The Daily Spin – Farmers Insurance Open

The Daily Spin – Farmers Insurance Open

RECAP

The AMEX played out as expected and we were treated to another birdie filled extravaganza with Sepp Straka pulling away for the win on Sunday, followed closely behind by Justin Thomas. As usual, the cut line was silly coming in at -9 after the first three rounds and taking out plenty of notable players like Sungjae Im, Tony Finau and Tom Kim among some of the more expensive names at the top. It is one of those events where starting on a certain course in certain conditions can create a domino effect on the entire field for the week.

My lineup worked out well for the week despite a couple of missed cuts. What was left of my lineup on Sunday played really well which helped to make up for the missed cuts sustained on Saturday. I think I may have to close the book on my love of Adam Hadwin on desert style courses. He burned me in the fall at the Shriners in Vegas and then again last week at the AMEX, both events that he has been really good at throughout his career. He did not play all that badly, but needed to be aggressive down the stretch to keep up with the field and just could not find any birdies to get him to Sunday. Me weak spot is being a course history truther sometimes and it burned me last week with Hadwin. In my defense, he has been out of form many times over the years coming into both of those events, but his rolling numbers were certainly not great heading into last week.

The other player that tripped me up was really unexpected as CBez is someone that I can almost always count on at easier events to at least get me a made cut with real potential at some upside. If you look at his missed cuts for all of 2024, he only missed out on playing the weekend on the really tough tracks like Torrey Pines, PGA National, The PGA Championship and The Open. While there have been seasons where his cut making prowess has not been as high as it once was, over his entire career, he has been dependable at the pitch and putt tournaments so it was a real surprise that he was nowhere close to making the cut last week. He got killed on the Stadium Course on Thursday and I think that demoralized him enough so that he knew he was not going to have much of a chance of playing on Sunday so he did not quite have the drive that he would have otherwise.

The rest of my team performed well overall. I would have liked to have gotten a little more out of Sam Burns who finished 29th for the week. He actually played really well overall, but two holes, the 9th and 10th on Saturday broke his chances to contend for the week as he made back to back double bogeys which dropped him way down the leaderboard. He shot a 67 on the Stadium Course on Sunday so his game was fine, just lost his focus momentarily and suffered the consequences.

Patrick Cantlay played well for me last week. He was priced lower than we normally see him, likely due to a couple of recent performances that were not as good as earlier in his career at the AMEX. It will be interesting to see if he can turn back on his motivation to play competitive golf this year. Maybe it is his demeanor in general and I totally could be misreading his body language, but he just did not seem all that motivated last year outside of a handful of tournaments. I am not saying he was bad last season, far from it. It just never felt like he was really in the mix last season outside of the US Open so we will wait and see how he approaches the new year. A 5th place finish last week was definitely an encouraging start. However, seeing him skip Torrey Pines to play in the TGL only keeps the questions lingering.

A couple of value plays that did work out nicely for me were Ben Griffin and Alex Smalley with 7th and 11th place finishes respectively. Griffin is someone that we are always going to target on easier courses with Bermuda greens. His splits on Bermuda are borderline insane. It is hard to believe that a golfer could be so much better on a specific grass type, but there are a few on tour that really standout. The AMEX also continues to be a comfort zone for Smalley as he notched another Top-25 finish. That marks back to back Top-20 finishes to start the year for him and I am really impressed with his ball striking to start 2025. His game was trending in the right direction in the fall so hopefully this is a sustainable for him after a really slow start last year.

Course

• Torrey Pines (North)
• Par 72
• 7,258 Yards
• Bentgrass Greens

 

• Torrey Pines (South)
• Par 72
• 7,765 Yards
• Poa Annua Greens

The tournament this week will be played out over two courses. The players will get one round on the North Course either Wednesday or Thursday and then play the other three rounds at the South Course. The North Course is relatively straight forward as a Par 72 and plays at around 7,250 yards. The fairways are on the narrow side, but it should not be an issue to club down to stay on the fairways. The goal is to hold serve on the Par 3/4 holes and create birdie opportunities on the shorter Par 5 holes. All four of the Par 3 holes on the North Course are over 200 yards. The greens are on the larger side and bentgrass was put in on the greens of the North course in 2017. It’s imperative that players shoot under par on the North Course if they want to be in contention for the weekend. The North course usually plays 2-3 strokes easier than the South Course on average so if you do not shoot in the -3 to -5 range, you’ve got a lot of work ahead to contend.

