Friends in fore,

Raise your hand if you had Nick Dunlap and Matthieu Pavon on your early Golf SZN bingo board.

PUT YOUR HANDS DOWN.

Of our 31 Golf SZN events, 14 are big money. (You'll hear "elevated purses" a lot, which, same thing.)

The first is this week - the AT&T Pebble Beach. It's an 80-golfer, no-cut event (so, no survivor picking).

After a bizarre opening two weeks, Commish expects (but does not guarantee!) we'll see a LOT more familiar names at the top of the leaderboard at Pebble.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS

What happened, in one paragraph

Weekend scoring proved VERY difficult on the Torrey Pines South Course. So that meant the guys who did well early - and especially in the one round on the easier North Course - generally finished at the top. The problem? Most of us don't know any of them. Matthieu Pavon won at 13-under, with the rising Nicolai Hojgaard at 12-under, and the trio of Stephan Jaeger, Nate Lashley, and Jake Knapp at 11-under.

One-and-Done ("YEYPO")

• Avg earnings: $79,305 (0.88% of purse). Officially our worst week in Golf SZN history, one week after we ALMOST had our worst week
• Winner picks: 0 In two entire YEARS before this, we'd missed the winner once. We've now missed in back-to-back weeks
• Overall Leader(s): @adittrich at $1,044,980. Only two people have crested $1M (@danrizzolo119 is the other) and the average SZN earnings is just $195,597. If you started today at $0, you haven't missed much
• Interval 1 Leader(s): @adittrich at $1,044,980. We have FIVE intervals this year, each with their OWN PRIZES. Top 15 get paid and 1st place gets $200 in each. Interval 1 is Weeks 1-6
• Best Squad: FORE! at $1.75M. Our Week 1 leaders held the lead despite adding just $300K to their total. (You can still create/join golf squads - you just need 3+ people in the pool to be eligible for Squad Prizes!)

Survivor #1

• Damage done: 481 down. Brutal. Our top pick (Jason Day) plus our 3rd and 4th picks (Sungjae and Morikawa) all missed the cut. That was 366 eliminations, and it kept piling up from there
• Survivors: 666 are on to Week 4
• Best Squad: We went from 51 Squads with at least 3 survivors to 29 such Squads. (You can still create/join golf squads - you just need 3+ people in the pool to be eligible for Squad Prizes!)

Top 10s

• Avg points earned: 1.09. This was actually an improvement over last week's 0.7
• Top 10s actually picked: 8 of 12. Four guys were T9, hence there being 12 "Top 10s". One person nailed Stephan Jaeger and another lone soldier bagged Kevin Yu. Two got Beau Hossler. The four we missed: Winner Pavon, Nate Lashley, Jake Knapp, and Patrick Rodgers
• Best weekly score: 5 (3 people). @Flandawg had Xander and Yu, @paradachas had Aberg and Pendrith, and @tightwap20 had Xander and Hojgaard
• Overall Leader(s): 4 at 7 points. For the record, if you have ZERO - just like Commish - you're still T392. It's been HARD so far
• Best Squad: Saturday Hackers (15 pts). They're top 3 have 7, 4, and 4 points. Impressive!

100 Tier One-and-Done

• Avg earnings: $97,884 (1.09% of purse). Once again, slightly better than the main OAD but still very tough sledding
• Winner picks: 0 If the Frenchman Pavon didn't get picked in the main OAD, he isn't getting picked here
• Overall Leader(s): 2 at $1,193,100. Hats off to @PTM1021 and @suckitspanos - both have gone Poston-Hojgaard - who would also be leading the main OAD had they made the same picks there
• Interval 1 Leader(s): 2 at $1,193,100. We do 3 intervals in 100 Tier: First half (W1-15), Second half (W16-31) and Majors Only. $400, $200, $150 to the top 3 in each interval

COMMISH COMMENTARY

It's tempting to fire off hot takes like "the PGA Tour is dead" given the start of the 2024 SZN.

Commish was tempted himself. I sent a screenshot of this weekend's leaderboard to our Team SZN chat on Friday, simply adding "woof".

I then did it again after it was final, and said, "somehow this got worse".

BUT! We have to remember the PGA Tour more or less did this on purpose.

In front of us are 14 big money events that ALL will include the PGA's best 30 golfers (and in most cases the best 50). A 15th, next week's Phoenix Open, also gets a great field. The Majors will of course include the LIV guys, too (Rahm, Brooks, DJ, Bryson, etc.).

Most of those big money events are also "limited field" (like this week's 80-golfer AT&T Pebble Beach) and many don't have a cut.

A LOT of big changes happened at once, and they're designed to make these 15 marquee events more... marquee. Let's see if it works.

Yes, the changes mean the "other" events on our calendar might continue producing unheralded champs. But also maybe not. It's only been two weeks.

Commish is gonna do his best to reserve judgment for a little while longer...

Yours in metal stick swinging,
The Commish