Toronto Players Club π¨π¦
Back-to-back national championshipsRight now, we are in the center of the maelstrom. Signature, major, signature, national open, national open, and signature event all inside seven weeks on the PGA TOUR schedule. At the same time, Scottie Scheffler has decided to go nuclear and play the best golf of his career. The numbers prove it, and it will be interesting to see how long he can keep this heater up. Oakmont is going to test these guys even more than Muirfield Village, and it's obvious to me (and Jack) that the "nice players" are going to have a difficult time keeping pace. Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau are in action this week (at separate venues). Can either spark some fear into their respective fields like Scheffler did last week in Ohio? Or will they just prepare for Pittsburgh... Taylor Pendrith is under a ton of pressure this week at the RBC Canadian Open. Following a T12 finish at The Memorial, Pendrith heads to his home region of Canada for the national open. Pendrith is acquiring more attention than Hughes, Hadwin, and Taylor due to his length and course history. It's tough to be the people's favorite at a big event. Taylor grew up about 40 miles east of Osprey Valley, and I'm sure he has played the North Course more than any other card-carrying TOUR player in the field, hence the interest. These player narratives usually go one of two ways. Thinking back to the Presidents Cup in Montreal, the Canadians went 5-9-0 in those matches. Although Mackenzie Hughes faced a similar situation last year in the Canadian Open and finished seventh at Hamilton! Can Taylor take home the title? Keep reading and see if he has what it takes to win outside of Toronto. On the outskirtsTPC Toronto at Osprey Valley will be the thirty-eighth host for Canada's national menβs golf championship. The second brand-new venue in three years, we have 156 "rookies" coming to Alton, Ontario. I'm sure some of these Canadian players (like Pendrith) have competed here before. How many would have played here after the massive 2023 course renovation? My friend Ian Andrew gave the North Course some championship character. Just for a quick comparison, in 2019 PGA TOUR Americas played here, and the winning score by Paul Barjon was 25 under par. Last year, Will Cannon won the Fortinet Cup Championship (Americas Tour Championship) at five under par. Only seven players finished under par that week! It might be easy to get confused between this week and next. Both are national championships, both have 156 players in the field, both are a par 70, and they both measure approximately the same yardage. The North Course at TPC Toronto is 7,389 yards while Oakmont will play 7,372 yards. Will the two tests be similar? The simple answer is yes, but the truth of the matter is that comparing any course to a venue like Oakmont is unfair. Every resource available at Oakmont is driven toward punishing the player. TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley is a public facility. One with three courses, and even though Ian Andrew renovated this into a true championship test, you still have to manage play. Fields of fescue stretch far back from the fairway landing areas, and the rough will be about half the length (maybe) of what we will see outside of Pittsburgh. RBC Canadian Open starts in...With bookend par 5s (holes one and 18), we have a unique scoring situation. Keep an eye on those birdie streaks for players going off hole 10 in rounds one and two. I have spoken to a couple of my Canadian counterparts from the media center, and they all believe the winning score will be completely weather-dependent. I mentioned the Barjon versus Cannon scoring earlier, and Vegas set the final score over/under at -17.5. According to the GCSAA report, the Toronto region has witnessed a weather pattern much like Muirfield Village. Temperatures have been cool, and the forecast has been wet. Precipitation has plagued the area, and it looks like we will see more rain during the tournament rounds. There's rain forecasted for Thursday morning and throughout Friday. This afternoon, a storm is supposed to hit the North Course and dump .25" of rain. We're saying the turf will be soft. One of the unique elements of this golf course is the layout. Seventeen of the 18 holes sit along a northwest-to-southeast pole. Our wind forecast for the week starts from the northwest and rotates through the northeast and into the south. Following that pattern, our players will play each hole under different wind conditions. Nine holes head northwest, and eight run toward the southeast. As the wind changes, we'll get holes with crosswinds, against, with, etc. Featuring ball striking in a national championship is not a hot take, but one I would be aware of. Early morning tee times will require a good layering system to keep warm, as each early AM tee time starts in the mid-50s. The greens on the North Course are covered in a Bentgrass/Poa mix and average 6,500 sq/ft in size. Over thirty acres of fairway grass is a healthy amount to hit, avoid the five holes with water in play, and 48 bunkers across the landscape. One quick change to the regular