Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Fantasy Golf: The Baycurrent Classic Preview

We decided to take some personal time last week in an effort to stem the tide of a pretty auspicious losing streak that included not only picking the U.S. to win the Ryder Cup and a 1-5 NFL record, but also two real live team golf playoff losses where my partners and I secured 5.5 out of our possible 6 points while our teammates went . . . ahem . . . full Englikawa which is my new name recommendation for the worst Ryder Cup pairing in history (it was either that or Morikish and Englikawa tested better with the 24-35 demographic). To quote the legendary Opal Fleener from Hoosiers, "the sun don't shine on the same dog's ass everyday, but, mister you ain't seen a ray of light since you got here."

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


Email the Fantasy Golf Report here.

No comments: