Jeff’s Hardcore Core- The Open Championship

A huge week in the golf world this week as maybe you have heard, it is Open Championship Week!  It does feel kind of weird when I think about it being the final major of the year now with the change in schedule.  The Open is always one of my favorite events of the year as I am able to wake up real early and catch several hours of coverage before having to carry on with work, kids, etc.  Royal Portrush is the host for this years Open, which is not on the normal rotation and will be a new look for everybody this year.  Of course, there is a ton of press about it coming back to Ireland and it being a home game for Rory McIlroy.  I will dive into my strategy and player pool, but first let’s briefly recap last week’s John Deere.

What went right?  Another fantastic week of getting guys through the cut, which has been a common theme over the past month.  Troy Merritt was the only cog between us and being perfect getting everybody through the initial cut as we got 18 of 19 guys through the cut.  Not too many times in the past have we gotten absolutely everybody through, which is very very difficult to do.  Even better was the fact that 14 of the players finished in the Top 40.  The best performances came from a T10 for Niemann and T6 for Vaughn Taylor.  I had 8 of my 20 teams get 6/6 players through the cut (35%), which was about double the rest of the field.

What went wrong?  An amazing week turned into a good week over the weekend as Talor Gooch and Joey Garber laid an egg on Saturday and missed the MDF.  Really terrible efforts were turned in on Sunday by Sungjae Im and Cameron Tringale who were key parts to some important teams that I had near the top of GPP leaderboards.  I know Tringale’s effort hurt a lot of you.  I did not have Dylan Fritelli which is a bit frustrating because I have been high on him for a couple years now, he just has been struggling this year and I liked other players around him.  I heard from many of you who had big weeks, so congratulations.  I have also heard from many of you who are like me and have had consistently good weeks for over a month now, but have not been able to pop a big one and I talk about this often, but will just remind you to stay patient and it will happen.  You cannot consistently build high quality cores, where the vast majority of players make the cut, and not pop a big one eventually.  GPPs are tough to take down, but stick to what we have been doing and it will happen, hopefully it will be  this week where we have some big prizes up top.

Good luck this week Team FGI!

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- The Open Championship
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