scorecard, the eighth and seventeenth holes have been flipped. The seventeenth is a medium par 4 that will now help close the front nine, and the eighth is a 530+ yard par 4(!) put in place to challenge the contenders during the closing holes. I love this change, and it will supply some sensational theater as the back nine now finishes with The Rink at 14, a medium par 4 at 15, two brutal par 4s at 16 and 17, and then a risk-reward final hole where the second shot over water approaches a green with a false front. Miss your 250+ approach a couple of feet short, and you could roll back into the pond. NOW we are talking. Three of the top 15 and 16 of the top 50 in the OWGR are in the field competing for $9.8 million. A solid $1.764 million to first. Get inside the top 65 and ties if you want to get paid. Rory is the outright favorite around +450, and should fit this layout quite nicely. Will McIlroy be looking ahead, or will he be worried about Scottie's recent alpha-run and want to stake his claim again for player of the year? Donβt forget, Rory had a signature win (AT&T), The PLAYERS, and a career grand slam victory at The Masters before Scottie went into superhero mode. Yes, Scheffler has won three of four, but let's not permit our recency bias to bar us from the facts. A reasonable US Open preview, let's see who can survive this upcoming weekend and challenge Mr. Scheffler for golf's grandest storyline heading into Oakmont. Not all rookies are equalSix par 4s over 480 yards. Let's just start with length off the tee. We already know the conditions will be soft, and there could be more rain throughout the tournament. It doesn't take long to decipher the landing areas off the tee are favorable and the fescue you see in these YouTube video previews has been cut back. With two short par 3s, and two par 5s under 600 yards, there's a ton of yardage in these par 4s. The average par 4 length on the North Course is 459 yards. The average length at Augusta National is 456 yards, at Quail Hollow it was 459 yards. I'm on the record to say length will not slow these guys down, but it does eliminate players from contention. Strokes gained off the tee is a great measure at TPC Toronto because it rates players total driving with a length bias. A great skill to start with is a player's ability to send it. These conditions will allow the field to score. When the wind doesn't blow, players make sub-par scores on the North. If a player on PGA TOUR Americas can shoot 25 under here, imagine what a PGA TOUR level player can do. The wind will be moving around, but it is not supposed to blow over 12 mph. That level of breeze won't be enough to slow this pool of players down. In fact, with so many young players in the field against a bunch of veterans who have not played the course before, the skill to score will be a huge factor. I also want aggressive players. This course is wide open; take the driver out and hammer it. Then fire at every pin. A 500-yard hole for a long TOUR player is driver, seven or eight iron. Sorry, Jack, nice players hit it far these days. There are two players on top of the betting board (Rory and Ludvig), and they are two of the longest (and accurate) players on the PGA TOUR. We drive for show and putt for dough. Following ball speed and scoring, my next standard for contending this week is putting. When everyone is learning the green complexes, good putters can separate from the field for two reasons. They excel at speed control. Not all 12s on the Stimpmeter are the same. This is the first time we have seen a Bent/Poa blend this season. The faster you can react and control your speed on these greens, the better. Second, good putters can read greens. It's a specific requirement to make putts! For both reasons, I am weighing putting and picking those who rate highly, along with sub-par scoring and ball speed. Par 70 scorecards usually pack in a couple of extra par 4s. The North Course is built with 12 of them. Par 4 scoring is a filter I'm interested in for our card. We need guys who won't regress over the weekend when scoring gets more difficult. Quick PSA, rounds one and two are generally set up very fair. Tournament officials must get 156 players through the cut by Friday night. Then on Saturday, the gloves are off. Saturday played +1.8 strokes over par at Muirfield Village. This is why Saturday is always "moving day." Tournament staff set up the course to separate the field. I want weekend warriors who can score on the par 4s and handle the Saturday setups. Too many of our players (men and women) have been dropping on Saturdays. I'm targeting weekend scoring as a specific skill I want for our guys. A brand-new venue cannot provide us with the par ranges we look at every week to help determine our leans. What we do know are the approach ranges these guys will play from. At 7,400 yards and a par 70 be prepared to see plenty of mid irons pulled from bags. The scoring range will be 175-225 yards. For these guys, our focus is on five or six through nine iron. Ian Andrew was hired to design a master plan for the last club I was the Head Professional at. I'm very familiar with his tendencies, and he loves the ground game. You can see