Book of Genesis 📖
Across the AtlanticDid you have Brian Campbell on your 2025 prediction card as a multiple winner in 2025? I did not. Campbell joins five others (McIlroy, Scheffler, Straka, Griffin, Fox), and if you picked all of these guys before the FedEx season started to win more than once, please send us your contact information… Read The Line is hiring! We had Grillo on our Rocket Classic card, but Brian was +35000 (350-1) to start the week in the Quad Cities. Nonetheless, he won dramatically and once again proves that regular PGA TOUR events are a great opportunity to cash a large ticket. The Genesis Scottish Open starts my favorite two-week stretch of the season. I love early morning golf from across the Atlantic. The style of play is so entertaining, and watching the world’s best get tested differently is exceptionally entertaining. Combined with the quiet mornings at home before everyone is awake, it brings about a single focus on the screen that weekly coverage cannot copy. We’ll start our two-week sojourn in North Berwick, Scotland, at the Renaissance Club and then jump to Northern Ireland for the 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush. Plenty on our fourth and final major next week, for now let’s fixate on the coastline along the Firth of Forth! Sarvadi partyA field of 156 players is set to take on the Renaissance Club for the seventh straight time. Born of American innovation, this Tom Doak design has given us a number of great Scottish national championships. In six years, we have watched three playoff victories followed by three one-shot wins. It doesn’t get much closer than that. Say what you want about a modern links style Doak design, the Sarvadi’s know how to party on Sundays. Who could forget the McIlroy-MacIntyre finish from two years ago, only to have Robert MacIntyre come back last year and beat Adam Scott by one stroke to win in his home country. The Renaissance Club is a very unique piece of property. Nestled alongside some of Scotland’s legendary links, it requires weather to give these guys headaches. They have added a couple of yards to the course, but overall, it is still a par 70 measuring 7,282 yards. The Renaissance Club does have a unique scorecard; there are five par 3s, 10 par 4s, and three par 5s. Those 3s and 4s are all pretty stout when the wind is blowing. Speaking of which, any event overseas in the United Kingdom requires constant monitoring of the weather. Does anyone remember the AM-PM wave advantage at Royal Troon? The current forecast for Thursday through Sunday is quite good. Temperatures will reach highs around 70 degrees, and it looks like rain (if we get any) will be on Sunday. The wind along the coastline cannot be measured by any website, so keep that in mind. Genesis Scottish Open starts in...The breeze is going to bend a little. It starts early in the week out of the west and shifts to the east on Friday. The holes at TRC run in all different directions, so this should cause a little havoc during that cut sweat on Friday. The wind caps out at approximately 16-18 mph, but again, this is the coast along the Firth of Forth. It will be a little more aggressive and especially when the guys play holes 12-15 out toward the point. Remember, for the most up-to-minute forecast, please use the link below. I started adding that three years ago because a member suggested it. A great idea, and we have put the weekly weather link in the newsletter ever since! In 2022, this event was co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour and the PGA TOUR. As a preview and prep for the Open Championship, we get a signature-level field. Eight of the top 10 and 17 of the top 25 in the OWGR are here to compete for $9 million. I also love the fact these two weeks have a full field and a cut. The top 65 and ties play the weekend and will compete for a winner's check of $1.62 million. When it comes to picking players against the cut line, keep those DP guys in mind. Staring out, 84 players are from the TOUR and 72 from the DP. An average of 45% of the players who make the cut over the past three years have been from the European Tour! The average winner's tournament odds since the upgrade are +2300. This event not only looks like a signature event on paper, but it plays like one. The leaderboards have been a who's who, and I believe that trend will continue. Part of the reason for the elite Sunday final round(s) is the scoring. If the wind blows, it favors the best players to scramble and those who fare well in difficult "major-like" conditions. If the conditions are calm, it's a birdiefest and the best players have an advantage again. Get ready for the forty-third Scottish Open. I doubt the weather will be good all four rounds, so keep an eye on our live betting coverage and keep your mouse pointer near the real-time weather link. We have two great weeks ahead of us, and with our recent run of consistent contenders, a great chance to cash out both Sundays at lunchtime. BraveheartsThe weather dictates so much of what we will predict for the Scottish Open. With the current forecast, we expect low scoring. In benign conditions, the average winning score of this event is 18 under par. Vegas set the winning score line at 16.5 under par. I guess they believe the calm forecast! Looking at just the co-sanctioned years, approach play had the biggest influence on overall scoring. The greens are large at TRC, and players will hit well over 70% of them, even from the fescue. To separate, players need to narrow their proximity and knock it close. Even when Xander won at seven under par in 2022, he still made 18 sub-par scores. Bobby Mac and Rory averaged 22.5 under par totals. You must create birdie chances, and focusing on the best iron players will be where to start. We can refine the skill set more in a minute, but an accurate iron game from 175-225 yards is essential. The Renaissance Club has a large number of approach shots under 75 yards. An odd feature, players that can scramble play well here. Min Woo Lee, Xander are two of the best with a wedge from close