‘Everything is on the table’ this offseason for the Broncos as they search for a starting quarterback for the 2022 season, general manager George Paton said Tuesday.
Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott had surgery on his non-throwing shoulder, but coach Mike McCarthy doesn’t expect it to keep him out of the offseason program.
Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan has decided against hiring an executive vice president and will now leave key football decisions to new coach Doug Pederson and general manager Trent Baalke.
The field at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard this week is stacked. Led by world No. 1 Jon Rahm, who currently has golf odds of +800 to win, and also featuring three more from the world top six in Viktor Hovland, Scottie Scheffler and 2018 champion Rory McIlroy, the tournament sets up to be a special one. Additionally, the Bay Hill Club & Lodge just outside of Orlando, Florida has been compared to major championship courses given its thick rough, difficult greens and sometimes windy conditions. Given all that, it takes a special talent to beat the rest of the field and hold the trophy come Sunday evening. So, one would expect the betting action to be on an established player, who probably has experience winning other tournaments on the PGA TOUR. That is not the case. Will Zalatoris, who is just 25 and doesn’t have a PGA TOUR win to his name, is generating the earliest action at the BetMGM online sportsbook. As of Tuesday morning, Zalatoris, who has golf odds of +2500 to win, is pulling in 8.5% of the tickets and 14% of the handle, both of which are the most in the field. Believe it or not, it is easy to see why. The Wake Forest product has made three starts in the 2022 calendar year and has finished tied for sixth, second, and 26th. The second-place finish was a playoff loss to Luke List at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, a course that has hosted multiple U.S. Opens. Over his short career, which is just 41 events, Zalatoris has two second-place finishes, 10 top-10 finishes, and 18 top-25 finishes. Clearly, he’s a special talent and is due for a win and that has been a trend of late on TOUR. There have been four first-time winners over the last five weeks, including Sepp Straka at the Honda Classic last week. Zalatoris can also fall back on a solid week at his only other Arnold Palmer Invitational appearance last year when he finished tied for 10th. Current Handle & Tickets Handle: Will Zalatoris – 14% Rory McIlroy – 10% Sungjae Im – 7.9% Viktor Hovland – 6.4% Hideki Matsuyama – 5.8% Tickets: Will Zalatoris – 8.5% Hideki Matsuyama – 6.8% Viktor Hovland – 6.0% Rory McIlroy – 5.8% Jon Rahm – 4.4% Rahm has seen his odds go from +900 to +800, while Im has seen the biggest movement, going from +3000 to +2500. Some other notable golf odds to win include McIlroy +1100, Hovland +1600, and Scheffler +1600. Defending champion Bryson DeChambeau withdrew from the event on Monday due to a hand injury. A good mix of players – both long and short hitters – have won the event in the past, with winning scores typically being in the low double-digits under par. An exception was in 2019 when Tyrell Hatton had a winning score of -4, as the tournament was played in extremely windy conditions. You can view updated golf odds for the Arnold Palmer Invitational winner, top American finisher, wire-to-wire winner, and more at the BetMGM online sportsbook. * Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 21+ years of age or older to wager. BetMGM available in AZ, CO, DC, IA, IN, LA, MI, MS, NJ, NV, NY, PA, TN, VA, WV, or WY only. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Paid in free bets. Free bets expire in 7 days from issuance. Minimum deposit required. Excludes Michigan Disassociated Persons. Please Gamble Responsibly. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (CO, DC, LA, NV, WY, VA), 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help (MI), 1-800-GAMBLER (IN, NJ, PA & WV), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA) or call (877-8-HOPENY) or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), call or text the Tennessee REDLINE: 800-889-9789 (TN) or call 1-888-777-9696 (MS). Sports betting is void where prohibited. Promotional offers not available in Nevada.
Veteran point guard Isaiah Thomas is signing with the Hornets on a 10-day contract, sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Thomas has played for the Lakers and Mavs this season.
Veteran point guard Isaiah Thomas is signing with the Hornets on a 10-day contract, a source told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Thomas has played for the Lakers and Mavs this season.