his classic style all over this place. Even with the soft conditions, players will be forced to find specific landing areas and use the ground to get it close. Much like the great putters can read greens, the best GIR guys know how to break down a green complex. They know exactly where to land the ball and where not to. Long irons will come into play on the par 5s and two of the par 3s. Both of the 225+ par 3s have water in play. I believe MVGC will end up being a better preview than TPC Toronto for next week, but this course can trip you up if you're not careful. I'm placing bogey avoidance and around the green play last of the four major strokes gained categories. If players do miss a green, most of these surrounds are not difficult to get up and down. Half of them have one bunker or fewer. Finesse with a wedge won't hurt, but I don't think short game separates anyone as it did at Muirfield Village. A nice draw off the tee wouldn't hurt, as more than half the holes favor a right to left ball flight. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be giving you options other than Rory McIlroy. Don't worry, I have an angle to handle him. We just won +550 in prop bets with Scheffler at Memorial when his outright value was +250 pre-week. The Canadian Open has leaned into young stars for some time, and that's one reason why the field is so interesting the week before our national championship. Luke Clanton, David Ford, and the 2023 PGA TOUR U leader, Ludvig Γ berg, are all playing. Twenty-six players competed in The Memorial, and we have 21 Canadians in the field. I like this spot on the schedule for Canadaβs Open. It is much better than the days following The Open Championship! Our winner this week will have to beat a serious crop of contenders. I feel the men below have the best opportunity to do it. Outright Winners - RBC Canadian OpenA weekend at the Jersey shoreMuch like the men at Memorial, our women waned over the weekend at the US Women's Open. Our streak of not having a women's winner since November is way too long. Thankfully, we head back to New Jersey and a venue where we have picked the outright twice in the last three years. The ShopRite LPGA Classic presented by ACER has been a mainstay on the LPGA calendar for decades. Some may think the week after the US Women's Open might not be a great spot on the schedule, but Nelly and Jeeno have made the trek to the Jersey Shore. Perhaps after a brutal week in Wisconsin, they are seeking a little competitive relief. The Bay Course at Seaview can provide just that. It is the shortest course on the LPGA schedule. Combine that with one extra day of travel time, and it's no wonder this leaderboard has been filled with legends over the years. That's right, don't go looking for round one scores on Thursday morning. The ShopRite is one of two 54-hole events left on the tour. The second comes in September. A fun birdiefest, the average winning score for three rounds is 14 under par over the last decade. Donald Ross designed the windswept setting across from Atlantic City in 1914. No word on whether Nucky Thompson ever played here, but the overall layout has held up over time. A couple of holes could use a little length, but the course rewards accuracy like no other on tour, and if the wind gets up this week, they will be lucky to finish in double digits under par. ShopRite LPGA Classic starts in...New Jersey has seen rain on 24 of the 31 days in May. This weather pattern has been brutal on Superintendents and golf's weekend warriors. The conditions have been great early in the week, but that's where the good news ends. The forecast for Friday is for rain, 13 mph winds, and temperatures in the low 80s. The Bay Course sits right on the edge of the water overlooking Atlantic City. The setting has very few trees and is exposed to whatever Mother Nature rolls in. Saturday has a 50% chance of storms in the forecast, and Sunday will be similar to Friday. The cut comes here on Saturday afternoon, so tournament officials will be challenged to get these 144 women around the course through 36 holes. It's a shame the weather won't be better, as South Jersey and Philly fill these galleries with fans and families. This is one of the most fan-friendly events on any tour. A par 71 scorecard that covers 6,293 yards is an easy walk. You can see every hole, and many of the fairways run parallel to one another. I've played the course and attended the tournament several times. A couple of tee boxes have been moved since last year, which has added 66 yards to the routing. It's an entertaining course to watch a tournament because the field can birdie or bogey any hole depending on the conditions. The Bay Course is so exposed, and you can see it during the coverage. Eleven of the top 25 in the Rolex World Rankings are playing, including number one (Korda) and two (Thitikul). Both can easily have their way with this test, but the middle tier is a factor. Even with 93 bunkers and 6,000 sq/ft greens (on average), the field will score. That's the rub of this place. The ShopRite has seen Hall of Famers and first-timers win because the layout is so short. Nelly and Jeeno do not have the weekly advantage