Jeff’s Hardcore Core- Shriners Hospital for Children Open

Remember in my column a couple weeks ago when I talked about how close we were to hitting the stone cold nuts for several weeks now?  Well, last week was the epidemy of missing by a hair.  It took a colossal choke by the #1 player in the world to prevent us from winning everything.  My core had 9 players finish in the Top 11, including DJ, Koepka, and Stenson all tying for 2^nd.  Cabrera Bello (T5), Stanley (T5), Fitzpatrick (T9) who were all monsters. Personally, I was sitting in 6^th place in the $333 tournament with the following lineup heading into the final round on Saturday night- DJ, Finau, Stanley, Kuchar, Glover, and Reavie.  All I needed was DJ to hold onto his 6 STROKE LEAD, Kuchar and Stanley to hold their position, and Glover and Reavie to mix in a few birdies and I would have finished in the Top 3 with a chance to win.  Unfortunately, DJ and Kuchar went into total meltdown mode and cost me any chance at the $10k first price. I ended up finishing 10^th for $1,000, but was very disappointed given the chance I had.

Not having Justin Rose, cost us a chance to win a really large field tournament, like the Fore contest on Draftkings where the top three finishers had Rose.  The Dogleg and Club Pro contests were different however where nobody in the Top 4 had Rose in the Dogleg (only being owned by 5%) and none of the Top 3 finishers in the Club Pro had Rose either (only owned by 3%).

I am not sure how something like this will affect Dustin Johnson going forward.  This was a horrific choke, blowing one of the bigger leads you will ever see heading into a final round and he didn’t even lose to the guy in 2^nd heading into the round.  I felt like the days of DJ’s head getting in the way of him being able to close tournaments were past him, but posting a ZERO birdie round, while shooting a +5 and blowing a 6 shot lead could have lingering ramifications.  We will have to see if this becomes a trend again.

This week on the PGA Tour we go back to daytime golf and we go back to a large field, cut event, so build your rosters accordingly.

TPC Sumerlin has been the host of the Shriners for a while now, so tournament history will be a significant indicator of success.  If you have not read my article highlighting the new players on tour this fall, I would recommend doing so: PGA Tour Newcomers to Target this Fall Season.

Again last week we saw several new players like Chesson Hadley, Nicholas Lindheim, Benjamin Silverman, and Rob Oppenheim all put up nice performances at Sanderson Farms.

Jeff’s Strategy & Hardcore Core- Shriners Open
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