Tiger finishes return to golf in fine form

THE OVERVIEW If Sungjae Im was one of one of the cool-kid, Madison Avenue-driven American youngsters, the media hype around him might be out of this world. This South Korean star on the rise dominated the Web.com Tour in 2018, winning the opening event and leading the money list wire-to-wire, the only player in Tour history to achieve the feat. Two wins and 13 total top-25 finishes showed incredible consistency, and at just 20 years old, Im is indeed a player we need to keep an eye on. His first win came when he was just 19, making him the second-youngest player to ever win on that Tour behind Jason Day. He made 397 birdies during the Web.com Tour season, the most by a single player since 2011, and his final-round scoring average was an incredible 68. Im is the youngest of all new rookies on the PGA TOUR this season and may turn out to be the best – although Cameron Champ already has set a pretty high standard by posting a win in the fall. Proving the step up to the big leagues would not faze him, Im opened the new season with a T4 at the Safeway Open. Through six starts he sits 34th in the FedExCup and has plenty of TOUR veterans looking over their shoulder wondering just how long it might be before he makes his next breakthrough. Im hits the ball incredibly straight and loves a high ball flight, making him well suited to plenty of TOUR venues. His swing is comparable to Japanese star Hideki Matsuyama given the deliberate takeaway, although there is not as much of a pronounced pause at the top. — By Ben Everill BY THE NUMBERS How Sungjae Im ranked in Strokes Gained statistics during his last full season on the PGA TOUR: FEDEXCUP UPDATE Current 2018-19 position: 34th Playoff appearances: 0 TOUR Championship appearances: 0 Best FedExCup result: Im is in good shape after the fall events as he seeks to secure a Playoffs spot in his rookie season. SHOTLINK FUN FACT Sungjae Im was 192 under par on the Web.com Tour last season, ranking second for the most under-par player on that tour since 2010. INSIDER INSIGHTS PGATOUR.COM’s Insiders offer their expert views on what to expect from Sungjae Im in 2019. TOUR INSIDER: Talk to anyone who spent time around the Web.com Tour last season and they’ll wax lyrical about this kid. The key to his performance appears to be a machine-like quality of consistency. He’s already ranked 20th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee. To get to the next level of excellence, he will need to sharpen his short game. Around the greens can cause a level of anxiety for the youngster, perhaps because he’s rarely in trouble. — By Ben Everill FANTASY INSIDER: All things considered, he’s off to the kind of start that he projected after a historic season on the Web.com Tour. He co-leads the PGA TOUR with six starts – he may touch 35 overall – and his final-round scoring average (with four sub-par scores contributing) is better than his averages of each of the first three rounds. Showcasing the same balanced attack that led to the top spot in Web.com Tour earnings, exempt status from the reshuffle this season and a tee time at TPC Sawgrass for THE PLAYERS in March. And he still won’t turn 21 until two weeks after the TOUR’s flagship event. — By Rob Bolton EQUIPMENT INSIDER: Although Im found success on the Web.com Tour with a TaylorMade M3 driver in the bag, he switched to a Titleist TS3 for the 2018 Safeway Open and The CJ Cup. He stayed with the Graphite Design Tour AD-DI shaft despite switching heads. Im now has a bag full of Acushnet products, including a 917F2 fairway wood, 818H1 hybrid, AP2 irons, Vokey SM7 wedges and a Scotty Cameron 009 putter. — By Andrew Tursky STYLE INSIDER: With 1/4-zip sweaters, saddle shoes, and straight-legged trousers, Im proves there is still place in the game for classic looks. His style game is at its best when he uses pops of bright colors against darker, more traditional hues. Trading the white belt for one that matches his trousers would be a good New Year’s resolution for Im. — By Greg Monteforte

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ATLANTA – With one final event of the season left and $15 million on the line for the winner, the 30 TOUR Championship participants were making their final tweaks and adjustments to their game heading into Thursday. For most, their equipment setups were all but set in stone, but some players did make changes.  Most notably, Bryson DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele, and Dustin Johnson made equipment adjustments, which we cover more in-depth below.  Dustin Johnson’s driver Johnson has bounced back-and-forth between a TaylorMade M5 and M6 driver – sometimes playing both in the same event – and he’s used a few different shaft setups, as well. Ahead of the TOUR Championship, Johnson was spotted testing different heads and shafts again, but as of Wednesday afternoon, it appears he has settled on using a TaylorMade M.5 10.5-degree head equipped with a Fujikura Speeder 661 Evolution 2.0 Tour Spec X-flex shaft. Johnson has used that same shaft for years, but he used a Fujikura Ventus Black prototype for much of 2019.  Johnson made some tweaks to the sole weights in his M5 driver head, too. At the BMW Championship, the weights were configured in a high-forgiveness setting, but ahead of the TOUR Championship, they were in more of a low-spin and slightly fade-biased setting as seen in the photo above. Keep an eye on his driver shaft and head throughout this week to see if anything changes.  Xander’s sole Schauffele and the Callaway team noticed that because of the way Schauffele adjusted his hands before stroking a putt, the lie angle of his Odyssey Stroke Lab Tuttle putter was changing slightly. To combat this issue and garner greater consistency, the Callaway team grinded the front portion of the sole and added weight to the rear of the club head. Now, according to a Callaway representative, the sole sits flatter on the ground, even when Schauffele adjusts his hands before making a stroke.  DeChambeau goes back to the blade (and Cobra wedges) After extensive and thorough testing from Monday-to-Wednesday on the practice greens and on the golf course, DeChambeau is switching back into the SIK Golf — SIK stands for “Study in Kinematicsâ€� — blade-style putter that he’s won five times with on the PGA TOUR.  Throughout 2019, DeChambeau has bounced between different SIK (Study in Kinematics) Golf prototype putters; one of the putters is his familiar blade-style putter, and the others are mallet-style putters, called “Flow,â€� that have higher MOI (moment of inertia). Most recently, at the 2019 BMW Championship, DeChambeau used a mallet-style putter as pictured above. He referred to his blade putter as his “magic wand,â€� when talking with PGATOUR.COM on Wednesday ahead of the TOUR Championship, however.  Like DeChambeau himself, SIK Golf putters are different. The putters have four planar surfaces on their faces, basically meaning the loft is different on different spots on the putter face, rather than having a flat surface. The top of the putter face has more loft than the bottom of the face, which helps achieve greater consistency in loft at impact and therefore launch angle. DeChambeau’s blade-style SIK putter, according to company representative Greg Harrison, has 6 degrees of loft with 2-degrees of effective loft at impact due to DeChambeau’s forward-press and armlock putting style. His putter measures 43 inches in length.  Additionally, DeChambeau has gone back to a set of Cobra wedges after using PXG wedges during recent events. 

