Daily Wrap Up Dean & Deluca Round 4

You know you wanna, so go ahead. You learned your lesson. Make it count. One & Doners trapped between caution and conviction were second-guessing themselves when Tiger Woods emerged from the logjam at the Masters to secure his fifth green jacket. Now there’s no doubt that Woods gets the call at Bethpage State Park’s Black Course, site of the PGA Championship as well as his 2002 U.S. Open title. You saw – and felt – what transpired at Augusta National, and you’ve observed him exert careful ownership of his schedule. If there are tournaments that you know he won’t bypass, they are the majors. Despite what you’ll find below, those are the only Future Possibilities on which you should be focusing. RELATED: Tee times | Power Rankings | Expert Picks | Horses for Courses | Fantasy Insider Pebble Beach hosts the U.S. Open in a month, so pick your pleasure. Woods is a winner there, too – twice, in fact, if you include the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. It’s been 19 years since both, but it had been 14 years since his last victory at the Masters. As Woods has acknowledged, Father Time is undefeated, but GOATs make sure that he doesn’t prevail before receiving a powerful punch. If you’re also sitting on Phil Mickelson, then save him for Pebble Beach where’s he’s won five times in the annual PGA TOUR event contested every winter. That includes earlier this year. Lefty couldn’t have hand-picked a better site to convert on the career grand slam. Default to Woods at the PGA and you’re solid. Of course, it’s 2019 and not 2000 or 2002, so there are more than enough familiar faces in whom to invest at Bethpage. Defending champion Brooks Koepka will run away with the highest ownership percentage in PGA TOUR Fantasy One & Done. And he should. His swagger is what every gamer wants. His form is tip-top and he has a chip on his shoulder since he probably still can’t believe how his birdie try on the 72nd hole of the Masters didn’t fall. Rory McIlroy has spent the majority of this year camped out atop leaderboards. He’s also proven that he’s human when the pressure mounts, but he’s going to thrive at Bethpage. Long and accurate off the tee plays everywhere, but it’s a cheat code on Long Island. Pause only to holster him for The Open Championship at Royal Portrush in his native Northern Ireland. Rickie Fowler continues to inch closer to his first victory in a major. You can’t rule it out anywhere, but Bethpage is the best fit of the remaining three this season. He’s ideal if you’re chasing. If you’ve burned Mickelson and have a plan other than Dustin Johnson this week, then save DJ for the U.S. Open. He’s another gem at Pebble Beach where his experience, success and comfort will supersede the setup. He’ll also be seeking revenge for a final-round meltdown the last time the course hosted in 2010. Of all of the other notables at Bethpage, only Jason Day and Francesco Molinari pique my interest. Pivot to either if you’re in need of a contingency. Like Fowler, Jon Rahm also presents strongly to cut into a deficit. He’s rapidly figuring out how to put four rounds together consistently by neutralizing emotion while saving strokes. It’s scary to consider his potential once he climbs over the hump of intangibles that have nothing to do with the swing. The Spaniard possesses every athletic requirement for golf. It’s where we can find Koepka now. All of the others in the first 20 of my Power Rankings deserve a peek in two-man games, but scan Future Possibilities to map out short- and long-term strategies. Choices such as Justin Rose, Xander Schauffele, Sergio Garcia, Matt Kuchar and Hideki Matsuyama project as smart saves given who’s expected to flex for the Wanamaker Trophy. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES NOTE: Select golfers committed to the tournament are listed alphabetically. Future tournaments are sorted chronologically and reflect previous success on the courses on which the tournaments will be held in 2018-19. The numerical values in parentheses represent the order of relative confidence of where to use each golfer if multiple sites are listed (e.g. 1 for strongest, 2 for next-strongest and so on). To present weighted confidence in real time, numerical values will not change all season no matter how many tournament remain listed for each golfer. All are pending golfer commitment. Byeong Hun An … Memorial (1) Daniel Berger … Travelers (1) Keegan Bradley … Memorial (5); Travelers (4) Rafa Cabrera Bello … Wyndham (4) Patrick Cantlay … Memorial (3) Paul Casey … Travelers (1); TOUR Championship (3) Jason Day … PGA Championship (3); U.S. Open (10); Open Championship (9) Bryson DeChambeau … Travelers (4); John Deere (7) Jason Dufner … Charles Schwab (6); Memorial (5); U.S. Open (2); Wyndham (8); TOUR Championship (10) Tony Finau … Memorial (2) Rickie Fowler … PGA Championship (9); Memorial (5); U.S. Open (10) Sergio Garcia … Open Championship (5); TOUR Championship (2) Branden Grace … U.S. Open (4) Emiliano Grillo … Charles Schwab (3) Adam Hadwin … John Deere (5) Brian Harman … Charles Schwab (1); Travelers (5); John Deere (4) Charley Hoffman … Charles Schwab (6); Travelers (1) Billy Horschel … Wyndham (6); TOUR Championship (1) Dustin Johnson … PGA Championship (11); Memorial (10); U.S. Open (1); WGC-St. Jude (6); TOUR Championship (7) Zach Johnson … Charles Schwab (5); John Deere (1); Open Championship (2); TOUR Championship (8) Kevin Kisner … Charles Schwab (2); Memorial (6) Brooks Koepka … PGA Championship (2; defending); Charles Schwab (6); U.S. Open (1; two-time defending); Open Championship (8) Matt Kuchar … Charles Schwab (7); Memorial (1); Open Championship (8) Marc Leishman … Memorial (4); Travelers (3); Open Championship (8) Hideki Matsuyama … PGA Championship (13); Memorial (8); U.S. Open (14); Wyndham (7); TOUR Championship (5) Rory McIlroy … Memorial (5); Travelers (8); Open Championship (1); TOUR Championship (6) Phil Mickelson … U.S. Open (6); Open Championship (9); WGC-St. Jude (3) Francesco Molinari … PGA Championship (4); Open Championship (1; defending) Ryan Moore … Memorial (11); Travelers (6); John Deere (8); Wyndham (2); TOUR Championship (9) Kevin Na … Charles Schwab (3); Wyndham (5) Louis Oosthuizen … PGA Championship (4) Ryan Palmer … Charles Schwab (4) Scott Piercy … Canadian (7; last winner at Hamilton in 2012) Jon Rahm … Charles Schwab (1); TOUR Championship (7) Patrick Reed … PGA Championship (4); U.S. Open (3); Travelers (7) Justin Rose … Charles Schwab (7; defending); Memorial (4); Open Championship (8); TOUR Championship (2) Xander Schauffele … Open Championship (4); TOUR Championship (1) Adam Scott … PGA Championship (8); U.S. Open (9); Open Championship (7); TOUR Championship (3) Webb Simpson … Charles Schwab (8); Travelers (9); Wyndham (1) Cameron Smith … Wyndham (3) Brandt Snedeker … Charles Schwab (7); U.S. Open (5); Travelers (9); Wyndham (1; defending) Jordan Spieth … PGA Championship (7); Charles Schwab (5); Memorial (13); U.S. Open (4); Travelers (9); Open Championship (6); TOUR Championship (8) Henrik Stenson … PGA Championship (4); Open Championship (6); Wyndham (8); TOUR Championship (7) Bubba Watson … Memorial (7); Travelers (2; defending); TOUR Championship (8) Gary Woodland … Memorial (4) Tiger Woods … PGA Championship (6); Memorial (4); THE NORTHERN TRUST (7); TOUR Championship (5; defending)

