The 3M Open was a shootout like most everyone expected but the name at the top of the leaderboard was not.  Michael Thompson played four rounds of terrific golf to take home the title which gives his two top 10 finishes since we returned from the hiatus.  Besides Tony Finau, the leaderboard was littered with B, C, & D list players.  Now that the 3M Open is in our rearview, we’ve got two huge weeks ahead of us.  The World Golf Championship: FedEx St. Jude Invitational with its usual top flight field followed by our first major championship of the season, the PGA.

This World Golf Championship event is played in Memphis, Tennessee, home of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.  Firestone Country Club used to be the host of this WGC event before moving to TPC Southwind the home of the FedEx St. Jude Classic from 1989-2018.  This event was originally scheduled for 4th of July weekend but was shifted with the schedule shakeup.

TPC Southwind is a beautiful par 70 that measures out 7,239 yards and considered a true test of a golfer. It challenges all parts of a player’s game. If you look over the course history, there isn’t a particular type of player that has dominated on this track.  Even the most accurate players have had problems keeping it on the fairway.  The course features water hazards on ten different holes, a lot of balls have landed in the drink over the last 15 years since the course was remodeled and I'll add bogey avoidance because of that.  TPC Southwind’s greens are very small and difficult to hit, so once again I’ll rank strokes: gained: approach really high and I'm adding strokes gained: around the green because this week will test players ability to get up and down quickly.  I'll also add greens in regulation to the mix especially when you look over the previous year's leaderboards.  Lastly, when you are looking at a great field like this, most all of them are terrific ball strikers and it all comes down to putting.  So, I’m going to add strokes gained: putting to my list of key stats as well. 

There are only 78 players in the field.  Tiger Woods, Adam Scott, Francesco Molinari, Justin Rose and Lee Westwood all qualified to play in this event but are not in the field.  We should see most of them next week at the PGA.  When you have a small strong field like this, it makes it especially hard to make your lineup different.  All of the players in this field have been playing great golf this season and that's why they were invited to play.  You will be baffled to see players the quality of Rafa Cabrera Bello, Louis Oosthuizen, Phil Mickelson, Bernd Wiesberger, Byeong Hun An, Brandt Snedeker, Keegan Bradley, and Cameron Smith sitting in the 6K range this weekend.  I truly feel like you could put together any combination of players this week and feel really good about that lineup.  The defending champ Brooks Koepka isn’t in top form and Dustin Johnson is the only player in the field with four individual WGC wins but we all know how he’s playing right now.  So I'm going to give you the guys I'll have in a bulk of my builds but I'm not going to fault you for playing just about anyone this weekend.

We will have to discuss the weather because it looks pretty bleak especially early in the week.  They are calling for scattered thunderstorms and showers all day on Thursday and Friday and then tapering off into Saturday morning.  We could see some stoppages, delays and players having to play two rounds in one day.  Keep that in mind when setting those lineups. 

KEY STATS: Strokes Gained: Approach, Strokes Gained: Around the Green, Strokes Gained: Putting, Driving Accuracy, Greens in Regulation and Bogey Avoidance

ONE & DONE PICK: Jordan Spieth

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