Player Pool: Rocket Mortgage Classic
The fellas
Quick Traveler’s recap: I’m a little chapped on this one. We went 25/38 for a 66% made cut clip. Well below our average. Can’t account for guys like Jon Rahm & Tommy Fleetwood explosions or Lee Hodges missing a par putt on his 36th hole by literally one inch to miss the cut on the number. If if’s & but’s were candy & nuts, the 5 players that were in the pool and missed by a stroke, that would have moved us to 79% cuts made. Process wise, we were there, but golf’s extreme variance likes to mess with us.
The Rocket Mortgage Classic - my home state PGA Tour stop - brings us another birdie fest. One of the reasons the player pool is coming to you on Wednesday morning is I spent eight hours at Detroit Golf Club yesterday mixing it up with the players practicing and walking the course. It’s one of the oldest courses on Tour, designed by Donald Ross in the early 1900’s, and because of that, doesn’t carry overwhelming length nor particularly tough angles. It’s mostly straight and trees line the fairway, but the trees are relatively sparse and the course has very, very little defense. We received a ton of rain and storms that made the course incredibly soft. I could feel my foot making indentations in the fairways I walked across yesterday. It will be sunny & in the 80’s the rest of the week, so I do expect it to firm up at some point, but I’m expecting Thursday to be a birdie bonanza.
Because of just how little defense this course has, I didn’t look at some of the things I normally look at because they simply don’t matter. This is going to be a short iron/wedge approach game and if they can putt. One thing I want to highlight as different in the pool - I put distance ranks next to the DK salaries and I’ve never done that - this is only rank inside the player pool - the reason I did that is because I believe distance might offer a slight advantage at DGC, but it skews the numbers by a wide margin. You can use the ranks as a tiebreaker if you’re stuck on someone.
Doug Ghim??? Ok, then.
Austin Eckroat - a Substack favorite and a personal favorite. I met Austin yesterday, told him we call him Austin Eck-goat and he laughed and said it was a great nickname. Incredibly cool dude and gracious. So not only does he pass the data test, he passed the vibes test yesterday with flying colors. He’s 8th overall in my full field trend table which means he keeps improving on an already good game.
Kevin Yu - told me yesterday the knee was feeling great and getting stronger. He faded a little on the weekend at Traveler’s, but the balls I saw him yesterday were absolute missiles and I was mostly posted up on the tee box at 6 which I believe will be one of the hardest holes on the course and likely the toughest on the front 9. He played all 18 yesterday, so he was definitely doing his homework and putting in his routine. This, of course, is all observational — but the data backs him.
Nate Lashley won the inaugural event here in 2019 in which he could not miss a putt. I think he’ll get a lot more clicks at his price point than he normally would because of course history, but that is definitely something you can’t discount, either.
The only question I have on Keegan is if he has a Traveler’s hangover from an emotionally charged hometown win.
The much more volatile portion of the player pool. Gordon Sargent jumps from 21st to 4th if I had accounted for his distance numbers. That’s what I meant by how much that skews the data. But he can certainly hit the ball a country mile.
Last years champion Tony Finau and the prior years champ, Cam Davis, can be found on this page. I met Cam Davis briefly yesterday - again, this is purely observational and “vibe check” based - but he told me he was happy to be back in Detroit and he has good vibes around the place. $9,300 is a steep price to pay for vibes, but he seemed loose and confident and knows this is a place he can excel with a win and a T-14 last year. Per datagolf’s free course history interactive tool, Davis has a positive 1.12 adjusted strokes gained at DGC through 12 rounds.
I said last week you won’t see Ludvig Aberg in the $7K range for long and even in a more watered down field, he gets a massive bump to $8,700. He’s insanely talented, he’s high in my trend table and I think his driver is going to be a massive weapon at DGC. He’s improving everywhere, save approach, but he has not missed a cut in his pro career and has two back to back top 25’s and was the world’s #1 amateur. I’m all in.
JT was in great spirits yesterday and seems committed to righting the ship - he’s just inside the cut for the FedEx playoffs and can all but secure his spot with a high finish here in Detroit. A nice rebound last week in Connecticut, if he found something that can give him a spark and return the confidence, he’s probably top three to five most purely talented golfers in the field. The price tag last week was infinitely better and he is projecting at a 20% click rate, but that’s much better than Rickie’s at 30%.
We’ll have more for you later today.