Click here to read the full article…

Scottie Scheffler’s last putter switch paid quick dividends. He won in his first start with a new Scotty Cameron Special Select Timeless Tourtype GSS prototype, then rolled off three more wins in his next five starts, including the Masters, to reach world No. 1. Surely, Scheffler hopes his latest switch leads to such quick success. The reigning PGA TOUR Player of the Year has a new flatstick in the bag at this week’s THE CJ CUP in South Carolina, his first individual tournament since finishing second at the TOUR Championship in August. “I typically don’t like changing equipment at all, but I’ve been using (the new putter) now for probably two, three weeks,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “Late in the year I putted what felt like to me pretty poorly, I was really streaky. I was trying a few different things and that’s not really a way to improve when you’re kind of, felt like I was kind of blindly throwing darts just trying to find something. Sometimes I was lining the ball up, sometimes I wasn’t.” The new putter that Scheffler has in the bag this week is a new Scotty Cameron T-5.5 Proto mallet putter. The mallet is a departure from the style that Scheffler has used in recent years, but it reminds him of the style that he used during a successful junior career that included a victory at the U.S. Junior Amateur. Why the drastic change? “For me it’s just really easy to line up, I feel like I’m more consistent with it,” Scheffler said of the new putter. “I feel like my ceiling’s still the same. I can get hot with the putter and make a ton of putts, but I felt like my floor was a little too low last year, so hopefully this will be one of those deals that will kind of raise the floor.” At last month’s Presidents Cup, Scheffler was seen getting putting tips from U.S. Captain’s Assistant Steve Stricker and working past sunset with his longtime coach, Randy Smith, on Quail Hollow’s putting green. “I definitely was frustrated with how I was rolling it at the Presidents Cup,” Scheffler said. “I wasn’t hitting my lines. I couldn’t get comfortable over the ball.” As Scotty Cameron tour rep Brad Cloke explains it, Scheffler was recently practicing at home with an older Scotty Cameron Futura T5W mallet putter that the company had sent him years ago. Feeling that the T5W putter was helping him start the ball on-line more consistently, Scheffler asked Cloke last week for an updated version of the putter. Scotty Cameron then built Scheffler a new prototype of the Phantom X T-5.5 putter, which has a single black line on the top-line and two white lines on the back flange, just like the T5W putter Scheffler practiced with at home. For further customization, Scheffler’s new putter also has custom “Grinder” and “S.S.” stampings on the outer toe and heel portions, and it comes with deeper face milling marks, helping soften the feel and acoustics to match his previous GSS blade putter. Cloke said the size and stability of the Phantom’s mallet head are likely what helped Scheffler start the ball on his intended line more often. “I think the key takeaway, though, was just getting it lined up better for him, and framing it a little better than the blade,” Cloke told GolfWRX on Tuesday. While the putter switch may seem surprising after winning four times in 2022, Scheffler actually recorded negative Strokes Gained: Putting stats in six of his previous nine events where the stat was measured (the Genesis Scottish Open and The Open Championship did not report Strokes Gained: Putting stats). Scheffler finished the 2022 season ranked fourth in both Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green and Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green but was 58th in Strokes Gained: Putting. A new putter could help Scheffler get on another hot streak like the one we saw in the spring, though. We’ll have to wait until Thursday to see if the putter officially gets the call-up into competition, but if it does, another string of victories could be in store for the world No. 1.

Click here to read the full article…

Click here to read the full article…