Fantasy Golf: The HSBC Champions Preview

I have to apologize for the lack of a preview last week but it wasn't my fault (never is). How was I supposed to know that something called The CJ Cup @ Nine Bridges in the middle of October was a real golf tournament? I just assumed that it was a nine hole charity event put-on by some international celebrity who I had never heard of with the initials "CJ." (Seriously, that's what I thought it was until the head pro corrected me on Sunday . . . and I still didn't believe him). The name of the event has a goddamn ampersand in it and they played it in the middle of the night for Chrissakes. Honest. I ran out of gas. I . . . I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake . . . 

. . . A terrible flood. Locusts!
IT WASN'T MY FAULT.
I SWEAR TO GOD!

Anyway, I am fully recharged and refocused this week after spending four hours on Sunday morning putting a golf ball thirty-six times to irrevocably taint what would have been an otherwise very enjoyable round. Then I quietly watched a ten year old girls soccer game while everyone around me reenacted the commodities exchange scene from Trading Places. I then followed that with an hour of wandering around and cutting through the walls of a corn maze (but no fucking hayride for this guy). I chose that last activity over watching football which is probably a bad sign for the NFL but more on that in a later episode of the FGR.

This week it's back to golf as we gear-up for one of the more underrated tournaments of the year and I'm not talking about the Sanderson Farms Championship which sounds like it's sponsored by a chicken factory (because it is). Nope. To earn the FGR's attention in October you need to be a big-time WGC event with a world class international field sponsored by a corrupt bank and played in a country where people get paid $2 an hour to make toys for Happy Meals so little Johnny can fondle a plastic Minion while developing early onset arteriosclerosis. (Steps down from soapbox). 

The last four winners of the HSBC are top notch -  Hideki Matsuyama, Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson and Russell Knox (three out of four ain't bad) and the final leaderboard regularly includes the likes of Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia. Of course those guys aren't playing this year but the line-up is still solid with Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, Brooks Koepka and certain 2018 major winner, Jon Rahm (remember that you heard it here 7,681st). Right behind them you have Tyrrell Hatton, Ross Fisher and Marc Leishman who have combined for two wins and three runner-ups over the past three weeks. It should be a real hootenanny. Here is some advice on how to wager it.

What they don't tell you on television is that there are 57 
iPhone technicians living in those little orange pyramids 
and being charged $175 per month for a water view.

The One and Done Pick: Ross Fisher

The DraftKings Top Ten Value Picks

Hideki Matsuyama	$11,400
Justin Rose	$10,600
Marc Leishman	$9,900
Paul Casey	$9,400
Ross Fisher	$8,400
Daniel Berger	$8,300
Tyrrell Hatton	$8,200
Tony Finau	$7,700
Thor Oleson	$7,300
Adam Hadwin	$7,100

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com. 

     

The Country Club Libtard

We skipped the Safeway Open preview last week because the guy who recently changed his Twitter name to "Country Club Libtard" doesn't cover golf tournaments sponsored by grocery stores that would dare sell Cheese Whiz, Miracle Whip and non-bug friendly bug repellent.* The Trader Joe's Open maybe. The Wholefoods Open yes. The Weird Co-Op Where the FGR Picks-Up Vegetables from a Suspicious Box in a School Parking Lot Open . . . where do I sign? Actually, I avoid kumbaya grocery stores like they're the DMV because the overly friendly employees make me uncomfortable and trying to get a shopping cart through the aisles is like trying to deliver furniture to an apartment in downtown Mumbai. ("Don't write this down by I find Milton as boring as you probably find Milton"). 

In truth, the reasons for the brief sabbatical were many and none of them had to do with last week's tournament sponsor. But you don't care about that. Fuck it. Let's go through them anyway. Story time!

