Now that right there was a golf tournament! Let the haters complain all they want about Torrey Pines no longer bringing all the studs to town; the golf course itself always delivers some of the best finishes on Tour. I understand that Harris English dueling with Andrew Novak and Sam Stevens may not be everyone’s idea of peak golf, but this was the perfect style of tournament for our projections and ball-knowing takes to shine. Because we have seen this course so many times over the last decade, we understand what the best skill set is, and it revolves around distance. A non-penalizing rough with almost zero hazards in play for very wayward driving coupled with scoring conditions being incredibly difficult, the bomb-and-gouge boost was well in play. Yet English himself is by no means a long hitter, and he actually was the only golfer in the top five to lose strokes off the tee. But the course-fit angle was the differentiator in the $6K range, where PGA Tour rookie Aldrich Potgieter made a massive difference in my single-entry lineup that we will review today.
For those new to ETR, every Monday (or Sunday here for the Wednesday start) one of our team members dives into an angle from the previous week’s GPPs. I’m going to do a study here on the difference in ownership on the large-field Pitch + Putt and how it compared to the $200 Driver, as well as what we anticipated the small-field steam/squeeze could look like. Single-entry contests had never really been a focus of mine until joining the ETR team last April when my esteemed colleague, Jeremy King, challenged me to a season-long H2H contest. Yes, Jeremy got the best me of 2024 by way of a solo ship early in the year at the Zurich Classic and another top-five result late in the season. I did give it plenty of fight though, finishing second at the Charles Schwab Challenge, which set up a very profitable season in that $100 SE series. For 2025, we upped the stakes to the $200-entry Driver, which offers a larger top prize each week with an increase in contest entrants, too. For 2024, my losing punishment is to attend a PGA Tour event with a full-fledged costume of our Discord’s choice, but the stakes of the bet have not been decided for this year (and Jeremy might try to duck it after this week). After a min-cash last week to get on the board, this week I finished third for $10,000 with the below lineup.
I find landing on a single-entry lineup one of the more stressful yet fascinating parts of every week. The nature of the beast is there’s just not nearly as much agony over exposure levels in MME compared to making stands on only six golfers against the field. Every week in The Driver, I’m always going to be playing my flag plant, and Niklas Norgaard Moller was actually the one who prevented this lineup from being able to take first place. The lone missed cut, Moller shot a 78 on the easier course Friday to pack his bags early and, what I thought, destroy any chance at a big cash.
Above is a screenshot from Cutsweats (very recommended tool) that shows the breakdown of how lineups fared in The Driver. Despite every single double-digit-owned golfer making the cut, there were still only nine 6/6s out of the 694 entrants. Plus, with the course playing as difficult as it did, the typical difference in a 5/6 versus of 6/6 wasn’t nearly as wide. Ultimately, two 6/6s still got me, with thereisnospoon running away with the victory, but the upside for a big week was still in the cards.
We know there are discrepancies every slate between large- and small-field ownership, and Sam has done an awesome job at being able to predict these spots. Above are what we showed for the week on the largest deltas in each direction. We’ve seen great results so far, especially in the Signature Hole contest and a strong correlation against the 19th Hole as well, but one of the hardest contests to predict has been this $200 Driver. Our thought is it’s likely the contest that is swayed the most by public perception/available content in the space, without being too projection-driven. It’s at a price point that potentially someone on the more casual side could be entering. Especially with it being a single-entry contest, it doesn’t put them at a volume disadvantage. So each week, there’s always some additional finessing I like to do.
Now, above is where the cards flipped for The Driver. And right off the bat, the biggest decision to me on the week was how to start your lineups. It seemed clear the consensus was that Ludvig Aberg was the clear favorite for the week, and at a relatively affordable price, there was going to be zero issue rostering him. And despite winning The Sentry at the beginning of the month, public sentiment is rarely bullish on Hideki when he’s stacked up against other top competition, so it wasn’t that big of a surprise to see the two end up on polar opposite ends of the spectrum. Yet the difference ended up being Aberg nearly 3x as owned as Hideki, and when they were virtual co-favorites, that felt like a great spot to land on the contrarian side. As a result, Sungjae was clearly the forgotten man in that trio, and when the public is still getting comfortable with many of the names in the low $7Ks and $6Ks, the double-tap of Hideki and Sungjae was an angle I thought many would skip. Only 12 lineups in the entire contest went that route.
Now, for the course-fit angle, Aldrich Potgieter has been the golfer I had Torrey Pines penciled in for since he earned his card in August. I’d say the 20-year-old South African has arguably the rawest talent of anyone from the KFT this year, yet he was genuinely very lucky to earn his card in 2024. A win in the second event of the season was massive for him, as he only had two other top-10 finishes on the year. Crazy enough, he actually missed more cuts than he made, but that glimmer of ceiling is what we’ve been betting on and he did that again in November on the DP World Tour. A second-place finish and an eighth-place result in two appearances garnered more confidence for me in his game, and through every stat we have seen, Potgieter can rival any single player in the world in terms of distance off the tee. Knowing that, as well as realizing that there was going to be zero ownership associated with the rookie, it was an opportunity to give needed salary relief for the Hideki and Sungjae start.
Beau Hossler is a golfer I pretty much find exposure to on a weekly basis, and he’s strung together a sneaky run of consistency since the fall swing, without ownership or salary catching up too much. But to close out, we have to walk through the true moneymaker of the lineup, and that was 7.1%-owned Harris English. Truthfully, when doing the Value Report on Monday evening, I anticipated English being quite popular and one of our top values on the slate. We know those often go hand in hand with our impact on the market, so to see him still have a middle range that wouldn’t catch too many eyeballs was a welcomed treat. English has had a solid last two years that does not get much credit at all. 17 top-20 results with three of those being in majors or The Players Championship is a really under-the-radar accomplishment. I’m also doing my best to not fall in love with small sample sizes, but English’s numbers at The American Express really caught my eye. In two rounds of strokes gained stats, he earned over three strokes off the tee, which was better than all but two full events he played in 2024. With so many players adopting swing-speed changes, I thought there was a chance headed to Torrey that his driving abilities have been significantly elevated, and with his history of success at this course, it was the perfect time for him to have a top-1% outcome.
With a bit of a cushion over my good friend Jeremy, it’s still game-on the rest of the season in our head-to-head duel. I welcome the feedback on what everyone is looking for in the review piece and I’m happy to implement different looks every time I’m in charge of this piece. Below are a few quick hitters on what’s ahead for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am this week. Good luck everyone!
Field Size: 80 Golfers
Cut Rule: No Cut
Course: Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill Golf Course (Rotates for Thursday/Friday)
2024 Winner: Wyndham Clark at 17 under par over Ludvig Aberg (shortened to 54 holes)
Course Fit: Like Torrey Pines, Pebble Beach is a U.S. Open venue that can play difficult if the correct conditions arrive. It’s not nearly the same advantage to those that are long off the tee, as a much tidier short game has been the best recipe for years at this track. Spyglass allows a bit more for a spray technique, but between the two courses, there’s still the biggest premium on iron play (specifically 100-125 and 200-225).
