Toph's Thoughts: RBC Heritage
I seriously love Harbour Town
I’ve seen some loose projections that Collin Morikawa might only be low teen’s in terms of roster number. I’ll take that all day. Per the PGA Tour data - he’s second overall this year in driving accuracy. In the data I use in the model, he’s top 10 in things like good drive percentage, scrambling, accuracy, and greens or fringe in regulation. This isn’t everything he’s near the top in and not everything I use. He’s mostly been lurking, and I feel very confident in his game. I love Cantlay as well, but Morikawa is projecting at half the clicks Cantlay is.
Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler are good at golf. I don’t really know what else to tell you.
Matt Kuchar … I know… I know. But he had a terrific tournament at Valero and his course history at Harbour Town is so ridiculously strong. It’s a course that fits his game extremely well and he doesn’t make a lot of back breaking mistakes. He’s a smidge higher in price than I prefer, but I feel in that range he’ll maybe go overlooked for golfers like Keegan Bradley, Corey Conners, Russ Henley, Justin Rose and Rickie Fowler who are all within $300 and carry a lot more name recognition. They all played at Augusta, sans Rickie, and that kind of week to week carries weight with players. Kuchar is not losing strokes anywhere in his game the last 16 rounds and makes less than two bogey’s per round on average. He also leads the PGA Tour in scrambling.
Wyndham Clark is someone who is trending positively, and has a positive accuracy trend. He’s another in the Kuchar price range surrounded by the golfers I just mentioned and I don’t think people will be rushing to click him. He has phenomenal approach and ball striking numbers.
Tom Kim is trending up, played well at the Masters and finds his way back into the model. He never dominates one particular stat category, but I’m much higher on him this week than the model. His accuracy is on the way up, he rarely makes bogey — in part because he’s fantastic at getting on the fringe or green itself in regulation. $8,500 is a great price especially when I think the field is more likely to click $8,400 Matt Fitzpatrick.
Stephan Jaeger WD’d from his last two tournaments and didn’t qualify for Augusta. Something to be a little cautious of?
Ben Martin is crazy, crazy accurate and has elite ball striking numbers. Per the data I use - his ball striking numbers are slightly above Jon Rahm. You may have heard of him. No, I’m not saying Ben Martin is Jon Rahm. But Ben Martin has a good game profile for Harbour Town and if he get his putting working a little bit better he’ll not only add to his made cut list (hasn’t missed since late January), he’ll silently move up the leaderboard. He has three top 10’s in his last 5 starts. $7,100? Sign me up.
A Cam Young breakout is coming very soon. Not sure if it’ll be here as Harbour Town doesn’t favor bombers and Cam can get a little wayward at times. But it’s coming folks.
Jordan Spieth is an absolute roller coaster, but if he’s going to be sub 10% as the reigning Heritage champion and that ridiculous Sunday he just posted at Augusta, he might be the best pivot at the top of the field.
Good luck - let’s get 6/6 through.