For the South Course, driver comes out of the bag whether players can handle it or not. This is a US Open course and comes up in the rotation about once every decade. The fairways are very narrow here and difficult to hit. This week may see some relief with very low winds, but players that do struggle to keep it on the fairway will be playing from very thick rough which makes those lengthy approach shots into smaller, poa greens that much more difficult. I am looking for more of the bigger hitters this week for my player pool. I will have exposure to a handful of veterans that play in this event routinely as I think course experience is a bigger deal here than at other stops, but overall, we need to focus on golfers that can chop the South Course down into smaller bites rather than fighting approach shots from the rough from over 175 yards. A quick look at some recent winners will show you that the leaders off the tee and on approach have dominated this tournament for some time. There are events like Sony or AMEX where it feels like everyone genuinely has a chance to with the golf tournament. That is not the case at Torrey Pines where it is rare for a player from the middle of the pack to storm the field, though Luke List and Pavon have proven otherwise as the field has softened with the introduction of the signature events. With recent winners like Max Homa, Jon Rahm, Justin Rose, Patrick Reed and Marc Leishman, this is a tournament where we typically get a winner from one of the top names.

If we do anticipate that another stud wins this week, then we need to focus our attention around the top players. I want to have heavy shares of the golfers that I most favor near the top of the salary chart and take my stand on those players so that I do not end up underweight relative to the rest of the field. I want to build a heavily concentrated core at the top, but then give myself more sprinkle plays at the bottom. This is never an event where it feels at all clear which players are going to jump up from the lower range to have a big week. What I want to do is to give myself a few extra shots in the lower range so that if I really hit it hard with my stars, maybe I can find that somewhat random player that squeezes out an unexpected Top-10 finish. Build in your shares of the best players first and then go back and work on the secondary and tertiary plays making small changes and adding in a few really cheap golfers so that you are not watering down your shares up top.

Course Comps

• Riviera
• Silverado
• Quail Hollow
• Innisbrook
• Olympia Fields

Field 

For the third year in a row, this is a weaker field than what we have normally had for this tournament over the years. It is less surprising this season as the PGA Tour has made decisions about which events will remain signature tournaments. What is interesting is that due to the fires in Los Angelos, the Genesis Invitational has been moved from Riviera to Torrey Pines in a few weeks so Torrey will host a signature event, just not for the Farmers. With the announcement that Torrey would host the Genesis, a number of quality players actually withdrew from the tournament this week. Apparently, getting a feel for Torrey Pines before a signature tournament with a lot of extra prize money on the line was not appealing to them.

This makes lineup builds tougher than the last few events. Although the salaries are set a little lower up top, the $7k range where there are not as many strong value players as the Sentry or the AMEX where it was easy to build around him without sacrificing much. The strategy will be interesting this week. There are only a few legitimate stars that could be rostered up top which should spread ownership out a little more than in recent years when Jon Rahm was the overwhelmingly owned golfer in the upper tier. This should make cash games a little more unique.

Weather

• Torrey Pines Forecast – Wind, waves & weather Superforecast Torrey Pines Glider Port – Windfinder

The weather looks great this week. The winds will be calm all day on Wednesday and for nearly the entire day on Thursday. It appears that the winds could get a little gusty at around 5pm on Thursday, but everyone should be long off the courses by that point. With two courses in play, there is a tight window between 9-11am for tee times which means that everyone will be done by around 3:30pm or so in the opening two rounds. I do not see anything noteworthy that would push me towards using a courses wave to have all of my players starting on one course or the other.

