Value Report: World Wide Technology Championship

The game of professional golf has gone through an insane amount of change in the past few years with so much pushback in every direction, but it has absolutely nailed the Bank of Utah Championship. It is a perfect event in the fall swing as the field is full of players fighting for status, and sponsor’s invitations are given out based on merit to extremely talented players. Then the course itself is not just beautiful aesthetically; it is a unique test that really allows the golfers to separate with off-the-tee skill, yet demands a strong short game to keep up with the scoring. And now for the second year in a row, we have an uber-talented winner who wasn’t even on the PGA Tour yet! First, it was Matt McCarty breaking through, and now Michael Brennan wins in dominant fashion, earning himself a Tour card and bypassing the Korn Ferry Tour in its entirety. The talent he was showing on the PGA Tour Americas clearly was good enough to compete against a field like this, and he showed zero signs of the moment being too big for him, as he has now jump-started his career!

To make things even sweeter, Michael Brennan was the star of the Value Report for the week as well. If you see a player with form like that on a lesser-known tour in the $6K range, it’s almost a certainty I’m going to take a chance on them, especially in a situation where they haven’t had PGA Tour opportunities. The situation with Brennan had me a bit worried that his ownership could get quite high, as his projection across the industry was very bullish, but in the flagship, he still was just 8.22%, which turned out to be a gift. In higher-stakes contests, he was nearly double that, so that definitely shows there is still some IKB happening in certain contests. The other big pop of the week was from David Ford, who finished tied for third at just 1.19% ownership. I described him on Establish The Green as Matt McCarty lite, as he just might be the most accurate player on the PGA Tour, and at a course as open as this, he was able to hit the driver almost exclusively. What ended up happening was he led the field in driving distance on all drives, which was something he hadn’t sniffed in previous events. I think the ceiling here with Ford is insanely high as he grows with his iron and putter.