Friends in fore,

Raise your hand if you had "Phil Mickelson would determine our first Majors Pick 8 winner of the year" on your bingo board.

PUT YOUR HAND DOWN STOP LYING.

Commish dives into the results below, but first, this week is ANOTHER "elevated event" on the PGA Tour, meaning a huge purse ($20M) up for grabs. Pick accordingly!

WEEK 13 (RBC Heritage)

• Go to your competitions page >> 
• Purse: $20,000,000
• First place: $3,600,000

NOW, heading into Masters Sunday, it felt like a lock that our Majors Pick 8 winners would be from the relatively small group that had both Koepka and Rahm.

Phil, TEN shots back of Brooks with one round to go, was like, "hold my beer".

Phil shot 65 (tied for best round of the week). Brooks shot 75. Rahm walked to the title, and it was a Rahm-Phil rostering that brought the Masters Pick 8 title home to @bwoodson1.

Here was @bwoodson1's roster:

• Rahm (1st)
  Phil (T2)
  Spieth (T4)
  Hovland (T7)
  Scheff (T10)
  Xander (T10)
  Morikawa (T10)
  Rory (CUT)

(Thanks for nothing, Rory.)

That roster bagged $7,444,500, and was $58,500 better than runner-up @destespga; who had Rahm, Koepka (T2), and Reed (T4) to offset the champ's Rahm-Phil-Spieth trio, but didn't have anyone to match Hovland's T7 finish.

Nos. 2-17 in our standings ALL had Brooks and NONE had Phil, which makes our champ's performance even more noteworthy.

We'll do it all again in a month at the PGA Championship. Remember, each Major has its own prizes, in addition to Overall prizes for the best pickers across all four majors.

WEEK 12 RECAP

YEYPO

Golfer Performance | Weekly Performance | Overall Standings | Golden Spreadsheet

Rahm was huge for his 132 pickers, but we were HEAVY on the three guys above him and they all disappointed. Scheff (18%) posted a backdoor T10, Cam Smith (18%) faded hard to T34, and Rory (17.5%) missed the cut. Thus, we limped to an average pick performance of 2.77% of the purse - one of our worst numbers this SZN.

Narrative?
They LIV'd it up. No matter your view on the LIV tour (likely negative), when LIV golfers go T2, T2, T4 - and 12 of 18 make the cut - you can't ignore that success. The rivalry, bad blood, and debates are here to stay. Avoid picking LIV guys at your own risk...

Skin? 
Nope, but Russell Henley (T4) was a full skin opportunity and flirted with a run deep into Sunday.

Biggest Shank
Rory. Again. He missed the cut at The Players and did it again here. His last four outings: CUT, 3rd, CUT, T2. Dude is doing NOTHING to calm questions about his mental fortitude, as that track record demonstrates his physical form is just fine.

Standings
Our previous leader, @GatorBuffs, got stung by Rory, which opened the door. Four people leapfrogged Gator, including our new leader, @downpat75, who is on a back-to-back winners heater (Conners, Rahm). @downpat75 has missed THREE cuts already this year, which should provide hope to all of us that it just takes a string of good results to get you RIGHT back in it.

Big John

Golfer Performance | Weekly Performance | Alive Players | Golden Spreadsheet

We went from 162 to 129 after Rory dropped 24 of us. We mostly avoided carnage beyond that.

Survivor #2

Golfer Performance | Weekly Performance | Alive Players | Golden Spreadsheet

We went from 332 to 274, closely mirroring Survivor #1 results.

Team SZN Performance

Commish bagged a T17 finish in the Majors Pick 8 (my roster: Rahm, Brooks, Reed, Cam Young, Scheff, Cam Smith, Day, Rory). It was looking even better for me before Day imploded on Sunday. @Merf took Spieth in YEYPO and is slowly climbing the leaderboard (650th) while Commish (148th) slowly falls.

Reminder: Team SZN plays along for fun and bragging rights but can't win any money.

Yours in metal stick swinging,
The Commish