Local Connections 

• Max Homa
• Sahith Theegala
• JJ Spaun
• Charley Hoffman
• Beau Hossler
• Eric Cole
• Michael Kim
• David Lipsky

Key Stats

• Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
• Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
• Birdie or Better Percentage: 15%
• Par 5 Scoring: 20%
• Scrambling: 10%
• Proximity: 5%

 

Cash Game Plays

I am going to post this to get the column out and then add my commentary throughout the rest of the day just to be expeditious. With the Wednesday start, I want to at least get you the names out early so you can start putting together your lineups and then if you need to loop back for the commentary for final decisions I can add some color.

Top Tier

Ludvig Aberg – I was nervous about how Aberg would perform in his first start at Torrey Pines last year, but he no problems at all, finishing 9th. He is built for tough courses like this as he has plenty of length and relative accuracy to handle the longer, narrower tracks like Torrey Pines and other setups for major championships. He is also outstanding from mid to long range with his irons. He missed only two cuts last year and had great success on all three California courses during the earlier stretch of the year. He kicked off 2025 with a 5th place finish at Kapalua and I think he picks up at least one win this season if not more.

Hideki Matsuyama – Hideki was impressive at Kapalua, running away from the rest of the field in a record setting performance. He is a tremendous tee to green player who is at his best on tougher courses where his precision long iron play helps him to standout from the field. He ranks 1st in my comp course model by a wide margin and though I would not describe him as a Poa specialist, he is certainly better here than on other surfaces. The key with Hideki in recent years has been in managing injury concerns with his back and neck. We are still early in the season so my hope is that we are catching him at his peak. This seems likely give how well he tends to play at Torrey Pines, the WMPO and Riviera.

Tony Finau – Tony has yet to win at Torrey Pines, but outside of 2022, he has been amazing at this venue with Top-25s every other season going back to 2015 with six of those resulting in Top-10 finishes. Like others who excel here, Tony dominates with his long iron play and ranked 2nd on tour last season in SGAPP. Given his success at Riviera as well, it is no surprise that he ranks near the top of my comp course model. 2024 was somewhat of a quiet year for Finau but he usually starts strong and this stretch of events is one of the best times to roster him.

Will Zalatoris – It has been a challenging last couple of years for Willy Z as he has spent a lot of time working his way back to being 100% healthy after a nightmare year in 2023 where he was barely on the course at all. He seemed to find his stride in the playoffs with a couple of Top-15 finishes and he looked good in his initial two starts of 2025. Zalatoris is another golfer that tends to be at his best on longer, tougher courses like Torrey Pines, Riviera or Augusta, events where he consistently finishes near the top of the field. When he was at his best in 2022, he led the tour in SGAPP and was outstanding from long distances. He will need to recapture that again this year if he hopes to find himself in contention again, but I am encouraged by his recent play and willing to take a chance this week.

UPDATE – Will Zalatoris has WD from the field this week at the last minute. I will be swapping all of my Zalatoris shares to Sahith Theegala who is from Southern Cal and has an excellent record at comp courses.

 

Middle Tier

Jason Day – I will pull a few threads for Day that I applied above as well. He is one of the best players in the field when it comes to his play on comp courses and he is a two time winner at Torrey Pines. We have also seen him have a ton of success at Pebble Beach so poa greens do not seem to be a problem for him. Like Hideki, he has also had issues with his back over the years so it seems to be best to get him early in the season before the schedule has worn him down much. He finished 3rd last week at the AMEX as well which gives me a little more optimism for this week at a course where he’s enjoyed so much success.

Taylor Pendrith – Pendrith is a bomber whose iron play really picked up throughout the season after somewhat of a slow start. He picked up two Top-10 finishes in his first three starts of 2024, but then missed the cut in five of six starts before a dramatic rebound which led to a win fifteen Top-25 finishes for the year. He is 3/3 making the cut at Torrey Pines and two of those were Top-20 finishes.

