FedExCup Update: Rory Sabbatini eyes East Lake return

This week’s Wyndham Championship is the final event for players to jockey for points in advance of the FedExCup Playoffs. It’s also the final opportunity to accrue Wyndham Rewards Top 10 points — the regular-season cash bonus — although no one is catching Brooks Koepka after his win at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. Just another $2 million into Brooks’ bank account — rough life. After two consecutive weeks of stacked fields at The Open Championship and the WGC-FedEx St, Jude Invitational, you’d expect a severe drop-off in the quality of the field in Greensboro, North Carolina. While there is a clear dip in talent, it’s not as pronounced as years’ past. Jordan Spieth, Webb Simpson, Hideki Matsuyama, Billy Horschel, Paul Casey, Cam Smith, Matthew Wolff, Lucas Bjerregaard, Collin Morikawa, Alex Noren, Viktor Hovland, Doc Redman, Branden Grace, Joaquin Niemann, Chez Reavie, Dylan Fritelli, Charles Howell III, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Sungjae Im and defending champ Brandt Snedeker will be teeing off in North Carolina. There is a slew of players impacted by the FedExCup standings, but while you can project “needâ€� onto golfers in this situation when making your picks all you want, there’s no empirical evidence to support it makes a difference either way. It is a fun narrative, and maybe it works out; however, it’s all noise from a prognostication standpoint. For the course, Sedgefield CC is one of the few on the PGA TOUR that allows players of all skill sets to play their preferred game and have a chance to complete. A Donald Ross design (like Detroit Golf Club and East Lake), Sedgefield features eight par 4s measuring between 400 and 450 yards and a pair of par 5s reachable by the entire field (a cumulative 70 eagles on those two holes last year). Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green has been more than two times as impactful on the top-5 finishers (+1.1/per round) than Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (+0.46/per round) and Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green (+0.37/per round), although, driving accuracy has popped as an essential skill in winning over the years. While the GIR rate is above TOUR average, the fairways narrow around the 275-yard mark off the tee, and this has resulted in six of the past eight Wyndham Championship winners finishing in the top 15 of accuracy for the week they claimed victory. Patrick Reed in 2013 and Brandt Snedeker last year are the two outliers. If you’re searching for a course that correlates with Sedgefield, Harbour Town and the RBC Heritage leaderboard have had a substantial amount of crossover the past decade. Targets From The Range Patrick Reed ($9,700) The lack of fairways gained off the tee is somewhat problematic, but as noted above, Reed was one of two winners (along with Snedeker) to finish outside the top 15 in Driving Accuracy in the last eight years. Reed’s an excellent player out of the rough, and has been red-hot over the past few months. He rolls into Greensboro with top-12 results in three of his past four starts, no worse than T32 in his past six starts and gaining an average of more than four strokes on approach in that span. He hasn’t won since the 2018 Masters, so we officially are in a drought. But at a familiar venue, which has seen multiple repeat champions, Reed is a perfect spot to collect another novelty check. Viktor Hovland ($9,500) First, Matthew Wolff got his breakthrough. Then Collin Morikawa followed it with a victory at the Barracuda Championship. Seems like Hovland won’t be too far behind. He fits the accuracy mold, ranking 10th in the field in fairways gained over the past 50 rounds per www.fantasynational.com, and it’s not like the rest of his game is lagging behind. He’s gained off the tee box and through approach in every start as a pro, and he hasn’t finished worse than T16 in any of his past three starts. If his putter finally will cooperate, he’ll at least notch the first top 10 of his career. Maybe more. Kyle Stanley ($7,700) After finding himself in majors and WGCs over the past two seasons, Stanley is back just attempting to churn out quality results and cash paychecks on TOUR. And most of the season, it’s been a poor effort. However, since the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, his ball-striking game has re-emerged. He’s strung together five straight cuts — with a pair of top-25 finishes — and is gaining off-the-tee and through approaches in every start. Per Fantasy National, Stanley is fourth in the field in fairways gained over the past 24 rounds, sixth in par 5s gained and eighth in approach. If he doesn’t putt himself out of contention, he’ll have a shot in a birdie-fest. Peter Malnati ($7,100) Making 13 of his past 14 cuts, Malnati has gained with his irons in six of past seven starts and has lost on the greens only once early February. While putting is a high-variance skill year-over-year, Malnati has been one of the few to sustain consistent roll over the years. Digging back into his course form, he has never missed the weekend at Sedgefield and was top 10 in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach a year ago, but a poor week off the tee capped his upside at a T24. However, this is the best he’s played entering the Wyndham in his career, sitting seventh in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green over the past 24 rounds and ranks out 24th in Par 4s 400-450 yards, 27th T2G, and 25th in proximity gained from 150-175 yards, where the plurality of iron shots come from this week. Read more daily fantasy analysis from Pat Mayo and others on the DraftKings Playbook. Writer’s profile: I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user (my username is ThePME) 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 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.

