Speaking of the Ryder Cup, I started writing a post-mortem but then I got to part 3 of Kevin Van Valkenburg's Three Final Thoughts on the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage and bowed my head because I knew that I'd been beat. Nothing I could produce was going to top this assessment of the crowd:
If you’re a grown man and you spent an afternoon screaming
horrible things at a professional athlete, trying to get under his skin by
calling his wife a whore and hoping he (and she) will hear you, but you still
wanted to be able to slither away before police arrive to kick you out, your
parents and grandparents failed you. If Rory McIlroy walked into your living
room on Sunday night, I am quite confident you would melt with embarrassment or
turtle up in fear. You have become so desensitized by the internet and the fake
life you live inside your phone that it would take years of therapy just to
reset you to your factory settings.
I will take a shot at the leadership because it would appear that the "plan" to the extent there was one was to have Bryson blast the opening tee shot to get the crowd fired-up and then just see what happens from there because putting Colin Morikawa who is 141st in strokes gained putting in 2025 and has one top ten over the last six months out for alternate shot made Zach Johnson look like a chess master by comparison. Someone described sending Morikawa and English out again on Saturday morning as "malpractice" which was spot-on because the medical equivalent would be doing a hip replacement on the wrong hip and then correcting it by replacing the wrong hip again.
Enough about all that. Hopefully three days of moderate to heavy drinking, gumbo and singing angsty teen anthems at a Natasha Bedingfield concert has cleansed the gambling palate so we can start fresh.
GOLF ANALYSIS
This week we head to Japan for the Baycurrent Classic which is a curious name for a golf tournament in its first year with a new sponsor at a course they've never played before but maybe "classic" means something different in Japanese like how "bra" means "good" in Swedish. (That Seinfeld episode must have confused some people in Stockholm).
We've got a pretty solid field with a few Ryder Cuppers including Xander Schauffele who finally showed some signs of life at Bethpage but this is a home game for Hideki Matsuyama and he takes that shit seriously so he's the pick. The rest are guys who have proven they like to play on the road including Michael Kim who recently won the French Open over a bunch of unsuspecting Euros and has moved-up to 38th in the world. Vive la Resistance!
We desperately looked for a way to recommend Sahith Theegala as the sleeper because we root for the guy and he just finally made a cut at the Procore Championship after missing five in a row. But that recent slump plus no top tens since 2024 means he has to settle for the bottom spot in the DraftKings top ten based on the hope that a change of scenery yields at least a paycheck.
|
Place |
Player |
Odds |
|
Winner |
Hideki Matsuyama |
+1800 |
|
Top 5 |
Rasmus Hojgaard |
+400 |
|
Top 10 |
Michael Kim |
+280 |
|
Top 10 |
Tom Kim |
+400 |
|
Top 20 |
Matti Schmid |
+180 |
One and Done Pick: Hideki Matsuyama
 |
| Nothing runs through Yokohama without Hideki getting a taste. |
Other Guy I'd Pick: Rasmus Hojgaard
Sleeper Pick: Matti Schmid
DraftKings Top Ten Values
|
Hideki Matsuyama |
$10,400 |
|
Alex Noren |
$9,800 |
|
Michael Kim |
$9,300 |
|
Rasmus Hojgaard |
$9,200 |
|
C. Bezuidenhout |
$8,400 |
|
Sungjae Im |
$8,300 |
|
Tom Kim |
$7,800 |
|
Byeong Hun An |
$7,400 |
|
Matti Schmid |
$7,100 |
|
Sahith Theegala |
$6,800 |
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