The First Look: The Open Championship

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We got ourselves a baller in the house. PGA TOUR Pick ‘Em Live is just four weeks old, but Rob already has hung up a pair of top 10s. After finishing third of about 5,700 entries at The Honda Classic, he wrangled a 10th among a little over 7,000 at THE PLAYERS Championship. Yeah, only the top five pay, but it’s a good thing – for you, wink wink – that he’s ineligible for prize money. As Rob himself declared at the outset, it’s always easier to win when a new game is launched. Not only is there a learning curve en masse, but traditionally there are fewer people against whom to compete until momentum builds. The expectation – and the plan, naturally – is for PGA TOUR Pick ‘Em Live to grow, but only the top five cash no matter how many are entered. In this week’s Draws and Fades, Rob walks you through his process that led to his performance at THE PLAYERS. It includes an accidental discovery of the difference in the timing of when the odds are updated on the interface (where the game is hosted) and PointsBet’s app. Capitalize on it. The Valspar Championship has us settling into what is a more familiar construct of a field. It’s more difficult to uncover the gems, but that’s why Glass and Rob collaborate for this weekly file in addition to their regular contributions across the FANTASY page. Register for PGA TOUR Pick ‘Em Live here and monitor their progress as Influencers; however, given Rob’s early success, you likely wouldn’t have to scroll or swipe for long to find him on the main leaderboard. For a broader explanation of the format and FAQs, click here. WEEKLONG Outright Rob … Denny McCarthy (+8000) Gosh, it feels good to have the honor again. Even better, with every passing week, I’m feeling the rhythm of the game. There’s no reason not to let a reach ride for a while. Remain patient and let the play develop. I omitted deeper analysis on McCarthy in my preview material, but not because he doesn’t make sense. There are just some guys who get overcovered for stretches for various reasons, so when the opportunity to expand the lens is presented, I take advantage. He’s among the most accurate off the tee and his putting takes the pressure off his mediocre irons. So, in a field with considerable strength at the top, but in a tournament with established competitive balance, I prefer the strong position of opening with a non-winner who has a decently balanced bag and a little mojo. Glass … Russell Knox (+6000) The Jacksonville resident battled through four rounds at par or better in his backyard at TPC Sawgrass before picking up his second top 10 (T6) of 2022. Rolling into Innisbrook on three consecutive T24-or-better finishes on the track, his three best from eight previous trips, suggests he has the digits to crack the code. The Florida grass and weather shouldn’t bother him and neither will be flying under the radar. I’m moving against a massive winner’s trend of succeeding early at this event but his play has been more than steady with five consecutive paydays, including a T7 at Sony on a demanding driving golf course at Waialae. Top 10 Glass … Alex Smalley (+1100) After seeing my dude peg Kisner at +1400 for a top 10 last week, I’m inspired to catch one of my own BIG FISH. Smalley didn’t have to fight the conditions for FIVE days last week and has been churning out results in 2022. Making the cut at Genesis, Honda and Arnold Palmer suggests he’s not intimidated by big ball-striking tracks. He’s in the top 75 of distance, fairways and greens in regulation, all of which plays this week. Let’s ride! Rob … Bubba Watson (+525) Glass is right about one thing, I am a dude who nailed Kisner last week – I also love his approach for Smalley – but I was grateful that the Top 10 bets never unlocked during THE PLAYERS, at least when I was paying attention, which was quite a bit. After a second-round 74, Kisner sat T22, so I may have been persuaded to modify the selection. We’ll never know, it doesn’t matter and I don’t care! Unlike THE PLAYERS where the depth of the field begets strong value deep in the ranks, the Valspar Championship encourages a conservative choice to benefit from a smaller sample size worthy of it. Watson is No. 8 in my Power Rankings. His firepower alone tempers his odds, but that value is strong considering he’s finished a respective T4 and T13 in the last two editions of the tournament. He also was the victim of Harold Varner III’s crazy-long birdie conversion at the buzzer of the Saudi Invite in early February. The home-state vibes and chill atmosphere at Copperhead are bonuses. Top 20 Rob … Vaughn Taylor (+700) As long as this unlocks, I’m going to swing for the fence before the tournament starts, but even if it doesn’t, the strategy of not making contact doesn’t cost as much as a more aggressive decision elsewhere. Consider that the longest odds on