range on TOUR. It is important to note this feature because if you select lineups and bets based upon this player characteristic, you'll fare well. General ARG play is great, but the contenders hit so many greens, if you are chipping and pitching to save par in calm conditions, you are going to get lapped by the field. Scoring comes down to those short wedges and great putting. This is a Doak design, and the greens are less than 20 years old. If a player can putt on fescue, they will have an advantage. Some PGA TOUR players just can't adjust to the slower speeds. It tends to help average putters score better. We'll get into a deeper conversation about that next week. Handle the long approach putts, make your five-footers, convert about a third of your birdie looks, and you'll be right there on the leaderboard. With a dearth of analytic data, I use leaderboards and scorecards. The contenders all take advantage of the par 5s. They differentiate on the 4s and survive the 3s. One of the hardest par 3s is the 147-yard sixth hole. One good swing and you get a simple par, one bad swing and a double bogey is staring you in the face. The last three winners have gained an average of nearly six strokes on the field across the 4s. Six of them are over 450 yards and will present a medium test in reasonable wind. The eighteenth hole is a test in any condition, especially when you consider how close every edition of this event has been at the end. The 2020 Scottish Open, won by Aaron Rai, was played in October. It was moved due to COVID-19. The remaining five were all played in the summer, and four of those five were birdie-laden. Scoring ability is important at this event. All exposed coastline courses have a difficult design challenge. If you make them too hard when it's calm, they become impossible when it blows. Make them fair under difficult weather conditions, and they become too easy under calm seas. That's the case with TRC. This is a phenomenal course, but bring in the world's very best players, and there's nothing you can do. These are the guys who create new scoring records almost every week on TOUR. The modern game has two baseline skills: speed and scoring. With our forecast, you'd better score this week. Speed has proven extremely valuable at the Sarvadi show. In case you are wondering who the Sarvadi's are? Jerry Sarvadi is the CEO of TRC. His family built the facility. If you have a minute and want to enjoy some 2022 RTL content, I interviewed Jerry three years ago as a preview for this event. Just a quick look at the past champions and you see the speed effect. Min Woo, Xander, and Rory can all send it. The fairways aren't super wide, but again, they cannot be too narrow if it gets windy. So bombers have an advantage. Miss those fairway bunkers and create more realistic scoring chances. Avoiding those fairway bunkers is a must. Players who approach from the fairway hit a ton (70%+) of their GIRs. Players who play from the fairway bunkers hit less than 20%! I weighted strokes gained OTT pretty heavily in my research because it favors length and measures accuracy. That's our archetype player for this AM run of tournament rounds. Break out the layers and let's get at it. I cannot wait for the golf to start tomorrow. Thank goodness it starts five hours earlier than usual. Set your alarms and enjoy the morning magic. Outright Winners - Genesis Scottish OpenLake lifeIt was nice to see Somi Lee and Jin Hee Im take home the Dow Championship. They defeated Lexi Thompson and Megan Khang in a playoff. Three of those names (Megan excluded) are names you know from this newsletter. Our LPGA process still works; now it just comes down to timing. Speaking of timing, it seems Lexi is enjoying retired life. The 30-year-old LPGA superstar has eight starts in 2025 and five top 15 finishes. Thompson's last five events: T14-MC-T4-T12-T2 (lost playoff). Two of those starts were top 15 results in major championships! It seems Lexi's career isn't quite over, which is good news for the LPGA and great news for the fans. Those fans will be out on the beautiful French mountainside of Evian les Bains, France, to watch the Amundi Evian Championship. The official “fifth” major of the LPGA season, there aren't many better settings to play and watch golf in the women's game. Located on the shores of Lake Léman between the borders of France and Switzerland, 132 women are in the field, ready to compete for $8 million. The top 65 and ties will play the weekend on the Champions Course at the Evian Resort. We love when majors move around and give us great variety in the venue, but the finish here is exciting. A small par 3, a short par 4, and wrapping with a reachable par 5 over water always leads to some uncertainty at the end. Fire up the espresso machine, the women (and men) are playing early morning golf in Europe! Amundi Evian Championship starts in...The Champions Course covers 6,527 yards and plays to a par 71. We lose a stroke to par as the scorecard has four par 5s, nine par 4s, and FIVE par 3s. Calling all approach artists, 28% of your iron shots will be from the tee box. Recent top 10 leaderboards tell us that playing the par 3s well is a big advantage. Over the past decade, the average winning score is 15 under par. Since becoming the LPGA's fifth major championship in 2013, the event has not had a repeat winner. To take it a step further, in those 11 years, only one country (South Korea) has won the event three times, and no other country has won the event more than once as a major. The Champions Course sits on a hillside and, at this elevation (1,575 feet above sea level), will lose about 3% of the scorecard length. The longer holes tend to go downhill, like the 226-yard par-three fourteenth, while the short 331-yard seventeenth hole goes uphill. The forecast looks solid over in Evian. Rain early in the week should just soften the surfaces enough to create some scoring. Twenty-one under par is the major tournament record by In-gee Chun back in 2016. Our defending champion, Ayaka Furue, came close last year at 19 under par. Seventy-eight