🚜 Hay, It's In My Jeans

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Jul 04, 2023

First off — happy fourth to all those who celebrate. Hope you all have a fun and safe holiday.

Use this week to rest and relax because we will need to start getting our body clocks acclimated to European time. After Silvis this week, the Scottish Open is on deck — then obviously — the Open Championship.

It’s almost coffee golf szn.

Good Luck
Rick

🏆 Last Week’s Optimal Lineup 🚀

📈 Ramping Up For Rickie

I’ve seen Rickie’s win described as a “capper” to his multi-year long slump. I’ve seen many describe it as “coming full circle”. In my opinion, this is just a launching point for continued success.

Since the start of 2023, Fowler has gained 1.77 strokes per round — 7th best rate of anyone in the world.

Now he heads overseas for the Scottish Open and Open Championship where he has a win and six more Top 10 finishes since 2010.
- His runner-up at the 2014 Open Championship was at Royal Liverpool, where he head again this year.
He’s now 8th in the FedEx Cup Standings — if the season ended right now, it would be his best finish since 2017.
He’s almost certainly locked into the US Ryder Cup team.

This is a stretch of golf that will have Fowler drooling for more.

🛑 Pump The Brakes

I encourage you to go back and read any number of Collin Morikawa transcripts in the last few months and you’ll get plenty of quotes like:

“It's just been a grind to figure out what it is. I feel like visually the swing looks great, but something small is making it miss left and that's just what that was.”

“I don't think I'm hitting it well until today, until this week really. There were -- like the good shots were good, the good shots were just as good, but the misses were worse”

“Yeah, this year hasn't been great, but I'm not giving up. We're still right there, we're 32nd FedExCup. A win puts us pretty high up so just focus how to win. I think it's just coming down to control the golf ball. Right now I brought in left on the golf course.”

You would think he’s at rock bottom and has zero control over his golf ball. Let’s put this into perspective a bit…

Since January 1st, Morikawa (+1.53/round) is the 8th best player in the world — right between Rickie Fowler and Viktor Hovland.
He’s the second best approach player during that stretch (+1.00) — behind only Scottie Scheffler.
He’s the fourth best tee-to-green player during that stretch (+1.54) — behind Scheffler, Cantlay and Rahm.
Since implementing AimPoint at the PGA Championship, he’s gained strokes putting in five of six starts.

The wins are coming and they are coming in bunches.

🧹 Sweeping With Gloves

Lucas Glover has implemented a long LAB Golf putter in recent weeks. I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly when he started using it but I know he was using the short putter at Quail Hollow and was tinkering with the long putter around the U.S. Open — an event that he didn’t qualify for. He definitely used it at the Travelers Championship (-3.63 strokes putting).

UPDATE: Thanks to a keen eye from Douglas S., we’ve been able to confirm that Glover also used the broomstick at the Canadian Open and Memorial. That’s four straight.

The reason for all this detective work is that Glover gained 5.42 strokes putting last week in Detroit. It could be an outlier or that he’s finally getting more comfortable with the new equipment. Either way, it’s his best putting week since the 2021 Honda Classic.

This becomes even more relevant this week since Glover is a past champion of the John Deere Classic, winning in 2021. He also has a T10 and T25 in the last four years. Those good results have come with some pretty sour putting performances so if he can fix that part of his game, he’s a steal at +7000.

❓ Trivia!

There are four golfers in this field who have gained at least 1.0 stroke per round at this event since 2008 (min 20 rounds).

Zach Johnson is the easy one — first at 1.90/round in 56 rounds.
You’d probably deduced Glover is another — fourth at 1.03/round in 26 rounds.

Name either of the other two golfers who fit the criteria.
(Answer at bottom of this post)

🦋 Give Yourself a Chance!

Similar to least week, you’ll need to go low around TPC Deere Run to have a chance at hoisting the trophy on Sunday. The number of birdies (or better) is closely tied to the number of birdie opportunities that each golfer provides themselves — duh!

Here are the best players in this field, over the last 50 rounds, at Opportunities (birdie looks inside 15’) and Opportunities+ (birdie looks inside 10’).

🤢 Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

Callum Tarren led the field in SG: Ball-Striking last week (+10.58) but gave away 8.13 strokes on the putting surfaces — the worst in the field. The “good news” is that last week was about 7.49 strokes putting worse than his expectation. Yes, he struggles with the putter, but not usually *that bad*. He also has a great sense of humor about it.

🐭 Weaker Than Most!

This field will rate as one of the weakest of the year but they will stand hand out a big paycheck and trophy on the 18th green. This competition certainly creates a path for many more names to earn their way to the top of the board. Here are the best players in “weak fields” since 2019.

⚠️ In Case You Missed It

⛰️ Utah will get a PGA TOUR event in 2024. Armina and I are big fans of Southern Utah and there are some incredible red rock golf courses. This is going to be a blast.

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Trivia Answer:
Ryan Moore — second with 1.36/round in 46 rounds.
Patrick Rodgers — third with 1.08/round in 30 rounds.