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

It has been exactly 90 days since I last posted a preview for a golf tournament. And, look, we all know the reason why that is, just like we’re painfully aware of the tremendous amount of suffering that’s blighted this planet in that same amount of time (both because of COVID-19 & a different type of virus that, unfortunately, can’t be cured by a vaccine), so I’m not going to get into it here.

Because the fact is, after the appetisers that were the ‘Taylormade Driving Relief Event’ & the second edition of ‘The Match’, this week sees professional golf returning to our screens with the PGA Tour’s Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club, something golf fans have been waiting for ever since Hideki Matsuyama’s stunning opening round 63 at Ponte Vedra Beach back in March was wiped from the history books and the doors shut.

So what can we expect from the festivities down in Fort Worth this week? Well,  not much in the way of actual ‘festivities’, really, given the only spectators allowed on the course will be whatever wildlife happen to call Colonial home – and, given rabbits tend to be bigger tennis fans than golf fans, I doubt we’ll be hearing them pop all that much for a late Sunday afternoon charge. What we can expect, though, is four days of live tournament golf around a cracking course with actual stakes on the line –  and after two months and 29 days without so much as a sniff of that, I’ll take it in whatever form it comes in. 

So, given I have to get back to the very important business of keeping Venezia in Serie ‘A’ in ‘Pro Evolution’, let’s crack on into it.

Field Report

Realistically, all being right and well  in the world, the field who would have been showing up to Colonial this week would have looked a lot different to the one that will be teeing it up come Thursday morning. After such a lengthy – and I think most importantly ‘enforced’ – break from the game, however, the vast majority of the world’s top players are eager to get back out between the ropes as quickly and as often as possible in order to get tournament-sharp ahead of the rescheduled Majors in the coming months. 

What this, in turn, means is that the field showing up in Fort Worth is going to be incredibly deep. You’re looking at every one of the current top five in the world (Rory, Rahm, Koepka, JT & DJ), plus sixteen more from the soon-to-be-thawed-out top thirty – with the only absentees being Adam Scott, Patrick Cantlay, Tommy Fleetwood, Tiger Woods, Tyrrell Hatton, Hideki Matsuyama, Paul Casey, Bernd Wiesberger and Francesco Molinari. 

Add in on top of that a smattering of highly talented PGA Tour regulars who, before March, were often found loitering around the upper parts of leaderboards late into Sunday afternoons in the shape of Collin Morikawa, Max Homa and Harold Varner III, to name but a few, and you can see why there is a lot of excitement about who exactly can emerge victorious from such a strong field.

The Yardage Book

(i) Below you will find the scorecard for Colonial Country Club. For each hole I’ve listed its par; what shape best suits it off the tee (for right-handers); and its scoring average:

Front 9	Colonial C.C.	Back 9
#1: Par 5 – Fade – 4.636	Fort Worth, Texas	#10: Par 4 – Draw – 4.091
#2: Par 4 – Fade – 3.904	7,209 yards	#11: Par 5 – Either – 4.878
#3: Par 4 – Draw – 4.226		#12: Par 4 – Draw – 4.127
#4: Par 3 – Either – 3.083		#13: Par 3 – Either – 3.101
#5: Par 4 – Fade – 4.273		#14: Par 4 – Draw – 4.161
#6: Par 4 – Fade – 3.953		#15: Par 4 – Fade – 4.073
#7: Par 4 – Either – 3.992		#16: Par 3 – Either – 3.018
#8: Par 3 – Either – 3.086		#17: Par 4 – Fade – 4.008
#9: Par 4 – Fade – 4.273		#18: Par 4 – Draw – 3.977
Out: 35	Par 70	In: 35

(ii) Given this week’s tournament marks golf’s first tentative steps on the long journey back to some semblance of normality and, essentially, most professional golfers’ first day back at school, I wouldn’t be expecting to see Colonial set up to be particularly penal this week. I mean, this week, really, is a celebration. It’s a reminder of the pure luxury that it is to be able to sit down and watch some of the best golfers in the world play golf – a luxury that, before COVID-19, we were all perhaps a little guilty of taking for granted at times. So, with that in mind, I think we’ll see a Colonial that is in absolutely wonderful condition and quite firm and fast, but, ultimately, the tour will be wanting a feast of birdies as opposed to people grinding over ten footers for par every hole.

(iii) At around 7,209 yards, Colonial isn’t exactly the longest of courses, as can be seen in the number of quite short par 4’s that are on the property. What it might lack in yardage, however, it makes up for with a course design chock-full of sweeping doglegs and narrow fairways that puts a premium on accuracy off the tee. So whilst the likes of Rory and the like – who are known to give it something of a good nudge with the driver (only the best analysis here) – will, like most weeks, be at an advantage, I’d expect to see a lot of fairway woods and driving irons getting pulled to ensure the short grass is found more often than not.

