Jon Rahm watches his shot from the second tee during the final round of the Quicken Loans National PGA golf tournament, Sunday, June 26, 2016, in Bethesda, Md. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
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PGA West TPC Stadium Course
Par 72 - 7,113 Yards
PGA West Nicklaus Tournament Course
Par 72 - 7,159 Yards
La Quinta Country Club
Par 72 - 7,060 Yards
After a couple Hawaii events to kick off 2022, the PGA Tour now heads back to the mainland for the California swing. It starts this week with the American Express which is back to a three-course rotation this year. That means each player in the field will play one round on each of PGA West Stadium Course, PGA West Nicklaus Course, and La Quinta Country Club Thursday through Saturday. Those who make the cut(Top 65 & ties) will then play the final round on the PGA West Stadium Course.
All three courses are Par 72's under 7,200 yards and all have ranked outside the Top 30 in difficulty in each of the last five years. The course I will concentrate on for my stats model this week will be the Stadium Course which will be used twice including the final round. It is a Pete Dye design so ball-striking is once again at a premium with emphasis on hitting fairways off the tee and hitting the below-average-sized greens.
In general, I don't really narrow my player pool down based on the order they play the three courses for the full-tourney contests but one narrative that gets thrown around is playing the Stadium Course in Round 3 as to play it on back-to-back days. Do with that what you will. As for the weather forecast, we will have to monitor leading up to lock but as of now, Saturday looks to be very window all day while the other three days appear calm and ripe for birdie making.
With all that, let's get into the picks.
We have a decision to make at the top this week as we get two players in Rahm and Cantlay who check every box and sit in their own tier. Let's start with Rahm who won this event back in 2018 and followed that up with a T6 in 2019. He missed the cut at the Fortinet Championship back in the fall but rebounded in a big way to open 2022 with a T2 at the Tournament of Champions. If you are looking for safety, you can also consider Rahm has now tallied a Top 10 finish in seven of his last eight events with a win and five total podium finishes.
For Cantlay, he finished last season as the hottest player on the planet winning the BMW Championship and Tour Championship in back-to-back weeks. He then took some time off and didn't play the fall season at all and showed up at the Tournament of Champions and looked good gaining 5.9 strokes tee to green and finishing T4. He has played in this event twice finishing T9 back in 2019 and came one shot short of Si Woo Kim last season finishing T2.
While you can take your pick and build around one of them in cash games, I prefer a more balanced route but in terms of my GPP builds, I will be splitting them down the middle and will have more than the field. Stay tuned for my Wednesday video on how I will do this with the optimizer.
This is the portion of the article where I make a pivot off the likely chalk in Abraham Ancer and Seamus Power. The top tier is loaded with course history narrative this week so Conners missed cut and T50 in two trips doesn't really look as appealing but that will also lead to some lower ownership and leverage. While I am not ready to bet him outright again, I will be locking him into my cash game lineups for all the same reasons I mentioned last week. The foundation of that argument was ball-striking as he leads the Tour in that category since the start of last season. That continued last week as he was Top 5 in ball striking and gained a whopping 5.9 strokes on approach. It was also the third time in four events he has not lost strokes putting and if he can do that again, I like his chances for his sixth Top 25 finish in his last seven events with a good chance at a Top 10 or better.
It may be due to it being early in the week but Knox doesn't seem to be getting the love he deserves. It starts with the price which has only gone up $700 on DraftKings after a tremendous ball-striking performance(9th in the field) last week which led to a T7 finish. He now returns to the AMEX where he has terrific course history making the cut in all four trips with two Top 20's(career-best T16 last year) and no finish worse than T37. All things considered, Knox is a core play for me in cash games this week and I will also have 20-30% exposure in my GPP builds. I will also be placing a Top 20 bet on him in the betting market.
He made us sweat for pretty much two days straight last week after a slow start but made the cut and finished T48 as the putter let him down once again but he was solid gaining 3.4 strokes tee to green. I am going back to the well once again, last least in cash games, as he has been solid making 10 of 11 cuts with six Top 25 finishes since mid-July, and returns to the AMEX where he finished with a decent T32 last year. He is the highest-ranked golfer in the $7.5K range and below on DraftKings and while he doesn't jump off the page anywhere, he does check a lot of boxes once again this week.
There is a nice group of golfers in this lower range that jump off the page in terms of Vegas odds to pricing differential. Buckley stands out the most at +20/+26 on DraftKings and FanDuel and is also Top 20 in my overall model on the sheet this week. He is also #1 in the PGA Tour Rookie Rankings after a T12 at the Sony Open which was not only his fourth made cut in six events but also his third finish of T12 or better. What stands out even more for me is that he has shown a complete game gaining strokes off the tee, on approach, and putting in the same event three times in his last five events. That is a recipe for an eventual breakthrough win but for this week, I would be thrilled with a Top 25 finish at these prices.
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