the board for a Top 20 are just +1700. Solid, but not necessarily game-changing when all you care about is a top-five finish. Taylor checks the boxes for converging trends, and that’s good enough for me. He finished T18 (2019) and T6 (2021) in the last two editions of the tournament, and he went for a T7 in his last start in Puerto Rico. That top 10 got him into the field this week. He’s one of my Sleepers. Glass … Mito Pereira (+400) Hitting it great here is paramount unless you scramble like Jordan Spieth or Patrick Reed, so I’ll run out fresh blood again with Pereira. His numbers off the tee and into greens stick out for me, and so does his T15 at Genesis (first time) and Honda (T30). I’ll toss in a T25 at Torrey Pines just to reinforce his strength tee to green. There’s no faking it at Riviera or Torrey Pines, so I’ll roll the dice. ROUND 1 Leader Rob … Patton Kizzire (+10000) When I joined Glass on his radio show on the Thursday afternoon of THE PLAYERS, I told him that he knew that I wasn’t going to let him bask for long after he had connected with Rory McIlroy as the R1 leader at Bay Hill the previous week. Tommy Fleetwood answered at TPC Sawgrass, and at four times the kickback. Boom. Quite simply, the strategy paid off. While Fleetwood was in the more fortunate wave, the plan all along was to toss out a guy who went out early. What’s more, and coincidentally, he had been a R1 leader at THE PLAYERS before. As I also explained and promised last week, my strategy henceforth will be to grab a guy in the early wave and remain fluid throughout the day. At Copperhead, I want my choice to navigate The Snake Pit mid-round and not at the end. Holes 16, 17 and 18 always average over par, but the par-5 first hole is one of the easiest on the entire PGA TOUR. Therefore, I want him to pounce on it not only after The Snake Pit but once he’s warm, so in addition to focusing only on the early wavers, I care only about guys starting on No. 10. Kizzire goes off 10 at 8:46 a.m. ET. He’s seventh on TOUR in first-round scoring average (68.15) and tops among the commitments. He’s opened 12 of his 13 starts this season with red numbers. His lowest score among 14 rounds at Copperhead is a 5-under 66 in the opening round of the tournament last year. Glass … Keegan Bradley (+5000) I rode the roller coaster of self-inflicted wounds last week with the big-boy ball-striker at TPC Sawgrass. My pre-tournament OUTRIGHT WINNER (at +8000) found himself one shot off the lead on the back nine, but I had already abandoned ship. I’M WEAK, I KNOW. A fantastic round turned to dust late on MONDAY but his form was never in question. Rob’s man-crush – well, ONE of them – opened here last year with 65, tied the 36-hole record and played from the final group on Sunday. There are many, many worse plays than this on the board this week! 3-Ball Glass … Joel Dahmen (ENTER ODDS HERE) over Andrew Landry and Michael Thompson First-round leader on debut here in 2019 takes on Landry (5 consecutive MC) and Thompson (4 consecutive MC before T60 last week). Dahmen’s T33 extends a run of four straight on TOUR, so I’ll ride the hottest hand of the trio. Rob … David Lipsky (+194) over Sahith Theegala and Bernd Wiesberger Remember, the reward outweighs failure when it comes to a single round, and because we’re credited with coins valued at just one-quarter the odds, go heavy on the risk. A winning bet at +100 yields 25 coins. Double the odds and you bank just 50 coins. In your pursuit of the top five for prize money, the difference is negligible if you lose. But because it’s golf, the law of averages is going to pay you more often than you think it will. I went heavy in all nine of my 3-balls at THE PLAYERS. Four came through for a value of 745 coins, and I was shut out in the finale (out of a possible 655 coins), but that haul represented just shy of only 18 percent of my overall, and I finished 509 coins outside the top five in a week when only two of the top 10 were paid by Cameron Smith’s opening outright line of +3300. (For more detail, jump to my Draws and Fades linked at the top.) So, I’m keeping it simple and leaning on a worldly veteran in Lipsky whose ball-striking is more encouraging than the feel game of his younger fellow rookie, Theegala, and the underachieving Wiesberger, who has only two top 10s in 65 PGA TOUR starts across 10 seasons. Make the Cut Glass … Russell Knox (-225) For reasons stated above, this makes sense. His game thrives tee to green and that’s what is required this week. When in doubt, I prefer riding the heat. Rob … Alex Noren (-200) Kevin Kisner (-180) is the only option with longer odds, but the street loves the Swede, so I might as well hop on the bandwagon. Noren finished T21 in his only appearance here last year. He’s also missed only two cuts in his last 12 starts in tournaments worldwide with a cut. He’s cashed in five straight upon arrival, two of which for a top 10.

