Month: January 2023

The PGA TOUR continues its California swing this week with the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Pebble Beach Golf Links will be the host, and we are back to both a three-course rotation and 54-hole cut this week. Golfers will each play one round at Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula and Spyglass Hill over the first three days, before returning to Pebble Beach for the final round. All three courses sit between 6,816 and 7,035 yards, while Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill are both par 72s. Monterey Peninsula will play as a par 71. All three courses feature poa greens. The field this week is headlined by Matt Fitzpatrick, Jordan Spieth and Viktor Hovland. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $700K Pitch + Putt [$200K to 1st] GOLFERS TO CONSIDER Jordan Spieth ($10,600) Spieth boasts some great course history at the event having played each year over the last decade. Since 2013, Spieth hasn't missed the cut, while posting a win, five additional top-10 finishes and a pair of top 20s. It's not entirely surprising to see Spieth dominate here, considering how small the greens are at Pebble. Everyone is going to miss their fair share of greens in regulation, putting an emphasis on both short game and putting, which Spieth has generally done better than many over the years. Spieth is still smarting from going from first round leader to missing the cut at the Sony Open in Hawaii, and he was T13 the week prior at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. The three-time major winner ranks No. 2 in SG: Tee-to-Green, seventh in SG: Ball-Striking and sixth in SG: Total over his past 48 rounds. Only Fitzpatrick has been better from tee-to-green than Spieth in that time frame. We have seen Spieth flip a proverbial switch when he gets to Pebble Beach every year, regardless of form, and I would expect nothing less this year. He makes for a great play in all formats. Nick Taylor ($8,000) Not quite to the extent of Spieth, but Taylor is also a former winner at Pebble Beach who boasts great course history. He's made six of eight cuts here, including his win in 2020 and two additional top-15 finishes. Despite missing two of his past three cuts, Taylor had previously been playing some strong golf, which extended back to the fall swing. The Canadian finished T7 at the Sony Open in Hawaii three weeks ago and had a stretch in mid-September where he posted three top-25 finishes in four weeks, including a T6 at the Fortinet Championship. Taylor's rolling stats have been pretty steady in this time frame as well, ranking 19th in this field in SG: Tee-to-Green, 16th in SG: Approach and 19th in SG: Total. His $8,000 salary is also quite reasonable for both his course history and recent form, and I will gladly go back to the well here. Beau Hossler ($7,400) Hossler was a disappointment last week at the Farmers Insurance Open, but we can chalk it up to an anomaly, as it was his usually steady putter that let him down. Dating back 48 rounds in this field, Hossler ranks seventh in SG: Putting, so as you can see, this is not something we should expect to continue. I am happy to go right back to him this week at a strong price of just $7,400, especially after he gained two strokes ball-striking in his lone round at the South Course at Torrey Pines last week. Prior to last week, Hossler had made five of his previous six cuts, with three top-25 finishes in that stretch. He also has some good familiarity with Pebble Beach, having played here six times in his career, which has resulted in four made cuts and a T3 last season. There is plenty of upside here for the price, and we're getting three guaranteed rounds from him no matter what, so hopefully he can turn his putting around.. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $700K Pitch + Putt [$200K to 1st] Put your knowledge to the test. Sign up for DraftKings and experience the game inside the game. I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and customer (my username is Lan1228) and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skill and judgment in building lineups. I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above. I am not an employee of DraftKings and do not have access to any non-public information.

The Farmers Insurance Open was Max Homa's sixth PGA TOUR victory. And his first as a father. The change in a player's outlook after the birth of his first child is such a common storyline that it also has become fodder for jokes on social media. Homa has joined in the fun by adding #perspective to some of his posts about fatherhood. Jokes aside, the presence of his wife and son made Saturday's victory at Torrey Pines an emotional one for Homa. He spoke after the win about his wife's difficult labor, his gratitude for her hard work as a mother and his enjoyment of even the dirty side of parenting (aka diapers). Homa also has his son's name stamped on all four of his Vokey wedges. Homa may be one of the most popular players in the game, the FedExCup leader and the 13th-ranked player in the world, but he's also known as "Cam's dad," which is stamped on all four of his wedges. "I work hard at two things now, so it feels a little bit more difficult but it’s a million times more rewarding," Homa said Saturday evening. "To see them behind the 18th green knowing I was probably about to win a golf tournament was cool. ... This will be my corny dad story that I will tell every Thanksgiving or something." Wedges are an important part of any TOUR player's bag, and have to be personalized to match the player's preferences and swing, as well as the conditions he faces. Homa uses four Vokey Design SM9 wedges: the 46.10F, 50.12F, 56.14F and 60.04L models. The numbers to the left of the decimal point are the loft, while the numbers to the right represent the bounce. The letter represents the grind. Vokey's Tour Rep, Aaron Dill, added the "Cam's Dad" stamping before delivering the fresh set of wedges to Homa at Torrey Pines. Dill explained how Homa landed on his current wedge configuration, including a high-bounce sand wedge and low-bounce lob wedge: "When you ask guys the question, ‘Why do you have this grind and this much bounce?' a lot of times they'll say, ‘I don't know. It's just kind of what I've always played.' So spending some time with him, and digging a little deeper into how to build his set makeup, we realized that he was a little limited in the types of shots he could hit, especially greenside," Dill said. "I gave him an option that was a little bit less bounce, and he began to realize that ‘Oh my gosh, some of the shots that I was afraid to hit, I can hit those again.' By taking some of that bounce away and giving him the thinner sole of the L grind, he can now fearlessly go to any shot that he's facing and obviously pull off some miraculous ones. "Max has a high bounce sand wedge (56.14F) and low bounce lob wedge (60.04L), and that combination gives him the ability to hit anything he wants. He was playing an M grind in the 60 before and he just had a little too much width. ... When you have a lot of sole width, it can be tricky to (open the face). So by giving him a little bit thinner sole, he can open it up. It sits nice and close, and he can just freely do the things that he needs to do. "I think when you look at the correlation between the types of players who use an M Grind on the PGA TOUR, they're a little steeper. Max is a very shallow player. He's very good at hitting low and high shots. But I think for him being a shallow guy, he doesn't have to be too fearful about sticking into the ground. So he and (his coach) Mark Blackburn have done a terrific job of dialing in his short game and keeping him out of that style of shot so he can play a low bounce wedge and not have any discomfort with it." Having the correct wedge setup helped Cameron's dad win another PGA TOUR title, and change diapers with an even bigger smile on his face. "These tournaments are hard, man, but it puts you in the best mood ever when you come out on top," he said. "He can poop away and I’ll just be here for him." Perspective, indeed.