they normally would on a standard LPGA venue. If you take the top BoB% players on tour and tell them they need to average five birdies a day under normal conditions, 25 ladies can do that. The top 65 and ties advance to Sunday's third and final round. As a limited-length event, the purse is a little shorter, too. The total in the pot is $1.75 million, and $262,500 for coming in first. I'm praying the event gets decent weather and the wind doesn't blow like crazy. Even if the forecast says 10-15 mph, it will be more like 20 mph with gusts. The weather brings an element of the unknown. Under normal circumstances, we know this course and can pick a winner. Hopefully, the forecast does us a favor and these ladies get a better weekend down the shore than we all did for Memorial Day! Throwing dartsBuilding a successful card for the ShopRite has always come down to a couple of very specific things. Pundits punish this place with their reporting, saying it is too short, and the venue is dated. I understand we cannot have courses like this every week, but eight of the last 10 years this tournament has been won in a playoff or by one stroke. That level of theater is great for golf. What keeps the contenders close coming down the stretch is exactly what you need to win this event: proximity and putting. I took a look at the last three top 10s on the Sunday ShopRite leaderboards. Those 32 women over three years gained an average of over four strokes on the field with their approach game. The ShopRite secret weapon is iron play. The average approach length is short at Seaview's Bay Course. Five of the 11 par 4s are under 350 yards in length. Add in a very short par 3 on 17, and that's six approaches (33%) where you must create close birdie chances. Remember, the winning score is 14 or 15 under par over three rounds. Our contenders are looking to fire five under par per day to keep pace. Those six short-range approaches are important. Since the LPGA lacks specific proximity data, how can we measure who separates on short par 4s? I like par 5 scoring at the ShopRite for this reason and a couple of others. Players who can score on the 5s have a unique combination of skills. First, they score from close range. The modern professional golfer pushes the ball down to the green in two on a par 5. That third scoring shot comes from inside 100 yards. The best birdie makers on par 5s excel on this last approach. Six par 4s and all three par 5s will reward this skill set at the ShopRite. That's half the holes these ladies will play each day. If you can birdie four or five of those nine, you are on pace to win. Those sub-par scores are the easiest to make on tour. The second skill on par 5s that applies on the Bay Course is your long iron or fairway wood approach in two. All three par 5s are reachable at Seaview. Each is under 510 yards in length. Those three long swings also correlate to success on the par 3s. If the Bay Course challenges anything, it is par 3 scoring. Outside of the short seventeenth, the other par 3s are over 180 yards. Each one has a small, undulating green. Ross was notorious for testing players on par 3s. Add up those three tee shots and the three long second swings on the par 5s and that's six more situations where players can separate. The final key par 5 player trait is making birdie or better. The scoring average of the last three top 10s at the ShopRite after three rounds is 4.5 on the 5s. The leaders are going low on these holes. It doesn't matter what the weather is; this collection of par 5s is very scoreable. You must average two birdies per day on those three holes. I just described a couple of situations where it may seem like length can be an advantage. I'll never say you want to be short off the tee, but in specific cases around the Bay Course, you are forced to play positional off the tee. For Nelly or Jeeno, that will be a fairway wood, and for a player like Ayaka Furue it will be the driver. When you compare those two results, they are both in the fairway striking their second shots from the same place. Shorter hitters on the LPGA don't miss fairways, they cannot afford to. Longer hitters will have an advantage on the 5s, but overall, length has been mitigated over the years. Approach play from these specific buckets has been the deciding factor. If you are looking for a Nelly play, make sure you check the prop bets. Three years ago, we won with Brooke Henderson and two years ago with Ashleigh Buhai. Both were on our outright card because they were top 10 iron players, and they destroyed par 5s. I'm sticking with the simple keys for all the above reasons at the ShopRite. If the weather does roll in, approach wedges will become even more important. Not to mention, scoring implies making putts inside 10 feet. Our outrights are lethal from close range, both on and off the green. They are all in great form and show a strong propensity for sub-par scoring. Let's roll the dice down in Atlantic City with this group and see if we can win another LPGA ticket at the ShopRite register. Outright winners - ShopRite LPGA 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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