Fantasy Fix
Through the use of statistics, trends, course-matchups and sometimes a magic eight ball, we will do our best to help you set your fantasy golf lineup
Time to celebrate, Freddie. Riviera calls.
Northern Trust Open
Where: Pacific Palisades, Calif.
Courses: Riviera Country Club
Defending champion: Phil Mickelson overcame a turbulent final round to hold off Steve Stricker by one shot to claim his second straight title at this event.
Purse: $6,300,000
Welcome to another edition of Fantasy Fix, where we offer fantasy advice no matter what type of grooves you're playing. The PGA Tour season finally seems to be in full swing now that Phil Mickelson is playing again. This week, the field at the Northern Trust Open has more marquee names than we've seen since the Tour Championship. (If you didn't see Geoff Shackelford's piece in Golf World last week about how basketball legend Jerry West is working hard at restoring the event's prominence, check it out).
Ahh, the allure of Hollywood. Even Anthony Kim is making his first PGA Tour start of the season. Other flashy players in the field include Japanese phenom Ryo Ishikawa, Adam Scott, Rickie Fowler, who is coming off an impressive performance at the Farmers Insurance Open, and Jim Furyk. OK, so maybe Furyk is about as flashy as a wet bath towel, but last time I checked, he's still the fifth-ranked player in the world, despite not having won a PGA Tour event in more than two years. Last time I checked, I also noticed Martin Kaymer is No. 6 (Martin Kaymer?!), but that's another story.
As for Fowler, of course he had his stellar performance THE WEEK AFTER I named him as a sleeper. Maybe it's a sign I need to shake up how I'm doing this. Maybe I should try going with Super Bowl-themed picks this week in honor of the big game Sunday. Representing New Orleans, I'll take David Toms, a Louisiana native. And representing Indianapolis, I'll take, hmm, um, okay, so maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Turns out Toms, who burned me earlier this year, isn't even playing this week (Rumor has it that he's in Miami teaching Peyton Manning how to throw a skinny post), so it's back to the old drawing board. Here we go:
STUDS
Fred Couples: Freddie's track record in this event (no matter what it's been called throughout the years) is better than most players' entire careers. In one seven-year stretch, Couples racked up two wins (1990 and 1992) and three runner-up finishes. Overall, Couples has 13 Top 10s at Riviera.
Couples is by far the oldest pick I've made so far. Having turned 50, he's postponed his inevitable domination of the Champions Tour (Think "Silly Season" for the entire season) to continue playing a mix of tournaments on both circuits.
"Boom Boom" nearly won his first event as a Champions Tour rookie, but he was nipped by Tom Watson's two closing birdies at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship in Hawaii. Now that's the Hollywood ending we all wanted to see from Old Tom, too bad it came a few months removed from his magical run at Turnberry.
I also like Robert Allenby. If not for a disastrous triple bogey on the penultimate hole at the Farmers Insurance Open, he could have had a chance to catch Ben Crane. Still fuming from a ruling on the 17th hole that required him to declare his tee shot a lost ball since no one actually saw it come to rest in the hazard, Allenby stuck a 3-wood to about five feet on 18 and made the eagle putt to manage a T-9.
No one has been hotter on golf courses around the world in the past few months (Wins abroad at the Australian PGA and Nedbank in South Africa to end 2009, followed by a second at the Sony and another close call in San Diego), as the Australian's switch last year to a claw-grip when he's putting has produced immediate results. Always a renowned ball-striker, Allenby, the 2001 champion of this event, has been making more putts -- even if some of those come after shaky lags, as was the case several times during the final round at Torrey Pines. Plus, a co-worker made a prediction that Allenby would win this event a few weeks ago. Good enough for me!
The aforementioned Scott is a solid pick as well. Unofficially, he's a returning champion, having won in 2005 when the event had to be shortened to 36 holes due to bad weather. He followed that up with a runner-up finish in 2006. His first win in his home country, at the Australian Open in December, showed he isn't ready yet to go the way of Craig Perks, another former Players Championship winner, and that he is over whatever relationship he had with actress Kate Hudson. Once again, it all goes back to Hollywood.
Others to consider are Steve Stricker (obvious), 2006 winner Rory Sabbatini (more obvious), two-time defending champion Phil Mickelson (most obvious) and of course, Tim Clark, a Fantasy Fix favorite.
Ratings
Comments
Post a Comment