Jeff Roth, 63, to tee it up at Rocket Mortgage Classic

The PGA TOUR hits Detroit this week for the third edition of the Rocket Mortgage Classic. Detroit Golf Club’s North Course, a classic Donald Ross design that plays as a relatively easy par 72 at 7,370 yards, will host. The course features a blend of Bentgrass and Poa greens and is one of the easier venues on TOUR, with the two winners here reaching 23 and 25 under par, respectively. Bryson DeChambeau (+750; $11,400) defends in this full-field (156 man) after he bested Matthew Wolff (+3500; $9,100) by three shots. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $750K Flop Shot [$200K to 1st] STRATEGY The Rocket Mortgage Classic has quickly set itself up as a birdie-fest, where the players will need to capitalize on their scoring chances or run the risk of going home early. Last season, the cut was 5-under making the venue the fourth easiest courses on TOUR (38th out of 41). Detroit Golf Club is one of the flattest courses on TOUR in terms of elevation changes, so if you are finding fairways and greens here you won’t have a ton of other elements to throw your approach shot off. The rough can be grown out, but the fairways have been very easy to find for the pros since this event’s inception, with cut makers averaging 3-5% higher Driving Accuracy rates for the week compared to the TOUR norm. Detroit Golf Club is also what you’d consider a “driver-heavy” venue with the average driving distance here being 10 yards more than what it is at other venues on TOUR. You would figure the event favors big hitters, and a DeChambeau / Wolff showdown last season certainly confirms that belief somewhat. Still, the name of the game is birdie conversion and both Wolff and DeChambeau gained over six strokes putting here last season. In fact, none of the players in the top 10 last season gained less than 1.4 strokes putting for the week, which gives you an idea of how important that club is. If you’re targeting shorter hitters, make sure they are firing with their approach shots as they’ll have to make up for the lack of distance with solid iron play. The 125-150 and 150-175 range will be very popular, so short-to-mid-iron play will be one to key in on. As for players to target, Hideki Matsuyama (+1600; $10,400), Kyle Stanley (+6500; $7,600) and Henrik Norlander (+15000; $6,800) are all players who rank in the top 10 in proximity in both the 125-150 and 150-175 approach range. GOLFERS TO CONSIDER Hideki Matsuyama (+1600 to Win, $10,400 on DraftKings) Matsuyama has found some consistency at this event the last two years, even when struggling with his overall game. He finished T19 in 2019 and T26 here last season when he gained five strokes on his approaches. Matsuyama is one of the most consistent performers in terms of proximity from the 125-175 range so you can expect him to be firing at pins from the get-go. He’s had some decent results at other Donald Ross-designed venues (third at the 2016 Wyndham Championship and T15 at the 2018 BMW Championship) and comes in with solid form after a T26 finish at the U.S. Open, where he gained over six strokes on approach. The odds to win are more than reasonable given the upside he’s shown in 2021, and for DraftKings contests, using him as an anchor is very affordable. Charley Hoffman (+2500 to Win, $8,800 on DraftKings) Hoffman has been on an incredible run for DFS purposes over the past couple of months. The veteran has made over 10 cuts in a row and finished T30 last week while piling up 16 birdies. Hoffman looks like a great fit in a lot of different ways, but it’s his birdie conversion rate that really sticks out. He ranks first in SG: Approach stats, second in Birdies or Better gained over the past 50 rounds and is third in DraftKings points gained over that same span. Despite the consistency, though, he still comes in under $9K in price on DraftKings and has typically been a player who has excelled at easier venues over his career. He looks well priced to load up on this week once again. Doc Redman (+6000 to Win, $7,900 on DraftKings) Redman has really picked up his play after a slow start to 2021. Despite a uneventful T61 last week, the third-year player has made the cut in five straight events and has gained strokes putting and on his approaches in all five of those. Redman ranks well enough in the key proximity ranges and has also proven himself as somewhat of a Donald Ross-design specialist, having grabbed a runner-up finish at this event in 2019 and a third-place finish at the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club – another Ross design – in 2020. Given how well he’s trending on the greens, his DFS price looks very attractive, and at +6000, there’s still enough juice there to take a shot on the outright on DraftKings Sportsbook. Redman’s a player who seems likely to pop for a win soon and this