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Traveling moneyCaptain America takes down the Travelers as Tommy Fleetwood suffers his most epic heartache ever on the seventy-second hole. Congratulations to Keegan Bradley for capturing his eighth career PGA TOUR victory. For a guy who is consistently overlooked by PGA pundits, two signature wins, two FedEx Cup playoff wins, one WGC win, and a PGA Championship is quite the career CV. Bradley is our third outright win of the season and a wonderful story, as he won in his home area of New England. Now ninth in the Ryder Cup rankings, the player-captain conversation is completely real. For those wondering, the last time it happened was 1963 when Arnold Palmer went 3-0-1 and the US won 23-9 at the Atlanta Athletic Club. Overall, 23 player-captains participated in 13 separate Ryder Cups. The most recent example was 2019, when Tiger Woods was a player-captain for Team USA during the Presidents Cup. I rarely compare any player to Tiger Woods, and I won't do it here. The modern Ryder Cup Captain's role is far beyond where it was in 2023, let alone 1963! Is Keegan one of the 12 best US players? 100%. Bradley has four wins on TOUR in the last three years! Can he do both? Absolutely not. We all love a great story, and I can guarantee you this one is not going away anytime soon. The FedEx raceWe have six weeks left to earn FedEx Cup points as we head to Detroit for the Rocket Classic. A field of 156 descends upon the Detroit Golf Club. A 36-hole facility with a North and South Course, the tournament layout uses 17 holes from the North and one hole from the South. A couple of holes are re-routed on the front nine, and the back nine exists in the same order as the back nine on the North Course. Cam Davis won by a stroke over four players last year. This was Davis's second Rocket Classic victory in his career. The average winning score is 22 under par through six editions. Our championship layout is a par 72 design covering 7,370 yards. A classic Donald Ross design, modern PGA TOUR players can score. Collin Morikawa (+1200) is the betting favorite. That sounds far-fetched since he has not won since the fall of 2023, but in six events, three of the winners have owned tournament odds of +1400 or lower. The top 65 and ties will play the weekend for $9.6 million and those precious FedEx Cup points. Here's a quick refresher for 2025.
Taking just the top 100 by year's end will create a ton of drama between now and Thanksgiving. Plenty of popular players are not going to make the top 70 cut for Memphis and will have to play in the fall to secure their card. Many of the middle tier are going to be active in these summer events to try and avoid being eliminated. Rocket Classic starts in...That's why forty-seven of the top 100 are in Detroit to compete for points and a first-place check of $1.73 million. Detroit Golf Club rewards scorers as four of the six winners have finished with a winning score in the 20s. The average cut is three under par, and those finishing last year at 10 under were tied twenty-fifth. Vegas has set the winning score over/under line at -22.5. I'll explore more on how to score in the outrights section, but let's start with hitting these small greens (5,150 sq/ft), avoiding the four-inch rough, and 87 bunkers. This is one of the easiest courses on TOUR to hit GIRs. If everyone is on the green and the winner is 20+ under par, you must be able to roll the rock in Rock City! The six winners have averaged gaining over five strokes on the greens against the field with their flatstick. With four par 5s and six par 4s under 450, 49% of your approach shots are taken from 150 yards or less. Figure out the driver, wedge, and putter formula for this field, and you'll be in the hunt late on Sunday. Look at last year's winner (Cam Davis) and those who finished runner-up: Min Woo Lee, Akshay Bhatia, Davis Thompson, and Aaron Rai. Rai might be the only outlier there, but you get the point. Bryson, Finau, Cam Young, and Taylor Pendrith have all had great success here. I know Tommy's slip on the seventy-second hole was brutal on Sunday, but how about Bhatia's blunder last year on the final green? His three-putt cost him the tournament and gave Davis his second Rocket Classic trophy. Rocket manThe Rocket is a classic proximity contest. With 50% of the approach shots coming from inside 150 yards, the players have to find other avenues to differentiate themselves. The floor is wedge play with so many short approaches, but Detroit GC offers a couple of interesting full swings where you can separate from the competition. Par 3 scoring makes a difference on classic courses. Amazing architects like Donald Ross always drop a couple of tough 3s into the scorecard, and DGC is no different. Nine and 11 reach over 200 yards, and both are inside the top 4 toughest on this test relative to par. If you can score on these two holes over four days, that is a real advantage. The par 5s have an average birdie rate of 42%. Those second shots on the 5s are also an area to step up. Long iron play and fairway woods will be used. Unlike wedge play, a 250+ yard approach is more ceiling than floor potential on TOUR. A majority of the par 4s are short, but the longer ones define where you can make the biggest gains. Here's the strokes gained breakdown by par and yardage.
As a PGA Professional, I love teaching even more than I love betting. At RTL, we can do both, but these narratives are meant to help all of you see what I notice when I analyze a venue. If we know GIRs are common and scoring is low at the Rocket Classic, then what else do we need to select the best outright predictions? The PUTTER! Every winner has gained at least three strokes on the field with their flatstick the year they won. Classic push-up greens like those at DGC require scoring from close range. Longer approach putts outside of 15 feet will be difficult to make, and with the average size of these greens, there won't be many of those. The guys who contend will make the majority of their putts inside 10 feet. The ability to convert from six feet for birdie on a par 5 or eight feet to save par after a chip is the straightest path to success. Prioritize putting this week and scoring. Birdie or better percentage, par 4 scoring, etc., are vital. The six winners have averaged 26 sub-par scores in the year they won. Twenty-six birdies (or better) start with 30+ birdie chances. All of this adds up, but bettors still select players who don't make putts on northern Bent/Poa greens. Course history and putting on the same surface as last week at the Travelers are mandatory skills in the Motor City. Don't talk yourself into hoping players will putt well. I looked closely at the course history and current form on the greens. β Many in this field have not played in three weeks (or more). If you are a middle-tier player or lower and didn't get in the RBC Canadian Open, we may not have seen you since the Charles Schwab. That's a long time without being tournament-tested. I'm sticking with guys who have been competing, and quite frankly, need the points. Cam Young is outside the top 30. Young is playing well and is a good fit for Detroit GC. That's the opportunity we are looking for on the betting board. A trending player who can score on this layout. Young also fits the OTT style we are seeking. Look again at the top 5 from one year ago. Those guys are aggressive drivers of the golf ball. Bryson DeChambeau won here by attacking with the big stick. Six of the top 10 in SG:OTT were inside the top 25 on the leaderboard one year ago. There's little doubt we're looking for a Rocket Man. A player who can go deep on the scoreboard and off the tee. The year Finau won, nine of the top 10 OTT were inside the top 25 on Sunday night. Power players off the tee tend to have an edge with their long iron game as well. That level of ball speed gets them closer and allows them to launch it higher from 200+ yards. The archetype player formula here is not complicated. Each of these guys has been impressive over the past six weeks. A couple need a win, and others have proven they can close when they get close. The drama is far from over, even if the signature events have ended. Each event until the playoffs has a 36-hole cut. It's time to dig in and win again. No weekend guarantees until August. Settle in because for the next couple of summer weeks, there's no Scottie to suffer through. Let's go back-to-back at a place where we know the field and the formula for winning. Outright Winners - Rocket ClassicRead between the linesThe best place to follow news about Read The Line is right here! β Do you know what it means to be a member of Read The Line?We provide more outrights, prop bets, H2H matchups, DFS lineups, and One & Done picks. Hit the link above and see for yourself! β
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