Friends in fore,

If I just repeat, every week in this space, that Golf SZN will start returning to "normal", it's bound to happen... right?

Wyndham Clark - the reigning U.S. Open champ - went from the cutline (if Pebble Beach had a cut) to champ in a matter of 24 hours.

Dude shot 60 - yes, a 12-under 60! - at America's most famous course on Saturday, rocketing from the lower half of the leaderboard to the top slot, and after extreme weather caused a cancelation of the final round, Clark was the champ.

This week, no matter how weird the final leaderboard, we are GUARANTEED to see drunk-out-of-their-minds fans screaming and throwing beer at the 16th hole.

Commish is gonna call that "a return to normal". Because, at the Phoenix Open, that is extremely, sublimely, normal.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS

What happened, in one paragraph

In the debut for the PGA Tour's new no-cut events, we saw what can happen with no cuts. Wyndham Clark very well might have been cut in a full field event. He then shot 12-under 60 on Saturday and won the whole damn thing. Meanwhile, the trend of little-known guys packing the top 10 continued, as Matthieu Pavon stayed hot (3rd), and Mark Hubbard and Thomas Detry (yup) finished T4

One-and-Done ("YEYPO")

• Avg earnings: $227,350 (1.14% of purse). Our third-straight bad week, by historical standards. Wyndham Clark is a top 10 golfer by World Rank, but hasn't been that good of late. So just 5 picked him. More perplexingly, just 14 took runner-up Ludvig Aberg, who is riding a hot streak
• Winner picks: 5 On one hand, it's the first winner we've picked this year. On the other hand, we have 5 total winner picks through three weeks.
• Overall Leader(s): @cds1514 at $3,903,750. They missed Week 1, then went Finau-Clark in Weeks 2 and 3 to claim the throne. Obviously, our five Clark pickers sit 1-5
• Interval 1 Leader(s): @cds1514. 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: Roseville Post 7555 at $4.12M. PGA (Pure Golf Addiction) is close behind at $4.11M. (You can still create/join golf squads - you just need 3+ people in the pool to be eligible for Squad Prizes!)

Survivor #1

There was no cut, which means a "bye" week for Survivor picking.

Top 10s

• Avg points earned: 1.33. We've steadily improved in each week. Our biggest correct pick was Scheff (92 picks), while the most points came from JT (85 picks at 3 points each)
• Top 10s actually picked: 8 of 10. We missed Matthieu Pavon (again), as well as Mark Hubbard.
• Best weekly score: 6 (18 people). We finally saw our first perfect weekly score (two 3-point golfers), and 18 of you did it. JT + Jason Day was the most popular 6-point combo.
• Overall Leader(s): @tmirrione and @JKL (11 points). Our pool-wide average is still just 3.12. LONG way to go
• Best Squad: Nigel Honoring TigersGreatness (25 pts). Saturday Hackers fell back to 2nd place (21 pts)

"All 30" One-and-Done

• Avg earnings: $519,210 (2.6% of purse). This pool is two picks (vs. 1 in YEYPO), but we did better here because a higher percentage of pickers took Aberg as one of their two guys (4.4% in All 30 vs. just 1% in YEYPO)
• Winner picks: 7 We still didn't pick Clark much because again, he hasn't been in form (until that blistering Saturday round)
• Overall Leader(s): @garrettcanderson at $5,760,000. Garrett picked BOTH Clark and Aberg. Amazing! They're up over $2M on 2nd place. Since this pool only does big money events AND you get two picks in each, the money will rack up quickly
• Best Squad: Nigel Honoring TigersGreatness at $8.44M. Blue Door Pub is in second place

100 Tier One-and-Done

• Avg earnings: $220,541 (1.1% of purse). Nobody picked Clark, which meant a slightly worse performance vs. YEYPO
• Winner picks: 0 We're 0-for-3 so far in 100 Tier. Three skin opportunities gone by the wayside!
• Overall Leader(s): @Perdyb25 at $3,204,980. They were one of four Aberg pickers in Week 3
• Interval 1 Leader(s): @Perdyb25. 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

The "chalk" line of having our top pick in every week so far would have earned you... $163K in YEYPO.

That trio of Sungjae-Keegan-Spieth has been middling at best.

You hear Commish say it all the time - you can't win a SZN pool without a little Moxie - and our early results in the 2024 Golf SZN are serving as a friendly reminder.

The good news is that the average YEYPO earnings across the entire pool is just $423K. Sure, that's more than $163K, but with golf earnings how they are now, that's a small gap.

For the third straight week, 3-point golfers outperformed 2-point golfers in our Top 10s pool.

The top 15 guys in the field by World Rank each week are worth 2 points if they finish top 10. All other golfers are worth 3 points.

In Week 3, eight of the top 10 golfers were 3-point guys. It was nine of 12 in Week 2 and seven of 10 in Week 3.

Yes, there are always way more 3-point golfers in the field (because there can only be 15 golfers at 2 points), but still, the risk/reward equation has been stilted heavily toward the deeper cuts thus far.

This can change, of course. It's only been three weeks. But the early narrative is clear.

One final callout that prize money is doubled this week (and ONLY this week) in the "All 30" OAD.

The reason is that we do 15 events (2 golfers per event, hence 30 total picks for our 30 golfers), and the other 14 are all "big money" events.

The Phoenix Open is unique in having a GREAT field while not being big money. So we simply double it in order to put it on par with the others.

Yours in metal stick swinging,
The Commish