Work

Part of my job (yes I have a job . . . a paying job) requires me on occasion to testify at hearings on behalf of my employer and against our employees. (This means I often leave the office expecting to find a street sign through my windshield a la Dalton in Roadhouse). Last week was one of those occasions and it resulted in the loss of four hours of my life that I will never get back, two of which were spent sitting in a waiting room listening to a secretary play Wack-a-Mole with a stapler every thirty seconds thereby ruining any chance of a late morning nap. Let's just say that someone appeared to be having a bad day and the fucking staples were going to pay for it. 

Once I finally finished testifying, I did get the pleasure of this exchange with the judge:

Me: Am I free to go?

"I'm going to need you to sit
down and shut the fuck up."

Judge: Do you have somewhere urgent to be?

Me: Urgent?

Judge: You might want to hear what I have to say.

Me: (Inner voice - "I doubt it") Ok. Will we be much longer?

Judge: (Visibly irritated) Not much longer.

Hey, I'll probably never see that guy again. The lesson there is that it's better to be the client than the lawyer. 

Soccer

I coach a soccer team of 14 year olds and last weekend we had a tournament which is an unnecessarily taxing administrative exercise because trying to get seventeen kids into a weekend soccer tournament is harder than smuggling American embassy workers out of Tehran in 1979 (the references are going to come fast and furious this week so look sharp). The best part is that the parents reward your volunteerism by being super vigilant about returning the necessary forms and providing pertinent information like whether their kid is actually going to show-up (I think he's being sarcastic again). The good news is that we made it all the way to the finals before losing on a bullshit call that the prick ref clearly made to avoid overtime. At least that's what I told the kids.  

Activism

So about a year ago I decided to insert myself into a local dispute over whether a gas station should be built in a place where a gas station definitely should not be built (if you haven't figured it out yet, the movie scene that best defines me is the one from Ferris Bueller's Day Off when Jennifer Grey's character walks into Mr. Rooney's office with a scowl on her face and the secretary says, "Hello Jeannie. Who's bothering you know?"). By last Thanksgiving, I had fully engaged myself and was holed-up in our dining room like Carrie Mathison off her meds with stacks of papers everywhere, diagrams, flow-charts and more conspiracy theories than Oliver Stone on mushrooms.

"You complete me!"

Fast forward to last week and success is within our reach, however, now a new enemy has emerged in the form of the reactionary mob who want to capitalize on our momentum by demanding that the gas station be replaced with a more Earth friendly concept like say a day spa for turtles or a butterfly ranch. It turns-out that community activist kook might be more overzealous than soccer parent kook. I clearly need to start spending more time around the putting green with the guys who smoke cigars and discuss how few fucks they have to give and less time wearing my Captain Righteous cape. 

Golf

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the lingering effects of the previous weekend's Member-Member tournament performance . . . and what a performance it was. On Day #1 we played two nine-hole matches and, after parring the first three holes, I then proceeded to exceed my handicap by eleven shots or, put another way, multiply my handicap times three and then add it to par and that was my score. We were the suckers at the table and we knew we were the suckers at the table.    

In preparation for a better Day #2 performance, I ate three slices of pizza for dinner, washed it down with some red wine and went to a bar with a Grateful Dead cover band until about midnight. For good measure, somewhere along the way I got a giant coffee to ensure that sleeping on my partner's couch would be as restless as possible. Mission accomplished. 

Day #2 began with me waking-up on said couch, putting my clothes from the night before back on and heading to the club an hour before our tee time. Quick shower and a shave (look good play good . . . or something), bowl of oatmeal, couple of putts and we were off. Boom. Double bogey. Here we go again. Except that was followed by birdie, par, par, par, par, birdie, bogey and a par. Seriously, this fucking game. That, combined with my partner adding a par on top of my double and a birdie on one of my pars, put us right back in contention. For about half an hour.

