Top 30 Players to Watch in 2019: No. 12 Tommy Fleetwood

Hayden Buckley (+400 for a Top 20) … It was last fall when the then-unheralded PGA TOUR rookie burst onto the scene with a T4-T8 fortnight spanning the Sanderson Farms and Shriners. Well, he’s at it again. He placed T19 at Country Club of Jackson last week where his 7-under 65 was the second-lowest score of the finale. Widening the lens, he’s 8-for-10 since the U.S. Open in June at which time he acknowledged how adjustments were paying off when the lights went on. Given that he began to drift into territory in which he wasn’t going to be a certainty to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs, it’s revealed the kind of moxie that a second-year talent who appreciates what the work feels like tends to pay forward, particularly on sites where he’s done it before. Russell Knox (+350 for a Top 20) … The 37-year-old Scot is off to a classic start to the new season. A top-25 machine for stretches of what is now a 12-year career, he’s opened with a pair in this one. While better than most alternatives, the sample size still is small but it echoes his overall balance when he’s gliding above the surface. He’s also 6-for-8 at the Shriners with a podium finish, albeit in 2014. If a market for a Top 40 opens, dedicate a unit or more to it. Taylor Moore (+225 for a Top 20) … To steal a line from baseball, this bet is an aggressive send, so retreat into a more comfortable goal where it’s presented. Yet, he deserves the shot to score. The 29-year-old PGA TOUR sophomore has cashed in 10 consecutive starts, half of which resulting in a top 25, including last week’s T24 in Mississippi. His tee-to-green game was on point and he ranked third in scrambling. He also finished T24 at TPC Summerlin in his membership debut a year ago on the strength of terrific mid- to long-range putting. Beau Hossler … Every season, there’s usually at least one golfer who serves as the poster boy for the possibilities despite the saddle of conditional status. He was that in 2021-22. That relatively buried position in the overall pecking order prevented him from qualifying for the Shriners, which is an open. However, because he capitalized on a couple of early opportunities, his standing in the FedExCup opened doors in all of the invitationals in which he piled on at times. Altogether, he qualified easily for the Playoffs to regain fully exempt status and eliminated the doubt of climbing into this week’s 144-man field at TPC Summerlin. This is the kind of stage on which it’d make sense for him to cash in on the calling card of his white-hot putter because he’s 4-for-4 with a pair of top 25s and a scoring average of 68.13 in 16 rounds since a T7 in his first try in 2017. Robby Shelton … Like Hossler above, Shelton relies on his flat stick to make noise, so if either focuses on hitting to the middles of the targets, it could be a special week. Shelton paced the Korn Ferry Tour in 2022 in both putts per GIR and converting GIR into par breakers. Placing most of the eggs in one basket wasn’t that bad considering he was the only multiple winner on the circuit all season. He’s also 2-for-2 at TPC Summerlin at which all eight of his scores were sub-70s and where this week’s experience may feel like a KFT stop in terms of its ease. Odds were sourced on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022. For live odds, visit BetMGM.

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Welcome to Numbers to Know, where we’ll take a closer look at Collin Morikawa’s historic victory in the PGA Championship. 1. YOUNG GUN: Morikawa, 23, shot 129 in the final two rounds at TPC Harding Park. It is the lowest weekend score ever shot by a men’s major winner. Morikawa’s 64 on Sunday also ties the lowest final-round score by a PGA Championship winner in the event’s history; Steve Elkington also shot 64 in his win in the 1995 PGA Championship. Morikawa is the third-youngest winner of the PGA Championship since World War II, behind only Rory McIlroy and Jack Nicklaus. Morikawa earned his third TOUR win, and first major, in his 29th PGA TOUR start. In Tiger Woods’ 29th PGA TOUR start, he won the 1997 Masters for his first major and fourth PGA TOUR title. 2. STRAIGHT KNOCKER: Morikawa led the field in driving accuracy, hitting 39 of 56 fairways. That was two more than anyone else in the field. He hit the short grass 70% of the time, while the field only hit the fairway half the time. Morikawa is the first player since 2010 to win a major while leading the field in driving accuracy. Louis Oosthuizen did it in the 2010 Open Championship at St. Andrews, though those fairways were just a little wider than TPC Harding Park’s. The PGA TOUR has stats from the three majors in the United States dating to 1983. It has stats from The Open Championship since 2003. These are the only four players in those stats to win majors while leading in driving accuracy. 3. EIGHT IS GREAT: This was by far the best putting week of Morikawa’s career. Perhaps it was being back in California or on a course that he played in college. It couldn’t have come at a better time. He ranks 140th in Strokes Gained: Putting this season, but led the PGA field in that statistic. He gained more than eight strokes on the greens at TPC Harding Park after never gaining more than five strokes in a single event. Before last week, Morikawa had never finished a single TOUR event in the top 10 of that statistic.

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