Weekend Warriors – RBC Heritage

The Luke Donald era of dominance at the RBC Heritage has come to an end. He started off poorly on Thursday, looked completely out of, but then began a charge today that had him in position to make the cut on the final hole as he knocked his approach shot to within five feet of the pin and needed to just sink one short putt to push through to the weekend. In fitting fashion, the one part of his game that he could normally count on let him down and he missed the cut by one stroke. Although I am sure that some touts will be jubilant over his miss and point to it as something that discredits course history, I would say that Luke Donald’s downhill decline over the lat year probably had as much to do with the missed cut than anything. Having great course history is something that ends even for every player at some point if they stick around long enough. KJ Choi saw his run at Riviera end after many years and now Donald finally looks mortal at Harbor Town. However, Jeff avoided Donald completely and I kept my shares to a minimum so it certainly was not a total surprise for us this week as his play has signaled that something like this was coming for a while.

On the upper end of the board, we did see a few players suffering from a hangover after The Masters last week, maybe a little more so than usual. Paul Casey, Marc Leishman, Tyrrell Hatton, Charl Schwartzel, Kevin Chappell, Jason Dufner and Patton Kizzire all blew the cut this week and some of these guys were never even close. While this still is not a factor that I want to get too fixated on each year, it is certainly something to consider. This is the second time in a row we’ve seen Paul Casey lay an egg here and Marc Leishman hasn’t ever really played well at this event after playing at Augusta so store that away in your head for next year.

As I thought might be the case, Dustin Johnson made the cut and has played okay, but he is currently sitting in 26th place going to the weekend. I would not put it past him to go out tomorrow and shoot a 64, but it also would not shock me if he simply kept up at the pace he is at and finished around 15th or somewhere in the vicinity. On the other end of the motivation spectrum, Matt Kuchar showed up looking ready to go and is sitting in 13th right now. Many times, he plays his best golf over the weekend so do not be surprised if he makes a run before the weekend is over.

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