(iv) Like any tournament held in Texas, the wind, generally, is always going to be some kind of a factor. Now, if the wind does get up at Colonial – which it can – it will, of course, make pulling clubs and shot selection all the more difficult, but if it gets up in conjunction with the warm, sunny weather it’s looking like they’re going to be getting for the week, then that could firm up the greens in a heartbeat (many of which are quite small and on plateaus) and completely change the complexion of the tournament if not counteracted with some extra watering.

(v) Below you will find the top 10 and ties for the last four years of the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial:

2019	2018	2017	2016
Kevin Na -13	Justin Rose -20	Kevin Kisner -10	Jordan Spieth -17
Tony Finau -9	Brooks Koepka -17	Sean O’Hair -9	Harris English -14
C.T. Pan -8	Emiliano Grillo -16	Jon Rahm -9	Ryan Palmer -13
Andrew Putnam -8	Kevin Na -14	Jordan Spieth -9	Webb Simpson -13
Jonas Blixt -7	Louis Oosthuizen -10	Webb Simpson -8	Kyle Reifers -12
Ryan Palmer -6	Jon Rahm -10	Danny Lee -7	Jason Dufner -9
Rory Sabbatini -6	Kevin Tway -10	Brian Harman -6	Matt Kuchar -9
Tyrrell Hatton -5	Corey Conners -9	Scott Piercy -6	Anirban Lahiri -9
Mackenzie Hughes -5	Ben Crane -9	Steve Stricker -6	Martin Piller -9
Russell Knox -5	Joaquin Niemann -9	Paul Casey -4	Chad Campbell -8
Jordan Spieth -5		Stewart Cink -4	Kevin Kisner -8
Nick Watney -5			Bryce Molder -8

The Oracles’ Fourball

Trying to come up with potential picks for a tournament is difficult enough on a normal week. Doing it on a week where it’s the first properly competitive golf that anyone has played in months, however, and it suddenly becomes a different animal entirely as nobody has any form and stats that might have been relevant back in March, to an extent, may as well be from a year ago.

Luckily for me, however, I don’t solely rely on such tenuous things as ‘form’ or ‘hard numbers’ to sift through the dozens upon dozens of players who tee it up every week in order to get you your four weekly guys to look out for. I mean, what do I look like? A noob. A rookie. The greenest of the greenhorns? No, like any self-respecting golf writer, I go to a cave where my centuries-old Oracles live, make them an offering of wild mushrooms and slugs, and then they give me a special broth that tastes like death itself, but sends me into a deep state of hallucination, wherein the astral projections of four golfers present themselves to me as being the ones who could do quite well in a given week. Simple.

And with lockdown restrictions being lifted in the nick of time over here, I went and visited with said Oracles (who, as you can imagine, have been cocooning since the Players) and pulled up four possible picks who I think could do well around the leafy surrounds of breezy Colonial.

Jon Rahm

From the moment he entered the professional ranks in 2016, it quickly became apparent that Jon Rahm was on a one-way trajectory to the very top of the men’s game. And now, four years later, that path seems to be holding true as only Rory McIlroy stands between the reigning King of the Rolex Series and the world number one spot as the Taylormade stablemates head to Fort Worth. Now, depending on what Rory manages to do this week, there’s a chance Rahm could finally ascend to the peak of the rankings with a win or high enough finish, and given Jon’s recent history at Colonial, you’d fancy him to do just that. 

In the three years he’s teed it up in Fort Worth, Rahm has only missed the cut once (in 2019) and finished an impressive T-2 & T-5 in 2017 & 2018 respectively, whilst notching up scores of -9 & -10 in the process. And when you compare the strengths of Rahm’s game to the challenge which Colonial presents, you can understand why he’s had so much success in the Lone Star State. His stock shot is generally a nice, tight fade and given so many of the holes set up for that exact shot off the tee, you can imagine it must suit his eye down to the ground. His ability to send the ball to the moon allows him to find and hold Colonial’s smaller greens. On the occasions that he doesn’t manage to find the putting surface, his stellar short game can see him out of trouble. And with the putter in hand he’s rock solid, but he also has the added ability to get red-hot and start pouring them in from everywhere – and when you look at the past four winners of the Charles Schwab Challenge (Kevin Na, Justin Rose, Kevin Kisner & Jordan Spieth), Colonial seems to be a ‘putter’s course’.

Of course, like it will with everyone, the long layoff will have to be factored in, but as Rahm appears to have gotten to that level of ‘stainless steel play’ where he can just rock up to a course after a few weeks off and get right into the chase as well as any of the road warriors who are never not competing, I don’t expect that to be an issue.