is a great venue to take a shot with him. Chris Kirk (+5500 to Win, $7,400 on DraftKings) Kirk is coming off a missed cut last week, but the veteran still ranks very well in a lot of the long-term form stats. In fact, Kirk comes in ranked top 45 in the field in all major strokes gained stats, including 12th in SG: Tee to Green and third in SG: Around the Green over the past 50 rounds. While his results have tapered off a bit, his approach game has remained strong and he ranks 10th in proximity from 125-150 yards and ninth from greater than 200 yards over the last 50 rounds, which should set him up very well for this course. Kirk’s a solid birdie maker who can easily make up his lack of length off the tee with his approach game and putter on this softer setup, making him a good low-owned target for big GPPs. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $750K Flop Shot [$200K to 1st] Refer a friend and get $20 DK Dollars! Head to the DraftKings Playbook Promo page for more details! 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 user (my username is wavegoodbye) 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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LOS ANGELES – You can take the boy out of Chile but you won’t get the Chile out of the boy. Actually it seems you can’t always get the boy out of Chile either. RELATED: Final leaderboard | What’s in Niemann’s bag? Joaquin Niemann’s second PGA TOUR victory, a stunning wire-to-wire triumph in The Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club, was born back in Santiago a few months ago. The 23-year-old planned an extended off-season in Chile after The RSM Classic last fall and didn’t return to competition until the Farmers Insurance Open late last month. While Niemann didn’t qualify for the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Maui (where he finished second after a playoff in 2021) he could have returned to the Sony Open in Hawaii where he was runner up for the second straight week. But a return to his roots was way more important at the time. “A reset and refresh of the mind,” long-time girlfriend and fellow Chilean Christina Hellema Puga said. “No doubt. I needed it,” Niemann beamed. Staying true to his origins and culture is imperative for the greatest golfer Chile has ever produced. Without time to visit the beaches and lakes of his homeland, or have time with his family and friends, his mental state fades. And after not being able to close out another victory since his triumph at A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier in 2019, frustrations were certainly starting to build for the former world No.1 amateur by late 2021. Cue the trip home. A task made harder over the last few years during a pandemic. “I think I need it to bring some energy to my body,” Niemann confessed after collecting the winner’s trophy from none-other than idol Tiger Woods. “It’s something I like to do every year; I go back to my normal life. I’ve been here for a little more than three years and it is a hard life obviously, especially for us when we don’t live in the United States, being so far from home. “So it’s nice to go back once in a while, see my friends, see my family, do what I used to do when I was 16.” When pressed on what exactly that is Niemann flashed his trademark grin and said, “Party! Party, party, and more parties. We like to have a good time. Enjoy the company of friends and just live life.” This attitude is why it was no surprise to see his friends on TOUR waiting for him at the green as he closed out the two-shot win over Collin Morikawa and Cameron Young. The Latin American crew of Carlos Ortiz, Mito Pereira, Jhonattan Vegas, and Sebastian Munoz were all there to congratulate their mate, as was mentor Sergio Garcia. Not a tournament goes by when they’re not all hanging out together. Often renting houses, hiring chefs, and making sure they get a taste of ‘home’. Practice rounds are full of laughs. They help each other through the homesickness. “They’re awesome. All the Latinos, it makes our life easier, more fun, more entertainment. Obviously we play 30 weeks a year and out of those 30 weeks a year you want to spend as much time having fun as you can,” Niemann adds. “We stay together, we play practice rounds together. We’re really unified all together and we have a great relationship. Having them here on 18, it was something really special for me.” They weren’t the only visitors at the final hole. When most fans were on their way out the gates, a large crew of Latino supporters were still chanting Niemann’s name. Naturally that meant he took the Chilean flag and trophy and posed with the crew. “The fans, there was a lot of Latinos, a lot of Chileans, so you can feel the support of them. They were cheering differently than the people here,” Niemann said. “It was special to have them there