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Chelsea Colvard and Morgan Hoffmann were on their first date, just getting to know each other, their words flowing back and forth with ease. Among the many topics of conversation? Morgan told Chelsea that his right pectoral muscle had deteriorated, which is more than a little concerning for a man who makes his living swinging a golf club. His best guess at the time was that he’d damaged a nerve or injured himself working out. Related: Hoffmann receives 2020 PGA TOUR Courage Award | No stopping Hoffmann in his fight against muscular dystrophy “I just kind of wrote it off and I didn’t think a lot about it,â€� Chelsea recalls. “But I did notice that as we got closer and closer (as a couple), he would start taking phone calls in front of me that were between him and different doctors. “I started to kind of get the idea that I’m like, ‘OK, it seems like he’s still trying to figure out what’s going on with this whole missing pec thing.’â€� Two years into their relationship, one of the more than two dozen doctors Morgan had consulted finally called him with a diagnosis. The 27-year-old had facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), that typically causes atrophy of the chest, back, neck, arms and sometimes, the legs. There is no cure. No drugs that you can get at the pharmacy that will slow the progression of the disease, either. That was the hardest thing for Chelsea to understand. “It was pretty shocking at first just because of the fact that I hadn’t ever been in a situation where someone got a diagnosis that wasn’t immediately followed by some sort of a protocol to get better,â€� she says. “It was just this very helpless feeling that you’re like, ‘Okay, you have this diagnosis but now what? What can I do? What can we do to help?’ There just wasn’t a lot of answers. It was an unsettling time.â€� So, Morgan and Chelsea, who married in November of last year, immediately set about finding their own path to his health and well-being, relying on holistic treatments, herbal tinctures and a strict raw fruit- and plant-based diet to detoxify his body, as well as yoga and meditation and a hyperbaric chamber. Morgan, who is currently on medical leave from the PGA TOUR, went public with his diagnosis in the fall of 2017, writing a first-person essay in “The Players Tribune.â€� The couple started a foundation that has raised more than $2 million in less than two years to help find a cure for the disease. The ultimate plan is to build a health and wellness center that will be a “one-stop shopâ€� for those battling debilitating muscular diseases, staffed by doctors, therapists, nutritionists and other specialists.  The goal is to people fighting chronic diseases take control of their health. On Monday, Hoffman became the fourth recipient of the PGA TOUR Courage Award, joining Erik Compton (2013), Jarrod Lyle (2015) and Gene Sauers (2017). The award is presented to a player who, through courage and perseverance, has overcome adversity to make a meaningful contribution to the game.  “It was really a shock and something that is obviously very special with the past recipients and how much they have done and what they have been rewarded for,â€� Morgan says. “And to be a part of that is very humbling, but obviously it’s a situation that you don’t want to be in. “But I’m accepting it with as much gratitude as I can and hopefully, I can really help our foundation and make a change in people’s lives.â€� Chelsea met Morgan in March of 2015. She was working in real estate and living in Miami at the time and had gone to see some friends from Oklahoma, where she was born, who were visiting in Jupiter, Florida. Turns out, they were staying at Morgan’s house and the friends were teammates of his at Oklahoma State. But he was in Miami playing in the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship at Doral. The next day her friends asked Chelsea if she’d like to go to the golf tournament. It was her first time outside the ropes – but certainly would not be her last. “I show up to Doral having no idea what the attire for a golf tournament would be,â€� Chelsea recalls. “I think I was wearing high heels and jeans — just something completely inappropriate to walk a golf course in. “I started following Morgan and I could see him joking with his caddie and I swear I think they were making fun of my attire.â€� That night, the group – including Morgan – went out to dinner. “I still remember that my mouth was so sore at the end of that night because I could not stop smiling,â€� she says. “It was just an instant connection with Morgan. I was smitten. That was it. After that we were pretty inseparable.â€� Three years later, Morgan got down on one knee on a boat in the Bahamas and proposed, announcing the engagement on Jan. 2, 2019 in an Instagram post, saying it “took 2018 from being the worst, to the absolute best year of my life.â€� Chelsea thinks that dealing with his diagnosis helped draw the couple closer than either could have imagined. “It definitely was hard but, hey, at the risk of sounding kind of cliché I really do feel like those hard times are huge character-building moments,â€� she explains. “For Morgan and I to go through that together even right before we ended up getting married it was kind of a situation where I felt like we had already been through so much and we really saw what we were capable of and how strong we could be. “It just made me even more sure that I had a really great life partner to face anything with.â€� Morgan says Chelsea “didn’t bat an eye,â€� when he told her about the diagnosis.  And she has been there every step of the way, researching the disease, talking with doctors and naturalists, helping to identify potential treatments and even going through the same six-month raw fruit cleanse. He gives her every credit for the success of the foundation, as well. “She’s my rock — just always there by my side and no matter what I want to do, how crazy it may seem she’s supportive and not just supportive like, oh, I’m here for you rooting you on,â€� Morgan says. “She’s actually taken it to a different level of now she’s studying Dr. Robert Morris and going through certification classes of regenerative detoxification and it’s something that I never expected to have somebody do for me, but she’s doing it with me as well. “And it’s really special to have my then girlfriend and now wife be that influential in my life and that we’re kind of doing this together and creating this foundation and her ideas and her organization has been really helpful for me.