Fantasy Golf: The Rocket Classic Preview

I'm slowly reaching the conclusion that my particular mental and emotional disposition may not be well suited for the stroke play format of golf. I gave it another shot this past weekend in a two day competition honoring the late Herbert Strong who was either the guy who designed my home course or a lesser known porn star of the Betamax era. 

Day one started innocently enough with a nice 6 footer for par on the 1st but it didn't take long to start careening as I doubled the second hole and then made a miraculous bogey on the third after short-siding myself and then skulling my bunker shot thirty yards over the green. The subsequent up and down from there steadied the ship for the next three holes as I could feel my nervous system downgrade from "fight or flight" to just "get in a heated discussion or storm out of the room."  

Standing on the 7th tee, I felt pretty good about shooting even par the rest of the way, however, that seemed less likely when I pumped my drive out of bounds leading to a triple. That was followed by a disinterested bogey and then a double on the 9th where I pretty much four putted from the fringe with the last miss being from a foot and a half. Why? Because I was so irritated by my lame par putt that I decided to straddle the lines of two other players instead of just marking my ball like someone who is not a fucking idiot. The result was a nine over 44. 

Beers and a cart were immediately secured and I already felt better by the time I reached the 10th tee. As a pretend writer, I love scripting stories as I play and this one had me shooting a semi symmetrical 34 on the back. I was so inspired by this prospect that I popped-up a 4-wood and left myself 157 yards in on a 305 yard hole. I promptly striped a 7-iron to ten feet and made the putt for birdie. 

I then parred the next five playing steady golf before stumbling with a bogey on the 16th. A par on 17 setup the storybook ending which I missed by a hair when my birdie putt on 18 burned the edge. Still, backing-up the front nine 44 with a back nine 35 felt pretty damn good and seemed to be a sign that, if nothing else, I've still got some resilience left in me (I know tragic foreshadowing when I see it). 

For Day 2 I decided to take a caddie to help with the club's effort to grow the game and support our local youths. As anyone who has witnessed me and caddies interact can attest, we've had our ups and downs. It may just be that an impatient guy who has trust issues and major symptoms of OCD isn't meant to work closely with some random person in the one environment where all of those traits are magnified. To put it another way, my clubs have never spent an entire round walking thirty yards behind me when I carried them myself.    

I started the second round with a par and hit my subsequent tee shot down the middle. As I made the lonely walk to my ball while listening to my clubs clink somewhere in the distance behind me, I began to wonder how long I could keep this even par run going. The answer came pretty quickly as I botched my approach leaving a healthy pitch shot to a back pin where long is dead. My caddie told me 58 yards (which was probably accurate) but I was seeing more like 40 so I decelerated the downswing and hit it dead sideways into the front of a bunker that, applying math, still left me about 58 yards. Then the fun began.

Being a fairly strong bunker player and figuring that I could still salvage a bogey, I took a pretty good swipe and picked it absolutely clean. Unfortunately, the range on my sand wedge is about 80 yards which means that it probably landed somewhere between the sandbox and the kiddie pool in the yard behind the green. My ensuing drop left a partial fried egg lie so my next attempt landed short on the bank and rolled back into another bunker. Suffice it to say, I was now playing in a hurry to make the pain stop so from there I went long, chipped short, missed the putt and tapped-in for an ignominious 10. 

Kind of hard to bounce back from that but I did par the next hole after which my caddie said in a moment of brilliant obviousness, "that was better." I'm still not sure as I sit here whether he was being funny or just observant. Anyway, I stuck with it as a matter of principle or something and carded my worst round of the year unless you make the handicap adjustment on the 10 in which case it becomes my second worst round of the year. Some players emerge from an experience like that convinced that they've learned something. I am not one of those players. 

We've got about ten weeks before the Senior Club Championship to figure this shit out so if any of you golf shaman types out there have any suggestions, hit me up at the email address below or on Twitter.  

GOLF ANALYSIS

At this point we've used up all of the good players at the wrong tournaments so our one and done options are limited. However, the go for broke longshot approach paid off with some winners last week (Emiliano Grillo - Top 10 and Zac Blair - Top 20). It sure as hell worked better than the methodical approach so no point changing it now. 

Jake Knapp and Jacob Bridgeman are loose hunches but the Rickie Fowler and Davis Thompson picks come with some logic. And the oddsmakers seem skeptical or unaware when it comes to Zac Blair's recent heater which has yielded six made cuts in a row and a recent run of T9, T8 and T13. We love him at +465 to finish Top 20 and may love him even more at +1125 to finish Top 10. Who knows? Maybe the 10 on Sunday is the golf gods' way of telling me I need to start playing less and gambling more. 

Place	Player	Odds
Winner	Jake Knapp	+3300
Top 5	Jacob Bridgeman	+770
Top 10	Rickie Fowler	+345
Top 10	Davis Thompson	+440
Top 20	Zac Blair	+465

One and Done Pick: Jake Knapp

Welcome to the Detroit gun show folks.
We advise keeping your head on a swivel.

Other Guy I’d Pick: Cameron Young

Sleeper Pick: Zac Blair

DraftKings Top Ten Values

Cameron Young	$10,500
Chris Gotterup	$9,800
Patrick Cantlay	$9,100
Jake Knapp	$8,800
Rickie Fowler	$8,100
Jacob Bridgeman	$7,900
Davis Thompson	$7,700
Denny McCarthy	$7,500
Emiliano Grillo	$7,200
Zac Blair	$7,000

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