Aaron Rai – Rai had a fantastic 2024 season, finally breaking through for a win at the Wyndham Championship in August for his first win on the PGA Tour. He is not traditionally the type of player we would target for Torrey Pines due to a lack of length off the tee, but he led the tour in driving accuracy in 2024 and he is really good on approaches from beyond 175 yards and ranked 7th overall on SGAPP. He is also excellent on poa greens, gaining .3 strokes per round over other surfaces. He has made the cut in all three starts at Torrey Pines and finished 6th here in 2022.

JJ Spaun – Spaun is from the area and played his college golf at San Diego State and always puts the Farmers on his schedule each year. He can be a tricky player to gauge, but seemed to find something last summer that helped him to get back on track and has looked really sharp. He’s missed only one cut in his last 15 starts (one WD as well) and has seven Top-25s, including a 3rd place finish at the Sony to start 2025. He’s 4/8 at Torrey Pines making the cut, but he is playing some of the best golf of his career these past 6 months and ranks 10th among the field in SGTG over the last 24 rounds.

 

Lower Tier

Stephan Jaeger – Jaegar was a very consistent cut maker for us in 2023 and though he was not quite as good in 2024, most of those missed cuts came at much tougher courses where we would not normally use him anyway. That is not a real selling point to trot him out this week, but he did finish 3rd here a year ago which was a bit of a surprise. In his favor is that he is one of the longer players off the tee on tour and ranked 13th in Total Driving in 2024. He is also off to a promising start in 2025 after a 3rd place finish at the Sony Open two weeks ago.

Doug Ghim – Ghim has made the cut in 11/12 starts and looked good in finishing 21st at the AMEX last weekend. I am always hoping to catch any upward trend in his putting game as he is always just a few wayward putts away from contention. However, I will take a tee to green game that ranks 6th over the last 24 rounds among this field. He ranked 19th on tour in 2024 in SGTG and his around the green play has improved steadily in recent months. He’s been decent at Torrey Pines, making the cut in 4/6 starts with two Top-25 finishes. This is the type of course where someone can win without being perfect on the greens.

Jhonattan Vegas – Vegas plays this event every year and when he is on his game, he’s been fairly successful with a handful of Top-25 finishes over the last decade including one two years ago. He played really well over the summer and it led to a win at the 3M Open in July and then a decent fall where he picked up a couple of additional Top-25s. He started off 2025 with a 4th place finish in Kapalua so it still appears his game is intact and he ranks 13th in SGTOT among the field over the last 24 rounds.

Sam Stevens – Stevens was a really excellent cash game option for 2024, making the cut in 25/30 starts with ten Top-25 finishes. In 2025, he is 2/2 so far and he is also 2/2 in his career at Torrey Pines including a 13th place finish in 2023. He is great off the tee and has decent short game play which gets him to the weekend more often than not. In limited starts (8), he has played well on comp courses, gaining just over .6 strokes per round during his career.

 

GPP Player Pool

Core

Ludvig Aberg	10800
Hideki Matsuyama	10700
Tony Finau	10200
Will Zalatoris	9500
Jason Day	9300
Taylor Pendrith	8800
Aaron Rai	8300
JJ Spaun	7900
Stephan Jaeger	7800
Doug Ghim	7700
Jhonattan Vegas	7400
Sam Stevens	7300

 

Secondary

Keegan Bradley	9900
Maverick McNealy	8900
Max Homa	8600
Ben Griffin	8100
Beau Hossler	8000
Thomas Detry	7900
Mark Hubbard	7800
Daniel Berger	7600
Mac Meissner	7500
Harris English	7300
Michael Kim	7200
Gary Woodland	7200
Joseph Bramlett	6900

 

Tertiary

Niklas Norgaard Moller	7600
Justin Rose	7600
Matthieu Pavon	7200
Jackson Koivun	7100
Erik van Rooyen	6900
Ryo Hisatsune	6800
Jake Knapp	6700
Taylor Montgomery	6500
Ryan Palmer	6300