â€� Chelsea, for her part, has always admired Morgan’s strength and positive outlook on life. She admits to worrying, though, that his spirit might be broken after the diagnosis. Instead, she found herself feeding off his energy and any concerns she may have had now feel like a lifetime ago. “All of his athletic activities brought him so much joy and they seemed like they were the most important part of his life, his flying, his golf,â€� she says. “You know, he doesn’t just play golf. He loves all sports and all activities. He loves to surf. He loves to skateboard. Everything that requires your muscles. “I got scared that I would kind of lose a piece of him for that diagnosis, that he would be sad in a way that I wouldn’t be able to help, and I wouldn’t be able to fix it and that maybe no one would be able to fix it and then what would we do? “That went away. I think that fear lasted for about a year. As we’ve kind of evolved into this new lifestyle and as our journey has progressed it’s brought both of us a lot of comfort in that area and I’m not really scared of any of those things anymore.â€� A typical day at the Hoffman house generally begins with Morgan rising first, then meditating for an hour of so on the back porch near the water garden. By the time he’s done, Chelsea is usually in the kitchen juicing whatever fruit they’re having that day and making a breakfast smoothie. It’s a far cry from the meat-and-dairy-based diet she existed on when she met her future husband. “We only eat plants and we eat mostly fruit,â€� Chelsea says. “We do not eat very many cooked things. The one thing that we still eat that’s cooked on a semi-frequent basis is sweet potatoes. It’s nice whenever you are craving something warm, the sweet potato gets us by. “(So, it’s) mostly fruit and mostly raw. The idea behind that is fruit has the highest level of electromagnetic energy, which is basically what all living things really are, what they boil down to at least, our smallest parts. We’re just a big ball of energy. “Not only does eating the fruit help to elevate your energy and you can feel it. You wake up and you have a big fruit smoothie and it’s like … You just feel alive. It’s a great feeling.â€� Yoga classes and reading right now fill most of the time that Morgan might have spent at the practice range. The couple devours books written by herbalists and naturopathic healers, looking for more ways to combat his disease. They watch inspiring documentaries on TV, as well. Scribbles and Yama, their two dogs, need attention, too, and the couple often walks them on the beach. Paddle boarding is another favorite activity. In the evenings, Morgan spends time in a hyperbaric chamber that allows him to breathe nearly pure oxygen to boost his body’s healing capabilities. Chelsea says she’s always be interested in natural healing practices, although she’s never applied them to her life like she has in the four years that she’s known Morgan. Her mother’s side of the family is Native American, and her grandmother made plant-based, herbal salves and tinctures. “She would kind of share information with me that had been used by Native Americans since the dawn of time pretty much as we know it — at least, human existence as we know it,â€� Chelsea says. “I thought that that was so cool that I’m like, ‘Wow. I can use a method of healing that’s been used for some 30,000 years. That’s incredible that that knowledge has been passed down through generations and generations.’ “It wasn’t until I really started applying it to my life that I saw how incredibly powerful it really is.â€� Chelsea says the lifestyle changes she and Morgan have made have helped her, as well. Her psoriasis has cleared up and the symptoms she used to suffer from a mild case of Tourette’s Syndrome are almost non-existent. Her family has adopted a similar lifestyle and her mother’s arthritis pain has subsided, too. “It’s constant motivation for both of us that as we get deeper and deeper in giving up all of these things,â€� Chelsea says. “We don’t feel like we’re giving things up as much as what we’re gaining. You know?â€� Morgan hasn’t played in a PGA TOUR event since the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in October. He has three starts remaining on his major medical exemption and needs to earn 238.4 FedExCup points in order to retain his playing privileges. Getting and staying healthy, though, is Morgan’s priority right now. He has so much more in his life than chasing a little white ball down a lush green fairway. He recently restored a 1961 Mach 1 Mustang. He is involved with a thriving performance clothing company called Greyson. And of course, there is the Morgan Hoffmann Foundation, which will hold its third celebrity pro-am June 21-22 at Arcola Country Club, where he learned the game, in Paramus, New Jersey. Hoffman is just beginning to write the next chapter in his life. And Chelsea, for one, can’t wait to see what happens to them both. “I think Morgan was looking for a lot of his joy in athletic accomplishments,â€� Chelsea says. “I don’t even know where I was looking for mine. I think I was just really still trying to figure myself out and once we got this diagnosis, we set off on a journey that we thought would be just starting to try to understand all of the different alternative healing methods. “What that ended up becoming was us understanding a certain type of lifestyle that we could embody that would put us in the best possible place every single day to be as happy as we can be, to be as healthy as we can be. It’s become our biggest passion. “It’s become our spirituality. It’s really become everything to both of us. It’s given us a purpose.â€�

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