We played the fourth match with less energy than a kid going to the dentist on the morning of the first day of school after discovering that all five of his goldfish had a suicide pact ("Goodbye cruel bowl!"). The fact that I had no idea how far my irons were going started to become a problem so, on our sixth hole, I decided to redirect my frustration by questioning my partner's club selection (he made par and I of course made bogey). By the time that nine was done, we had mathematically eliminated ourselves with another match yet to play. If there's one thing I love more than playing golf badly, it's playing golf badly with no chance of winning a prize and the temporary admiration of my drunk friends.  

As it turned-out, the last match featured the highlight of the weekend. I was riding shotgun in the cart which, for some reason, our caddie was driving and, at the very moment that I caught sight of my ball and decided to step-out, he jammed on the breaks and took a hard left propelling me into a three step sprint followed by a 3/4 somersault that ended with me staring at the clouds. Oh the grass felt so warm and comforting that all I really wanted to do was stay there . . . forever. Unfortunately, my landing spot was in full view of at least two greens and two tee boxes so the last remnant of my pride forced me to get-up quickly and pretend like nothing happened. Miraculously, no one saw me other than the caddie who was mortified meaning that I then had to spend the rest of the hole telling him it was ok. And that brings us to the moral of our story. If you're going to eject a member from the cart, make sure it's the Country Club Libtard.        

Thank you for listening. This has been very cathartic. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go meet with some people about building a vegan steak house.    

Footnote

* Out of countless the hypocrisies that I represent, the food thing might be the most egregious. I am the first to pass judgment on the guy filling-up his 32 oz Dr. Pepper at 7-11 as I dilute my coffee with chemically engineered faux dairy crap. And don't think I won't consider alerting child protective services if I see you walking into McDonald's with your kids as me and mine exit Five Guys with a five pound paper bag full of fried potatoes and salt. I think this all started when I switched my go-to breakfast from cereal to kale smoothies. Somehow that turned me into a nutrivangelist Joel Osteen flying around in my private jet fueled by Chick-fil-a sauce to preach about the sins of excess as I conclude every order with ". . . and let's put some bacon on that."  

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com.                        

Fantasy Golf: The CIMB Classic Preview

I more or less took last week off but, if you care enough to visit the website and you checked-out the sidebar, you'd know that the picks were shockingly strong and included the winner (though that was only like a 3 to 1 shot). We've got a randomly good October tournament this week but, instead of previewing it, I've decided to write about why I didn't write last week. Trust me. It will all make sense at some point this week. In the meantime, enjoy this gambling advice from the red hot FGR along with a subtle message to a couple of raging assholes.  

The One and Done Pick: Justin Thomas

Fuck you Cam and Harvey!!!

The DraftKings Top Ten Values
               

Justin Thomas	$12,300
Paul Casey	$10,500
Gary Woodland	$8,700
Kevin Na	$8,200
Bud Cauley	$7,600
Chez Reavie	$7,600
Rafa Cabrera-Bello	$7,400
James Hahn	$7,400
Adam Hadwin	$7,400
Keegan Bradley	$7,000

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com 

     

Shark Sandwich: A Presidents Cup Memory

It's Presidents Cup week a/k/a golf's answer to every international sporting competition that includes gymnastics, synchronized swimming and ping-pong but is not the Olympics. In other words, it's about as meaningful as a week 15 Thursday night game between the Browns and the Jets but it does feature seven of the best eleven players in the world so will I be watching? Of course I will. (At least a little bit but it's member-member weekend for this guy so I'll also be busy grinding over par putts and making new friends at the club with my cheery match play disposition). 

Instead of previewing this year's Presidents Cup, I'm rehashing this 2011 post which followed an American win over Greg Norman's squad on his home turf at Royal Melbourne Golf Club. In an event that has been totally dominated by the Americans who are 9-1-1, this one was memorable because the international team and Norman came-in with particularly high expectations and then handled the subsequent loss like a bunch of petulant ten year old soccer players led by a coach who spent an hour screaming at the ref and then used his post-game speech to tell the kids how much they let him down. And with that, I will now turn it over to the FGR circa 2011.    
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Who knew someone could exceed the European Ryder Cup team at making excuses? Apparently the U.S. team's win this weekend had less to do with the fact that they outplayed their international opponents and more to do with the match format and the team selection process. At least that's how Greg Norman, the most bitter man ever to get rich playing golf, saw it. The world's most annoying wine maker kicked-off the rationalizing with "it's very difficult for us to prepare for an alternate shot format, because we don't do it." 