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The second tournament of the West Coast swing will be the Farmers Insurance Open located at the picturesque Torrey Pines in San Diego, California. This tournament will be the 54th year Torrey Pines will host the Farmers. Like last week, the tournament will play over multiple courses, the South and North Course. Golfers will play on both in the opening two rounds and move to the South over the final 36 holes. Both courses play as par 72s, with the South measuring at 7,765 yards on poa annua greens and the North playing shorter and more manageable at 7,258 yards. The North Course will be putt on bentgrass greens. The field is 156 golfers deep and will host six of the top 10 golfers in OWGR, including Dustin Johnson (+2200, $10,300), who is making his PGA TOUR season debut. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $800K Pitch + Putt [$200K to 1st] STRATEGY Torrey Pines won’t be yielding a ton of birdies, as we’ve seen over the past few weeks. Winning scores have been as low as 6-under to as high as 21-under in the past, meaning coastal weather conditions will play a factor if they show up this week. A mixture of efficiency Off-the-Tee and SG: Approach-the-Green will be the formula for success this week. The previous five winners are gaining an average of 1.76 strokes per round over the field with their ball-striking. The South Course is a behemoth, with seven par 4s measuring over 450 yards. Over the previous five years, golfers hit the fairway about 10% less here than the PGA TOUR average. Accuracy isn’t a prerequisite to winning this tournament, as was evident with Marc Leishman’s victory, where he only hit three fairways in the final round. Driving it in the short grass helps, but total driving with an emphasis on distance should be the preferred profile to target. We’ve also seen lower greens in regulation hit percentage here against the PGA TOUR average, with longer approach shots predominantly coming in from over 175 yards away. Our roster choices need to be trending with their long-irons or have a short game similar to Patrick Reed (+5000, $8,700) last year, leading the field in SG: Around-the-Green and finishing top 10 in SG: Putting. When building rosters, stacking lineups with golfers in a specific tee draw may do the trick. Over eight years, from 2011 to 2018, the eventual winners started on the South course, not being forced to play it three days in a row. This trend has been challenged recently with the last three winners (Justin Rose, Marc Leishman and Patrick Reed) all starting on the North Course. GOLFERS TO CONSIDER Tony Finau (+2500 to Win, $9,100 on DraftKings) If there’s ever a week to feel “confident” in Finau, it’s here at Farmers. We know how good of a ball-striker he is, but he becomes a short-game wizard in San Diego, ranking first in SG: Around-the-Green, and 18th in SG: Putting over the prior 30 rounds at this tournament. He’s also tied for first in SG: Total over his career at Torrey Pines, which has translated into two top-6 finishes, a top-5 and a runner-up finish last season since 2013. He’ll be chalk, but he’s cheap enough to roster this week. Will Zalatoris (+3000, $9,200) should also be on your shortlist of golfers to consider in SoCal. The former Demon Deacon shot a 61 in Round 2 last week and is hitting the ball exceptionally well, ranking inside the top-20 in ball-striking over the previous two dozen rounds. Zalatoris’ seventh-place here last season proves this poa annua set up on the South Course fits his game nicely. Max Homa (+7000 to Win, $8,400 on DraftKings) There’s a ‘buy-low’ opportunity with Matthew Wolff (+5000, $8,500), but we’ll save that for the betting article and side with Homa, who is a better option in totality this week. Homa won the Fortinet Championship five starts ago and finished ninth here in 2020 to go along with his top-20 last season. A couple of Homa’s recent wins at Quail Hollow and Riviera CC share similarities with Torrey Pines in their traditional, Tee-to-Green setup, making him a solid play in this range. Maverick McNealy (+4500, $8,200) also deserves a nod at this price. Another California-born player, McNealy has been on a solid run, finishing no worse than 27th in his previous four starts. McNealy’s top-15 here two seasons ago came from an all-around short-game performance. If he’s able to mix his current ball-striking prowess to go along with his work around and on the greens, he could be in line for a good week. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $800K Pitch + Putt [$200K to 1st] Put your knowledge to the test. Sign up for DraftKings and experience the game inside the game. Place your golf bets at DraftKings Sportsbook or by downloading the DraftKings Sportsbook app. All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests. The contents contained in this article do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skill and judgment in building lineups. 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