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The Loop
Yes, a new PGA Tour season is already starting, and here's what you need to know
And just like that . . . we're back! A new PGA Tour season gets underway less than three weeks after Jordan Spieth put a nice bow on the last one with his win at the Tour Championship. The 2015-16 wraparound campaign came so quick I almost forgot to make my weekly picks. And that would be a shame. Like Spieth, I'm coming off a great fantasy year myself. I scrapped my way into the playoffs and then got hot to win it all! Woo! Oh, never mind, that was in my fantasy baseball league. But golf wasn't so bad, either. Here's to an even better year, er, wraparound season, starting with my weekly PGA Tour Fantasy Golf lineup for this week's Frys.com Open:
Rory McIlroy: We'll start by keeping things simple and taking the top-ranked player in the field. Plus, he's not going to play many more events in the next few months, so you can feel OK about burning one of his three starts.
Hideki Matsuyama: The defending champ (Sang-Moon Bae) is in South Korea serving in the military. The guy who won this event the year before (Jimmy Walker) is apparently taking an extended break to do more star gazing. Matsuyama finished T-3 last year. That's good enough for us.
Steven Bowditch: Like Matsuyama, Bowditch isn't rusty after making his debut at the Presidents Cup, which included a Sunday singles win over Jimmy Walker. Like Matsuyama, he played well at Silverado last year, finishing runner-up to Bae.
Tony Finau: Finau made his PGA Tour debut here last year and got a strong rookie campaign off to a solid start with a T-12. We're expecting even bigger things from the big bopper this season. Speaking of guys we're expecting strong seasons from, check out our list of 9 sleepers to watch.
__ Bench:__ Justin Rose and Justin Thomas.
And for those of you playing other fantasy golf formats:
Yahoo! lineup: The Yahoo! season doesn't start until Kapalua in January. Kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
Knockout/One-and-done pick: Tony Finau.