Bay Hill broadcast to feature more caddie chatter

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. The first fantasy golf game to utilize live ShotLink data, PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf allows you to see scores update live during competition. Aside from the experts below, Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton breaks down the field at this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard in his edition of the Power Rankings. For more fantasy, check out Sleepers, 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 your team, click the “Leagues” tab and search for “PGA TOUR Experts.” After that? Pick your players and start talking smack. Want to represent the fans against our experts? SEASON SEGMENT

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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.

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FORT WORTH, Texas – Jon Rahm was at Colonial during tournament week each of the past two years to accept the Ben Hogan Award that goes to the nation’s top college golfer. This time, he’s playing in the PGA TOUR event at Hogan’s Alley and among the leaders. With his 4-under 66 on Thursday, Rahm was a stroke behind first-round leaders Kelly Kraft, Derek Fathauer and PGA TOUR rookie J.T. Poston. That also put Rahm ahead of two-time Colonial champs Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson after both birdied their last three holes for 67s. He also led 2016 winner Jordan Spieth, whose even-par round included six birdies. “The last two times I was here, all I recorded was super happy and positive memories,” Rahm said. “It’s just the vibe that I have around this place is so positive, especially with Sergio (Garcia) winning and with the Ben Hogan history that I’m related to now.” The 22-year-old Rahm, the winner at Torrey Pines in January, had only one bogey while playing with Masters champion Garcia, the fellow Spaniard who won in his first Colonial appearance in 2001. Kraft and Graeme McDowell, tied with Rahm for fourth, had the only bogey-free rounds. Only 33 of the 121 players finished the first round under par. Scott Brown had the other 66, and had the outright lead at 6 under before a double bogey at No. 18. Spieth, coming off missed cuts the past two weeks, was tied for 34th his six birdies, four bogeys and a double bogey. He was even par after birdies on his last two holes. “It’s a great finish. Kept me in the tournament,” Spieth said. “If I was a couple over, you know, in the back of my mind I would be wondering about the cut line.” After two bogeys on the first four holes, Spieth made 4-foot birdie putt at the 466-yard No. 5 hole, and made a 10-foot birdie at the 168-yard, par-3 13th. In between those birdies at two of Colonial’s toughest holes, Spieth made a nearly 40-foot putt to save par after a wayward drive at No. 9. His drive at the 10th went into a concrete culvert for another bogey, and he missed the fairway right again at the 622-yard 11th, only to get back in the fairway and go on to a 2-foot birdie. “Hit some very solid shots. With gusty winds, it’s not going to end up where you think it’s going to a lot of the time,” Spieth said. “I felt like I missed some fairways by 1-5 yards today. That made a complete difference in the way the hole played.” Before his birdie-birdie finish, Spieth had double bogey at the 429-yard 15th, when he blasted from a fairway bunker through the green and into the water, and made bogey at the par-3 16th. Mickelson, back at Hogan’s Alley for the first time since 2010, made an 8-foot putt at the 435-yard 7th hole, then hit his tee shot inside 2 feet of the cup at the par-3 8th. His 33-footer at No. 9 came after playing partner Matt Kuchar had just missed a slightly longer putt on the same line on their finishing hole. When changes were made to the course after his 2008 victory, Mickelson missed the cut in 2010 with a chance to become the world’s No. 1 player. He later indicated that Colonial no longer suited his game. “Nothing real specific,” he said, when asked what changed his mind. “It’s been a while and I needed to … I felt it was in my best interest to get in contention and try to play more events and try to get the scores, results out of it.” Rahm was at Arizona State when he became the first two-time winner of the Hogan Award. His first competitive round at Colonial came a day after Arizona State’s women rallied to win their eighth NCAA championship, and first since 2009. “To see them win in the fashion they did, it was amazing,” said Rahm, who practiced with that team while in school. “The coolest thing is that’s the closest I’ll ever be to experiencing something like that and I’m happy for them. … To be honest, that energy and positivity probably helped me today.”

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