and spend some time with them. They followed me the whole round.” It certainly was a special week. Niemann became the fourth wire-to-wire winner in tournament history, but the first since Charlie Sifford in 1969. He also became the second youngest winner and moved to seventh in the FedExCup and fifth in the International Presidents Cup standings. While he failed to match the longest standing 72-hole record of any current TOUR event of 264 by Lanny Wadkins by a shot he did pick up the 54-hole scoring record at 194 (-19) along the way. Niemann also led the field in birdies (21), Strokes Gained: Approach The Green (7.097) and Strokes Gained: Tee to Green (14.113). “Obviously it’s one of the toughest tournaments during the year. It’s got the best field, the best players are here and that proves to myself that I can be competing with the top guys, I can be up there in the world ranking,” Niemann said. “I think it’s going to give me a lot of confidence for what is coming next.” With speculation rife around the world of golf about potential rival leagues, Niemann now appears set to keep that ‘next’ on the PGA TOUR. The victory comes with a three-year exemption. “Everyone’s here to compete against the best players in the world. I’m here to do the same. I want to compete with the best players in the world, I want to be No. 1 one day,” he said. “There’s nothing better than what I’m feeling right now. Winning a PGA TOUR event, getting a trophy, having Tiger there, all the history behind it, there’s nothing that can compete with this.” Nothing maybe except for a trip home to Chile.

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RIDGELAND, S.C. – Chesson Hadley had missed 10 of his last 12 cuts coming into this week. He was 192nd in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, 151st in the FedExCup, 320th in the world. Only his putting, in which he ranked 14th on TOUR, seemed to be going right. The best thing he’d done was take some time away from the game to preserve his sanity. And yet it will be Hadley, and not his third-round playing partner, world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, who will go into Sunday with the best chance to win the Palmetto Championship at Congaree. Hadley, the snapping, lanky 33-year-old from Georgia Tech, was 3 under on the day and 14 under total when the horn sounded for a weather delay after his tee shot at the 18th hole. “No, I did not see this coming,” he said earlier this week. Harris English, 4 under on the day, was his closest pursuer, four shots back. Johnson was 1 over on the day and 8 under total, tied with South African Garrick Higgo (68). The third round was called for the day at 8 p.m. ET with four players on the course. It will resume at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, with fourth round tee times from 8:05 a.m. – 1:50 p.m. ET off the first tee. English, who bogeyed the 17th hole, had yet to putt out on 18 when the horn blew. The winner of the Sentry Tournament of Champions in January, he had cooled off some partly due to a back injury he suffered at THE PLAYERS Championship in March. “I never really had any back injuries before I had to pull out of THE PLAYERS, and I haven’t been 100 percent since then,” he said earlier this week. “It’s a long year. I know, 31 years old, I’m bound to have a couple injuries. But it’s been close. … I feel like it’s been trending.” Higgo, a 22-year-old lefty from Johannesburg who could make the 2022 International Presidents Cup Team, won two of his last three starts on the European Tour, but has been mostly overlooked this week. Instead, most of the attention has been on native son Johnson. Earlier this week, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster presented him with the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor. Alas, the golf hasn’t come easy lately for the 24-time PGA TOUR winner. After missing the cut in two of his last four starts, including the PGA Championship at nearby Kiawah Island, and failing to register a top-10 finish since February, he got away from the game to do some fishing and clear his head. He was struggling on the greens, he said, and while things were looking up for a while at Congaree, he was back in negative numbers in Strokes Gained: Putting on Saturday. Still, a six-shot deficit is hardly insurmountable, and Johnson surely would love to win in his home state of South Carolina for the first time in his career. Tyrrell Hatton (67) and veteran Bo Van Pelt (66) are at 7 under, seven back. Hadley, though, controls his destiny. If he doesn’t do anything crazy on 18 (he’s in the fairway) and shoots under par Sunday, the 2014 Puerto Rico Open champion, 2013-14 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year, and four-time Korn Ferry Tour winner will be awfully hard to catch.

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