Before I take questions, I would
like to state for the record that
this was obviously not my fault.

That statement is actually more ridiculous than it sounds (which is saying something) because, not only does it imply that the international players couldn't get together and play a few rounds of alternate shot before the event, it also presumes that the Americans have some distinct advantage because eight of their twelve players played alternate shot over a year ago in Wales. Despite their similar lack of experience, the Americans somehow have the ability to stand over a tricky 5 foot par putt that their partner created for them and drain it. It's called "grinding it out" Greg and, if you need it explained in simpler terms, it's the opposite of hitting your tee shot into the middle of the pond on 16 at Augusta after blowing a six shot lead to hand Nick Faldo the green jacket.

Norman's quote standing alone would have been pathetic enough but then Ernie Els (who had just gone 1-4 in his five matches while completing the fifth year of his three year plan to be number one in the world) felt obliged to chime in with "why don't we start with something different, you know. Let's start with four-ball matches (alternate shot), maybe that's the answer." Hey Ernie, before you float that suggestion, make sure they didn't use that format when the international team lost in '94 and '96 because that would make you sound a bit foolish, especially considering you were on the '96 team.

Turns out Norman was just getting warmed-up. "I had three other guys that could easily have been on my team, but I couldn't put on my team." I suppose Norman has a point there considering that he is locked into ten players and only gets two captain's picks. Unfortunately, his argument is just slightly undercut by the fact that his two captain's picks were Aaron Baddeley and Robert Allenby who combined to go 1-7-1 and effectively cost them the cup. I guess he wanted two more captain's picks to compensate for the lousy play of the two players he chose with the picks he had? I wish he did have two more picks so he could have put himself on the team as a playing captain. That way he could have thrown his players under the bus as their captain, and then backed over them as their teammate.

The crazy part is that Norman has
always taken losing so gracefully.

Before we get away from Sharkfoldo's captain's picks, can we take a moment to dispel the notion that a player should be on the team because he has local knowledge of the course which is presumably why Norman picked Allenby (one of the worst putters in professional golf) over Vijay Singh. Local knowledge cuts both ways. It's great when you're hitting it well but it's not so great when you're struggling because you find yourself thinking, "I know if I hit it there, I'm dead because I've hit it there before." Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Give credit to Johnny Miller for finally shutting down this theory on the last day when he dismissed the umpteenth reference to Allenby's knowledge of the course by saying, "local knowledge only matters if you can execute the shots." That was right about the time David Toms was closing out Allenby 7&5 to slam home the point. (For you non-golfers, 7&5 is roughly equivalent to a 28-3 NFL game). On the first hole of that match, Allenby left a three foot par putt short and Toms rolled his in from about the same distance and I thought, "it's over." Embellishing the immortal words of coach Bobby Finstock, "there are four rules that I live by: (1) never get less than twelve hours sleep, (2) never play cards with a guy who has the first name as a city, (3) never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body, and (4) never pick a bad putter for a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup team."                         

It was fitting that the U.S. team was captained by Fred Couples a/k/a the Anti-Norman. His response to Norman's whining was vintage "aw shucks, I'm going to act like I don't care as I crush you with a grin." Couples' indirect response to Norman's woe fest went this way: "We won this week because we were better players and I think we had a little motivation and we teamed well and we won. I don't know what they would have said if they would have won. Everything would have been fair." BAM! Spoken like a man who never needed to wear a cheesy hat or have a nickname to be one of the most popular players of all time. Never have the traits of "cool" and "uncool" been on fuller display.    

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com.