The Loop
Fantasy Fix: Can Rickie keep rolling at Jack's place?
Entering last week's AT&T Byron Nelson, Steven Bowditch had nine missed cuts and zero top 10s in 2015. And he won. Easily. Henceforth, when someone randomly pops out of nowhere to win a PGA Tour event, we will dub it a Bowditch. No disrespect to the talented Aussie, but it will be a little more difficult for someone to pull off a Bowditch this week at the Memorial, where the field is better and more limited since it's one of the tour's few remaining invitationals. And when you see who we're picking, you'll see that we are certainly not planning on getting Bowditched again. Here's our stacked PGA Tour Fantasy Golf lineup:
Dustin Johnson: Not the best track record at Muirfield Village, but he's capable of winning every event he plays, including last week when a quadruple-bogey 8 on Sunday derailed him after he'd taken the lead. The best thing about DJ in this fantasy format? Even when he's not hitting driver, he can still rack up 5-pointers (300-yard drives in the fairway) with his 3-wood.
Rickie Fowler: After that finish at TPC Sawgrass, how can anyone leave him out of their lineup in his follow-up U.S. start? Fowler doesn't have a great record at Muirfield Village the past three years, but he did finish runner-up in his first trip here in 2010. That year, Fowler shot a disappointing 73 on Sunday, but now he's much better prepared for final rounds. He doesn't dress like a traffic cone anymore and he has Alexis Randock by his side.
Matt Kuchar: Since Kuchar became the PGA Tour ATM we know and love after overhauling his swing in 2006, he's never finished outside of the top 15 in this tournament, including five top 10s. What the 2013 Memorial champ and 2011 runner-up will be giving up in points on tee shots, he should make up with scrambling and another high finish.
Bill Haas: We're going with the guy who won the Players and the guy who should have won. Hopefully, Haas has put his missed opportunity behind him and is ready to contend again at an event where he's finished T-4 and T-8 the past two years. In any event, with Nationwide as the title sponsor, get ready to see even more of those commercials with Haas during the broadcast.
__ Bench:__ Hideki Matsuyama and Brooks Koepka. (No Jordan Spieth -- saving him for the U.S. Open -- or Tiger Woods -- saving him for. . . uh. . .)
And for those of you playing other fantasy golf formats:
__Yahoo! lineup: __Haas, D. Johnson, Kuchar, Na.
Bench/backups:__ __Koepka, Fowler, Matsuyama, Thomas.
__Knockout/One-and-done pick:__Kuchar.