bunkers across the scorecard are not enough to slow this field of elite players down. Sidehill lies and major championship pressure are really what curtail scoring. Temperatures will be in the low 80s, and the wind will be just a slight breeze. We are looking at some phenomenal weather in the forecast, let's hope it holds. If you count the Dow Championship last week, we have 18 different winners in 17 events this year. Lydia, Jeeno, and Minjee have won, so you cannot say the stars have not produced. The world's number one, Nelly Korda, has been solid here (two top 10s in her last three starts at Evian), yet based on her entire 2025, is not the betting favorite when the board was released on Monday. The Champions Course almost entirely sits west to east. This design direction will provide very few challenging crosswind holes and make sub-par scoring even easier for the field. Of those 132 who start on Thursday, five players have odds under +2000. With so many "favorites," I'm going to be very particular about the card. Our usual dominance of the LPGA has been stymied this season. A familiar venue and great playing conditions will give us an edge. We had the winner here (Brooke Henderson) in 2022. It's time we return to the winner's circle. The only downside of the Evian is the scheduling. The PGA TOUR plays two weeks in Europe and takes all of the early morning golf attention. Why the LPGA places a major against the Genesis Scottish Open, I do not know. There's only one AM golf audience, and they will be watching Scottie and Rory at the Renaissance Club. Hopefully, the new Commissioner is taking notes, and we get a more unified schedule between the two tours in 2026. One that will help grow the LPGA and create more excitement around weeks like Evian, where the ending is going to be very entertaining. French ConnectionIt’s that time of the year when form tells us who is going to get a podium finish. Two years ago, Celine Boutier won the Evian and followed it up with another win in Scotland the next week! In 2022, Brooke won just three starts before she took home the Evian title. Last year, Ayaka Furue had four top 10s in five individual starts before her Evian victory. Comparing career history is important on the Champions Course, but I also want players who are competing at a high level in the last month and MAJOR championships this season. There are a couple of names who we know were due. Somi and Minjee Lee, Carlota Ciganda, and Mao Saigo, just to name a few. We've been betting on these women, and they finally broke through. The Evian is one big accuracy test, and if you're going to cut down this field and win this major championship, your knives (picks) better be sharp. I went through the trends from the last three Evian top 10s. This hillside setting is one of the biggest challenges players have for 72 holes. I don't believe there's a level lie on the entire scorecard. Take a look at how it affects the field on the specific par categories. • The field hits the fairway on the par 5s less than 60% of the time. The average for hitting all thirteen fairways is 70% for the three top 10s studied. Our outrights must get it in the short grass to take care of the 5s. That's an interesting observation, as it tells us being a bomber isn't good enough on this layout. Length is an advantage most everywhere, but course history and managing the par 5s from the fairway have proven to be even more important. • The key to playing the par 4s is hitting GIRs. Over eighteen holes, the three top 10s hit 77% of their GIRs. Last year, they averaged 81%! On the par 4s, that number drops to 65% for the field. Playing well on these varied hillside holes is a huge part of the scoring formula. What's even more interesting is that the par 4s average 390 yards in length. If total length isn't the issue, we are going to stick with the most accurate par 4 scorers. • There are FIVE par 3s to contend with. Players are hitting those par 3 greens 72% of the time. They represent 28% of the holes you will play. The 3s go uphill/downhill and vary greatly in length from 155 to 226 yards. 70%+ is a high number. Scoring on these holes is vital. The last three top 10s are averaging 2.95. Under par across these five tests by the tournament contenders proves this is the number one place to separate from the competition and that's why all of our outrights are in the top 20% for par 3 scoring in the field. Soft conditions and small targets will create an endless amount of scoring chances for those ladies who can hit their targets. The average winning score over the last 5 years is 17 under par. Those same three top 10s average 20 sub-par scores over 72 holes. That tells us the leaders do not spend much time using their around the green skills. Bogey avoidance will be less weighted at Evian than the other four major championships. With these slopes, you will have to convert those birdie chances. Strokes gained putting was just slightly beneath SG:APP for impact on those leaderboards. We established how important the iron game is, but the putter needs to perform as well. Our outrights not only reflect those women who lead strokes gained putting, but putts per GIR as well. Another trend I noticed on the leaderboards was since the Evian moved to major status, 10 of the 11 winners have scored aggressively in the opening round. Eight have rounds of 66 or better and all 11 winners have a round one scoring average of 65.8! I have some fast starters on our sheet. In many ways, it makes sense. Opening a major championship does two things. One, it gives the leader great confidence, and two, it makes the field play catch-up on a major proving ground. I know you'll be watching the men's finest up on the Firth of Forth, but don't worry, we’ll watch the women. The European run has been good to us over the years, and it’s time for some of the other season-long leans to start winning. Outright winners - Amundi Evian ChampionshipRead between the linesThe best place to follow news about Read The Line is right here! 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