Separating Factor One way of measuring a player’s ability to assemble rounds that separate him or her from the competition is to look at the percentage of the time he gains a large amount of strokes against the field in one specific discipline. For example, players gain a full stroke or more over the field with their approach shots about 27% of the time overall. Collin Morikawa, however, does that 55% of the time. Morikawa is the PGA TOUR leader in Strokes Gained: Approach over the last two seasons, at 1.13 per round. Zalatoris has flashed the ability to separate himself from the field via his approach play over the last two seasons. He gains more than one stroke with his approach play in 41.7% of his rounds since the beginning of last season, the fifth-highest rate on TOUR in that span. Zalatoris has gained three or more strokes on the field with his approach play in 9.2% of his rounds – that is more than three times the TOUR average (3.0%) over the last 2 seasons. Long Iron Advantage The best players in the world are able to make marginal gains over the field in myriad ways. One of the key places where Zalatoris makes those gains is on long approach shots, where he is consistently better than the competition. Over the last two seasons, Zalatoris is ranked 11th on the PGA TOUR in average proximity on approach shots outside 200 yards. Will’s average of 46 feet, 7 inches from that range may not seem overwhelming on the surface, but consider this: that’s more than 6 feet better than the PGA TOUR average. From 175-200 yards away, he’s more than 2 feet better than the TOUR average over the last two seasons. Breaking it down to shots from 200-225 yards out, he’s 4 feet, 5 inches better than the average. These add up over the course of a tournament, especially at a place like Bay Hill Club & Lodge, a venue that has yielded more approaches from outside 200 yards than any other PGA TOUR venue over the last 5 seasons. Due for a Breakthrough? The PGA TOUR has seen a wave of first-time winners early in 2022. Four of the last five winners on TOUR have been first-timers, the first time we have seen that happen since the fall of 2017. This is the first calendar year in which there were four first-time winners before March 1st since all the way back in 2002. It’s not unprecedented for a first-time winner to emerge from the traditionally strong fields at Bay Hill, as both Matt Every (2014) and Tyrrell Hatton (2020) have claimed their maiden PGA TOUR titles at this tournament in recent years. With underlying metrics that predict big-time success, that breakthrough win could come this week for Zalatoris. Last April, casual sports fans were introduced in grand fashion to wiry Will Zalatoris. Zalatoris had all phases of his game clicking in his Masters debut: he ranked fourth in the field that week in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, second in greens in regulation (73.6%) and fifth in Strokes Gained: Putting. His solo runner-up finish was the best by a player in his Masters debut since Dan Pohl in 1982. But golf fans in the know had been attuned to Zalatoris’ ascent for some time. In each of his first five Korn Ferry Tour starts after the pandemic hiatus, Zalatoris finished T6 or better. In the extended 2020-21 Korn Ferry Tour season, Zalatoris ranked first in scoring average, ball striking and the all-around ranking. A T6 at the U.S. Open in the fall of 2020 further cemented Zalatoris’ status as a name on the rise. Zalatoris played his way off the Korn Ferry Tour months earlier than anticipated and propelled himself to the Arnold Palmer Award, given to the TOUR’s top rookie, in 2021. Just how good has Zalatoris been in his young pro career, and why has he exceled? Twenty First Group dove into the numbers. Elite Ball Striker There are 177 players with 50 or more rounds measured by PGA TOUR ShotLink since the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot began. Among that group, Zalatoris has generated some of the most impressive and consistent tee-to-green statistics. He ranks fourth in Strokes Gained: Approach, trailing only Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Paul Casey. He’s fifth in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, narrowly behind reigning FedExCup champion Patrick Cantlay in that statistic. He’s sixth in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking in that span, a statistic that isolates performance off the tee and on approach shots. When narrowing the focus to just this season, the numbers are even more impressive. Zalatoris leads the TOUR in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green (1.93) and Strokes Gained: Approach (1.22) per round. He’s currently ninth in greens in regulation (74.6%) and has more than doubled his amount of Strokes Gained: Around the Green per round so far this season compared to last. Improvement on the greens could elevate Zalatoris into superstardom: so far this season, he’s making below the TOUR average on putts from 4-8 feet, inside 10 feet and from 10-15 feet.
Twelve-time PGA TOUR winner Jason Day has signed with Bridgestone Golf to use its golf ball. Day, whose victories include the 2016 PLAYERS and 2015 PGA Championship, first became interested in Bridgestone’s TOUR B XS after seeing Tiger Woods use the ball to hit some high-spinning short game shots. Though he had no relationship with Bridgestone Golf at the time, Day began experimenting with Woods’ ball and was impressed enough to start playing it on TOUR. “We were doing some short-game work with Tiger’s ball, the XS, and it caught my attention right away,” said Day. “I initially played the XS and liked it but after working with Bridgestone’s R&D team and really learning about the ball fitting process, it was obvious that the TOUR B X was the best fit for my game.” Day will be playing the 2022 TOUR B X for the foreseeable future. Day, who has been an equipment free agent over the past couple years, is 86th in this season’s FedExCup after finishing third at the Farmers Insurance Open. He is 90th in the Official World Golf Ranking after reaching the No. 1 position earlier in his career. “Every day I look at what I can do to get better and the choice to play Bridgestone feeds right into that,” said Day. “Personally, I feel kind of like I am cheating playing this ball. Of course, I’m not but it’s that good. The performance of the TOUR B affords me opportunities to be aggressive; off the tee, the ball speed is there but it’s still super spinny around the green, which is a nice combination. “I found a lot more consistency in not only the drives but consistency around the greens, as well. Consistency is huge for me.” Day joins Tiger Woods, Fred Couples, Matt Kuchar, Bryson DeChambeau and Lexi Thompson in representing Bridgestone.
A new breed of personnel now runs baseball, bent on treating it as a Fortune 500 company rather than as a sport.
How it works: Each week, our experts from PGATOUR.COM will make their selections in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. Each lineup consists of four starters and two bench players that can be rotated after each round. Adding to the challenge is that every golfer can be used only three times per each of four Segments. Aside from the experts below, Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton breaks down the field at this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard in this week’s edition of the Power Rankings. For more fantasy, check out Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers and Reshuffle. THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN OUR EXPERTS? The PGA TOUR Experts league is once again open to the public. You can play our free fantasy game and see how you measure up against our experts below. Joining the league is simple. Just click here to sign up or log in. Once you create a team, click the “LEAGUES” tab. Then click on “FEATURED,” and then on the PGA TOUR Experts league that populates. SEASON SEGMENT
