Written by Stephen Moloney (www.twitter.com/TheCheeky9)

Bryson DeChambeau

After run-ins with rules officials & ant colonies had him making headlines for the wrong reasons in the run-up to the PGA Championship, Bryson had people back talking about him for the right reasons come the end of 72 holes in San Francisco, as he put together four solid rounds of golf that, at one point on Sunday, saw him actually tied for the lead and, ultimately, saw him chalk up his best finish in a Major-to-date with a tie for 4th. So with the acid test showing that the changes he’s made to his body and swing can see him compete for Majors (his ultimate goal), I think we’ll see a rejuvenated Bryson rolling into Massachusetts looking to build on his performance at Harding Park and add to the positive memories he already has of winning the Dell Technologies Championship at TPC Boston back in 2018 against a field as similarly stacked as he’ll come up against this week.

The keys to him doing that? Well, as has been the case with Bryson all season, if he drives the ball well and uses his newfound power wisely he’ll be in with a chance, as he’s shown time after time for months now that if he gives himself regular looks for birdie on the greens, he will convert (evidenced by the fact he’s 1st in both ‘Birdie Average’ & ‘Scoring Average’). With the weather looking like it’ll be quite hot for the week, that should mean the ball will be flying that little bit further, and with a nice mix of both long and drivable par 4’s awaiting him, that should put Bryson at an advantage. I’d expect the rough to be fairly gnarly this week – and especially so without any fans to trample it down – so that could put paid to his chances if he starts getting a bit wayward off-the-tee a little too often, but as the fairways are generally quite generous around the New England track and a lot of the holes actually pull the driver out of your hands, if he’s any way dialed-in, he should find the short grass more often than not.

Most importantly for Bryson, however, will be controlling his emotions. As he showed at the Memorial and the WGC-FedEx St. Jude, he sometimes wants to win so badly and play so well that his emotions and his temper can get the better of him when things start to go awry. And when that happens? Well, as it showed in Ohio, it leads to him writing a big, fat 10 down on his scorecard and all but ensuring he’ll have the weekend off. If he rolls with the punches and just tries to keep big, big numbers off his card, though? Then, just like two years ago, he might well find himself with another late tee-time come Sunday afternoon.

Adam Scott

If you’re the type of PGA Tour player who has to constantly be grinding away at your game or the type of player who has to play in a good few tournaments on the trot before getting to a good place with your swing etc. it must be incredibly maddening to see someone like Adam Scott rock up to his first tournament in five full months at the PGA Championship, his clubs and a selection of tasteful jumpers in tow, and clock up a pretty effortless T-22 finish.

But, by now, that’s what we’ve come to expect from Adam Scott, right? I mean, he plays some tournaments, generally plays well in them and then disappears back down to Australia where he invests his winnings from said tournaments in more nice outfits and going on pleasant surfing trips with Chris Hemsworth (I’m assuming). And when you look at the reasons why he’s able to make this enviable pattern work for him, well the easy answer is that he’s just very, very good at golf. Like, he might be 40 now but he still shifts it plenty long off-the-tee (308.3 yards sees him 16th in ‘Driving Distance’ on Tour) and reasonably straight at that (he’s 189th on Tour currently, but I wouldn’t pay attention to that as he’s only played 8 times this season). Pair with those two abilities the fact he’s always been regarded as one of the better ball-strikers, thus leading to him hitting a lot of greens, and that he’s then a solid putter to capitalize on those opportunities, and the keys to his longevity and consistency whilst playing a very limited schedule become quite obvious.

So to see him turning up to TPC Boston this week, a course where he won the very first Deutsche Bank Championship all the way back in 2003, I think if he can drive the ball well this week and give himself the chance to make the most of his ball-striking, he could well pick up win number two of the season and vault himself right into the hunt for the FedEx Cup.

