Jeff’s Hardcore Core- PGA Championship

I didn’t remember how much I disliked Trinity Forest Golf Club until I started watching the PGA Live Coverage on Thursday morning. Actually, let me clarify, it’s not that I dislike the course itself, I just do not like it for a PGA tournament host course. Basically when you combine super wide fairways, zero rough even when you stray from the super wide fairways, extremely slow greens, and basically no trouble (water, trees, etc), you get a local muni course that is more appropriate for you and me to be playing. Even in significant 20 mph winds on Thursday and Friday, the professionals carved it up. Over the weekend when winds were minimal it became a joke. I absolutely hate when players fall behind by a ton of strokes if you do not shoot better than -5 every single round. Anyway, enough of my rant, it also doesn’t help make me any less grumpy that the majority of my core guys were unable to post ridiculously low scores each day and stay competitive. What is funny to me is how we go from a local muni in difficulty last week to an absolute bear of a course this week, in Bethpage Black. I hope the players got their jolly’s last week because the black course is no joke. I just hope the PGA people don’t lighten up on the rough, green speed, and pin placements. I kind of worry about that because it is not a U.S Open. Anyway it should be more fun than last week and less of a crap shoot with the players atop the leaderboard. We will dive into the PGA Championship thoroughly, but first lets recap the core for the AT&T Byron Nelson:

What went right? Pretty much the only bright spots were Matt Jones, who we have owned every event over the past couple months took as he finished T5. Also Justin Harding who I thought would be bit contrarian, ended up with a Sunday charge into a T10, a great finish for a $7,800 player. Our highest owned guy was Brooks Koepka and although he did not win it, a 4th place finish was acceptable, considering the other names around him atop the leaderboard and the lack of ownership (outside of Piercy). Guys like Thomas Pieters with a T23 and Scheffler with a T35 were also decent performers, but nothing amazing. When you have a scorefest, the results become much less predictable and there is far more variance. When you have a more difficult course, our research and predictions become much better. That is why I hate events where we see scores of -25. This week I am looking forward to great players being atop the leaderboard.

What went wrong? I felt guys like Patrick Reed (until Sunday when I think he gave up), Aaron Wise, Rafa Cabrera Bello and Matsuyama played fine last week as they all shot close to -10, which on a normal week is good. In birdiefests however, you need to score and rattle off birdies constantly, which they did not. The mistake I feel that I made was not going more contrarian and fading all chalk. With the unpredictability of events like this it makes more sense to go away from the plays that make sense based upon our metrics and that will attract owners.  I naturally have a contrarian mind, which is why I do so much better in GPPs than most, but I was not contrarian enough last week. There are not many of these types of events, but I have seen enough of them to know better and be more contrarian. That was my mistake and I will adjust in the future.

Let’s get into the PGA Championship because I am very excited.

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- PGA Championship
Sign up for an FGI account today to see the rest of this post.