WORKDAY CHARITY OPEN: In a PGA Tour season that has been anything but normal, this week’s Workday Charity Open is surely the strangest event on the schedule. This is mostly because the tournament didn’t exist a month ago, not even as a concept, and after this week it will never exist again. Also, it will be staged at the same course that will host next week’s Memorial, Muirfield Village. I doubt that anyone in the field has ever played two 4-round tournaments on the same course in consecutive weeks, but here we are, and all things considered it’s awfully impressive that the Tour was able to pull together a field, a sponsor, a venue, and a tidy little $6.2 million purse on such short notice.
The course will be very familiar to most of the players– Muirfield Village is the best-known of Jack Nicklaus’s designs, and is supposedly his favorite, which is why he has used it to host his tournament, the Memorial, each year since the event’s inception in 1976. It’s a stern tee-to-green test that demands accuracy off the tee, as the rough is generally long and lush and oftentimes the only way to hold the firm, undulating greens is from the fairway. That’s how they set it up for the Memorial, anyway, but there have been rumors that the rough will be slightly shorter than usual this week and the greens, which are traditionally lightning-fast, will be a bit slower, supposedly putting new pin positions in play– pin positions that are just too severe when the greens are at their firmest and fastest, as they presumably will be next week.
But a few things about Muirfield Village remain true regardless of the length of the rough or the severity of the greens– the course favors a left-to-right ball flight; precision with the mid-irons is a must on account of the length of the course (7,400 yards) and the size and design of the greens; and with ample water hazards and bunkering, there are several instances where players are forced to take on shots that leave little room for error. It’s just as Nicklaus wants it to be– a shotmaker’s course, through and through.
The field this week isn’t quite as star-studded as the one we’ll see at next week’s Memorial– Tiger has opted to skip this one, as has Rory, DJ, and the red-hot Bryson DeChambeau– but it’s still quite strong by Tour standards, with 4 of the world’s top 8 players in attendance. World No. 5 Justin Thomas (12.0) is the betting favorite, but it’s crowded atop BETDAQ’s Win Market, with Jon Rahm (16.5), Brooks Koepka (16.5), Patrick Cantlay (16.5), and Hideki Matsuyama (18.0) all trading at shorter than 20/1. Of course there are plenty of intriguing options a bit further down the board, as there always are with a field of this caliber, and it’s worth mentioning that relative unknowns like William McGirt and David Lingmerth have triumphed at Muirfield Village in recent years. All that being said, here’s what I’m thinking:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Rickie Fowler (38.0)- By now, we know the rap on Fowler: he doesn’t win enough. And given his high profile and the amount of time he’s spent in the top-10 of the World Golf Rankings, the fact that he “only” has five PGA Tour wins to his name is a sore spot, I’m sure. But just typing that sentence makes you realize how overblown some of this stuff is– Fowler is 31 years old and has logged 5 PGA Tour victories and 9 total worldwide wins. He’s likely to win many more in the years to come. This is an elite player by any measure, and though he’s been relatively quiet in 2020, he played very well in Detroit last week, finishing 12th after bookend 67s. He also has an excellent record at the Memorial, finding the top-15 in each of his past three appearances, so it’s safe to say that he enjoys competing at Muirfield Village. I heard Fowler talk about how close his game felt entering last week, and then he backed it up with a ho-hum top-15… he could be ready to bust out in a big way. I’m fairly enthusiastic about him at nearly 40/1.
Joaquin Niemann (50.0)- Niemann’s last competitive round was a Sunday 75 at the Travelers two weeks ago. Prior to those 18 holes of frustration, here are Niemann’s scores in his previous eight competitive rounds: 65, 69, 68, 63, 65, 68, 66, 68. So… yeah. The only question with this guy right now is “How many under will he shoot today?”. After returning from quarantine with a T32 at Colonial, he finished 5th at Harbour Town, where the putter finally started to warm up a bit. And that’s really the only question mark with Niemann– will he putt well enough to win? He’s an absolute ball-striking savant, particularly with the irons, so he’s able to systematically dismantle courses that require tee-to-green precision– courses like Muirfield Village. He seemed perfectly comfortable in his first two appearances at the Memorial, finishing 6th and 27th, so if the putter heats up even a little, look out. I think his price is a bit too fat here.
Harold Varner III (100.0)- While the man known as HV3 is still looking for his first career PGA Tour victory, he’s turned into a consistent moneymaker and has been particularly sharp lately, making the cut in 6 of his last 7 starts and finishing 32nd or better four times in that span, including a T30 at last week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic. Quality ball-striking is what he hangs his hat on, as he currently ranks 20th on Tour in Strokes Gained Off the Tee, 21st in GIR percentage, and 14th in Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green, so Muirfield Village fits his game nicely. He’s teed it up in the Memorial three times, making the cut twice and finding the top-20 once, so course knowledge certainly won’t be an issue, and a slightly slower pace to the greens might be particularly helpful for Varner, who has occasional bouts of frustration with the putter. He does his best work on bentgrass greens like those at Muirfield, however– 4 of his 6 career top-10s have come on bent– so there are reasons for optimism. As to whether he can close the deal on Sunday, we saw him fend off a world-class field to win the Australian PGA a few years back, so it’s not like he’s totally inexperienced in the winning department. Given the price, I’m happy to take a chance on HV3 this week.
