troy Merritt is number one by a mile in my full field trend table. His biggest weakness is his putter and if these greens are as forgiving as they appear to be, he could be looking at easily paying off his salary. My only question is potential fatigue - he qualified last minute for the Scottish Open, WD from Barbasol to go to Scotland, MC’d, off to California last week for the Barracuda where he made the cut but didn’t make any true noise, and is now coming back across the country for another tournament. That is a lot of miles.
Chez, Sigg, Cone, Glover and Merritt are all in the green in terms of the trend table — which means they’re in the upper echelon of positive trends.
Hojgaard leads off our more volatile section of the player pool and is another golfer who made the cut at The Open and played deep into Sunday.
I’m going to write about Keith Mitchell and give myself away here - I’m pretty enamored with the Georgia Bulldog. Can he make three straight weeks a Dawg takes home a title? When I put everything together earlier, his name kind of immediately jumped out at me based on the initial factors I was looking at. He’s terrific off the tee with solid ball striking numbers and plus distance. He’s not going to put himself out of position very often. He had a solo 5 here in 2021 and didn’t play last year, but is 2/3 in made cuts. He’ll have the motivation to make a push after being left out of The Open. 14th in my full field trend table, and middle of the pack in the player pool — again drawing some parallels to Harman last week, who I wrote about twice. With Mitchell, the biggest hang up has been his putter and I go right back to this - if these greens are as forgiving as they appear to be, he can find enough mojo to put himself in contention and with his driver being a weapon, he shouldn’t be putting himself out of position often.
Just thinking out loud as I wanted to break up the above paragraph that is sure to come back and bite me — I think with Harman last week and my lean towards Mitchell this week, I was curious why I’ve been finding the middle of the pack in the player pool so much - based on the data I use and being more biased to recent form, the middle of the pack players that aren’t seeing the pool week to week are usually guys that are making immense strides in their game and appear high in the trend table as well and they are poised to put it all together. Purely an opinion on my part, but one of the most plausible theories I have.
Finau was a MC at the Open, but both Sungjae and Ryan Fox played well into Sunday at Hoylake. Fatigue must be potentially taken into account there. It’s a shame, because I think this course really complements what Sungjae does well as a ball striker and a putter. A shame only in the sense that if he wasn’t coming from two weeks abroad and playing Sunday at The Open, I’d be a lot more heavily invested in the Korean star.
It’s the return of the Eck-goat! Austin made the cut at the Scottish Open, but didn’t play last week, so likely has less of the fatigue/travel concerns. A plus accuracy player, with some much needed rest from a torrid stretch, this could be a spot where he regains his form and his plus putter takes him deep into Sunday.
Adam Hadwin should be fully rested and recharged after not playing since a MC at the John Deere. He makes a lot of birdies, is an accurate player with an outstanding approach game and a top notch putter. This is a field that has similarities to Rocket Mortgage, a place he lost to Rickie Fowler in a playoff. His T2G, approach and ball striking trend are really jumping off the page. Could go overlooked.
For all the talk (deservedly) about how bad Justin Thomas’ game has been (and that hurts to write - JT is absolutely one of my guys) why aren’t we putting the same pressure on Tony Finau? He’s missed 3 cuts in his last 5 outings and in his last two+ months, his highest finish is 32nd. His game is in a nose dive right now - not what you want for the returning champ and slate’s second highest priced golfer. If he projects for single digit clicks because the field doesn’t want to pay up for a bad golf game, then you’re going to want to buy in just for leverage sake, but I’m not chasing in cash or single entry tournaments.