Viktor Hovland

The success of Viktor’s ‘Great American Road Trip’ in the six weeks following the return of golf has been well documented. He didn’t miss a single cut. Of the 24 rounds he played, he shot in the sixties 17 times. In the first five tournaments of his trip, he improved his finishes each week, going from a T-23 at the Charles Schwab all the way up to a solo 3rd at the Workday Charity Open. And by the end of his odyssey around ‘De Forente Stater’ (‘The United States’ in Norwegian – see, you’ve learned something today), he had scaled right up the World Rankings from down near 90 or 100, to in and around the top 30 – like, when most 22-year olds go on a trip around America the most they might come back with is a hole in their bank account and a false sense that their experiences with their college friends whom they went with have somehow forged a deep, meaningful bond between them that will last well beyond their college years.

Now, given the success of Collin Morikawa in the same period of time – what with his win at the Workday Charity Open & the PGA Championship – it might be easy to think that Viktor has somehow “fallen behind” his fellow twenty-something, but that isn’t true – nor is it something that Viktor’s probably even thinking about, as you can’t go around comparing yourself to others and what they’re doing because that can only lead to bad places. Instead, if Viktor has taken anything away from what Collin has done recently, it’s just further confirmation that there’s absolutely no reason why he can’t go into tournaments – be they regular tour events, playoffs or Majors – and produce similar performances. So, to see Viktor in the field this week, fresh off the back of a solid T-33 finish in San Francisco (thanks in no small part to a final round 66) I think if he can replicate his performance off-the-tee at the Workday and couple that with his solid iron play (he’s 10th in SG: Approach-the Green), then Viktor could well find himself in the hunt in Boston.

Because when I look at Viktor now and the kind of game that he plays, he reminds me a lot of Bryson DeChambeau when he won at TPC Boston two years ago – and, coincidentally, when I compared Viktor’s stats now with Bryson’s from 2018, there’s a lot of similarities. Like, Bryson was hitting it seven yards longer than Viktor is now, but when it comes to ‘Driving Accuracy’ and ‘GIR’? The Norwegian is better than him in the former and just narrowly behind him in the latter. In other words, Viktor has the game to win this week, he just needs to string it all together over four days.

Harris English

Oh, he’s been very sneaky has Harris. Since missing the cut at the Charles Schwab Challenge, the 6”3 Georgia-native has gone on a mightily impressive, yet somewhat under-the-radar (mine, at least), run of four straight top 20’s – including at the PGA Championship – and, just last week, clocked up a T-23 at the Wyndham Championship after being in and around the top 10 all week until he failed to get on the requisite ‘birdie train’ needed to contend on Sunday.

As I mentioned back in June when I picked him as one of ‘The Oracles’ Fourball’ for the Charles Schwab Challenge, however (which, as you can see from above, worked out just peachy) that’s really what we’ve come to expect from Harris. He’s a solid PGA Tour professional who turns up to events, makes the weekend, gets his cheque on Sunday, and moves on to the next town where he’ll more than likely rinse and repeat the same process.

So what enables him to carry out such an enviable pattern? Well, like Adam Scott, he drives it long (300 yards on average) and reasonably straight (79th on Tour with 62.39%), so that always helps. Where he really comes into his own, though, is with his approach play, as a total of 71.09% sees him currently ranked 11th in ‘GIR %’ on the PGA Tour. You then pair that with the fact that when he’s on the greens he’s also one of the most solid putters on Tour (16th in ‘SG: Putting’ & 14th in ‘Total Putting’) and the answer to the question, “Why is Harris English rapidly coming up on a total of $15 million in career earnings?”, quickly reveals itself.

So I think if Harris has as good a week with the driver as he did at the Wyndham (he averaged 67.86% for the week in North Carolina, which would be good enough to see him in the top 20 in ‘Driving Accuracy’ on Tour) then at a course like TPC Boston where good ball striking and solid putting is rewarded, he could very quickly sneak into contention and break through that $15 million mark with one good weekend.

Title Photo Credit: PGA Tour/TPC Boston