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There were nights when his parents wouldn’t eat so he could, tournament directors who accepted an IOU in lieu of an entry fee, and utility bills that went unpaid. RELATED: Q & A with Vasicki So the moment was choked with emotion when Sarasota mini-tour pro Michael Visacki, 27, Monday-qualified into this week’s Valspar Championship and called home to break the news. “I made it,” he croaks amid the tears, his father alternately cheering and crying. The hundreds of thousands of miles driven on his 2010 Honda Accord. The job cleaning carts. The ball that got stuck in a tree and led to a heartbreaking double bogey in the second stage of Q School in 2019. Visacki, who still lives at home with his parents, has come a long way to arrive at his first PGA TOUR start since turning pro in 2014, and the viral video shows just how long. “Just a lot of people give up on their dreams, probably because they can’t afford it,” Visacki said in a press conference Tuesday afternoon, when he was again overcome by emotion as he tried to explain the public’s reaction to his emerging story. “But I’ve been lucky enough to be with my parents and been able to help me out sometimes to keep living it.” Visacki is an only child. His parents, Mike and Donna, own a transport company that ships wheelchairs and stretchers and have done so for about 16 or 17 years. Michael showed great talent as a junior golfer, but developing that talent sometimes proved too costly. “Tournaments would want us to register about two weeks in advance to know that they had so many players in,” he said. “And sometimes money was tight where my parents would call the director and be like, ‘Do you mind putting my son in? I’ll have the money for you when we get to the event.’ And they knew that I was a really good junior golfer, so they would accept that, they would waive that restriction for me back in the junior days.” And Visacki was good. Having played tennis as a boy, he switched to golf at age 8, inspired by his dad. He grew so big and strong the Riverview High School football coach wanted to put him on the offensive line, but Visacki said no, he was a golfer. The coach soon realized he was right. Visacki played one year for the University of Central Florida, then turned pro. Playing 30-45 tournaments a year, he racked up 37 victories on the West Florida Pro Golf Tour and made his reputation as a big-time talent. He qualified for the Korn Ferry Tour’s 2018 Kansas City Golf Classic and finished T27. He lived at home to save money and bought a used Honda Accord he’s since driven 170,000 miles, at one point driving to Utah and back. He tried “six or seven” Monday qualifiers, but the closest he had come before this week was missing a playoff by a shot. Keep your head down, his dad told him. Keep grinding. “Because he knew that I had it,” Visacki said. He worked in the cart barn and pro shop at Serenoa Golf Club in Sarasota to make ends meet, sometimes closing the pro shop at 5, 6 o’clock and then hustling out onto the course to chase the sun. Never, he said, did he consider quitting. Not even after his ball got stuck in the tree to derail his Q School hopes by one shot in 2019, an agonizing close call that nearly broke him. “I don’t know how I was able to even drive,” he said of his somber ride home. His dream of playing his way into the Valspar almost fizzled when his tee shot stopped just short of going into a bush on the first extra hole. He chipped out sideways and got up and down from 107 yards and survived when Chris Baker missed his birdie putt. Visacki had his own birdie try from 20 feet on the second extra hole. “The first thing I was like, man, I have a chance to, if I make this putt I’m playing, I’m going to be playing in the Valspar,” he said. “But after that I was like, OK, I got to not think about that, I got to think about putting the best stroke possible, picking out a good line with me and my caddie and we picked out a great line and I hit the spot and it went in the hole.” Visacki embraced his caddie Kaylor Steger, a friend and fellow pro, and broke down. Then came the freighted phone call, and the viral video, and his reputation quickly growing far beyond all those mini-tour victories. Of his chances at establishing a foothold on the Korn Ferry Tour and/or PGA TOUR, and finally being able to make a decent living as a golfer, Visacki said, “I mean I think it’s just trying to get one percent better every day. I feel like I’m not that far off.” He added, not without ample evidence, “I know I’m capable of doing it.” For the Valspar’s newest fan favorite, the dream is coming together right before our eyes.

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