Scottie Scheffler

Before the pandemic brought things to a screeching halt, Scottie Scheffler had gotten his debut season on the PGA Tour off to a cracking start. In the thirteen tournaments he’d played in, he’d only missed two cuts (at the Farmers & Waste Management); finished in the top 30 three times; the top 20 three times; and had four top 10’s, three of which saw him rack up a 3rd, T-3 & T-5. You add all that together and it’s worth over $1.6 million, 19th in the FedEx Cup Rankings and a place just inside the world’s top 50 players for the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year.

So when I see Scheffler heading to Colonial – a course he’s no doubt played countless times given he grew up in Dallas and played college golf at the University of Texas – with a game that, so far, seems perfectly cut out for the professional ranks (8th in ‘Strokes Gained: Off the Tee’; 20th in ‘Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green; 26th in ‘Strokes Gained: Total’; & 15th in both ‘Driving Distance’ & ‘Scoring Average’) then I wouldn’t be surprised to see the former Texas Longhorn grab that maiden win in the big leagues he appears all-but-certain to nab sooner rather than later.

Harris English

The 6”3 English is one of those prototypical ‘solid professional golfers’ on the PGA Tour who, though he might not win all that much (he has two to his name from way back in 2013), he goes solidly about his business and amasses a nice, tidy amount of money for his trouble (so far just over $14 million in career earnings). 

Before the pandemic hit, however, thanks to decent driving (28th in ‘Strokes Gained: Off the Tee), exemplary ironplay (5th in ‘GIR %’) & solid putting (24th in ‘Total Putting’), Harris was building the kind of momentum that you wouldn’t have been surprised to see pay out in a victory as he was notching up some mightily impressive finishes with each passing week, most notably five top 10’s and three top 5’s. 

So if the 30 year old English can recapture that same standard of play and ball-striking he was wheeling out nearly every week pre-lockdown at Colonial – a course where, on the six occasions he’s played there since 2012, he’s only missed the cut once and finished 2nd, T-5, T-20, T-29 & T-30 – his seventh visit to Fort Worth might just prove to be his luckiest.

Jordan Spieth

To watch Jordan Spieth win the Open in 2017 after his final round battle with Matt Kuchar around a windy and drizzly Royal Birkdale, it just felt like – after the meltdown at Augusta a year previously – he was re-establishing himself as the guy to beat in professional golf; as the kind of generational talent who, if you found yourself finishing above him in a Major, then chances are you were either after winning the thing or making a hell of a lot of money.

Yet, as we all know, things haven’t exactly panned out that way for Jordan. Though there have been times over the years since then when finishing above him in a Major meant you were probably taking home a nice chunk of change (3rd in the ‘18 Masters, T-9 in the ‘18 Open & T-3 in the ‘19 PGA), not only has he himself not added any more Majors to the trio he won in that magical spell from 2015 to 2017, but even regular tour wins have eluded the Dallas native since he hoisted the Claret Jug three years ago.

So why then do I reckon that the former world number one (now, amazingly, 56th) might suddenly come good this week? Well, it comes down to what I mentioned when outlining why Jon Rahm could do well this week, in that Colonial is a putter’s course. Now, you might say that Jordan’s once white-hot putter has gone colder than the Arctic Circle in recent years and that would be a fair statement given he’s currently 90th in ‘Strokes Gained: Putting’ & 180th in ‘Total Putting’. But the problems Spieth’s been having on the greens are merely a knock-on effect of what’s been happening back on the tee box.

Like, he’s 227th in ‘Driving Accuracy’ thanks to hitting only 199 of the 415 fairways he had played before the pandemic. Because he’s been missing fairways that, of course, makes for less-than-ideal conditions to try and find greens because he’s either been hitting from the rough or deep in the trouble, and this is reflected in the fact he’s 221st in ‘GIR %’. You factor those two things in and suddenly you get a picture that perhaps his putter has “gone cold” because over the last few seasons he’s been having to grind for pars instead of having looks for birdie every other hole. And to watch Jordan Spieth play, you can tell that he’s still a good putter, but all that’s missing from him getting back to the level where he was – i.e. imperious with the flatstick in hand – is sorting out the long game to give himself fifteen footers for birdie instead of pars or worse. 

And after the enforced break from golf – along with the enforced perspective that comes when you’re promptly reminded of how fleeting our time on this planet actually is – I think Jordan could come back to the game refreshed and with a newfound outlook on what it means to be a professional golfer, with an empty Colonial providing the perfect stage to trial said ‘new outlook’. Because even with all his on-course difficulties since 2017, the former stomping ground of Ben Hogan has consistently given us a glimpse that the ‘old Jordan’ is still in there behind all those blocked drives out to the right, as following his win there in 2016, he’s finished T-2, T-32 & T-8 – nevermind the fact that from 2013 to 2015 he finished T-7, T-14 & T-2. So if he’s managed to find anything in his swing during lockdown? Come Sunday, Spieth might well just find himself adding another plaid jacket to his collection.

Title Photo Credit: PGA Tour