ZURICH CLASSIC: The PGA Tour’s most unique tournament gets underway this week from the most unique city in North America, the Big Easy, a place where you can always find fun, trouble, beauty, and ugliness, all on the same block. It’s the perfect spot for the Tour’s only team event, a laid-back four-day shootout featuring 2-man teams that are mostly comprised of friends, countrymen, ex-college teammates, Tuesday gambling partners, and, in one case, brothers. It’s a brief respite from the week-to-week grind, and the players have embraced the team format since its inception in 2017.
That said, the fact that last week’s RBC Heritage is now a Designated Event, meaning most of the top players do not get the customary post-Masters break, has affected the quality of the field this week, with many players choosing to rest after a stressful 2-week stretch. Still, the local New Orleans fans will get to see the type of talent that didn’t show up for the Zurich Classic before it became a team event, players like Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, who teamed up to win last year and are back to defend, and Collin Morikawa and Max Homa, who are joining forces for the first time and should be a formidable pair. There’s also the Fitzpatrick brothers, with Matt fresh off his triumph at Harbour Town, the “all Kim” team consisting of Tom and Si Woo, and several other interesting pairings. The format should be familiar to most golf fans: Best Ball (four-ball) for the first and third rounds, and the more difficult Alternate Shot (foursomes) on Friday and Sunday. It’s like your weekend scratch game, only with $8.6 million on the line.
The host course will once again be TPC Louisiana, a Pete Dye design that is fairly friendly by Tour standards, with ample space off the tee and not as much severity around the greens as you normally expect from a Dye track. At 7,425 yards, it’s plenty long and it generally plays pretty soft, so length off the tee is a definite advantage, and the tee-to-green Bermuda should eliminate a few teams from consideration. The players generally tear TPC Louisiana apart, so we can expect another winning score in the 25-under range. You’d better bring your birdies!
Here are three teams worth considering this week:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Kurt Kitayama/Taylor Montgomery (28.0)- Though this team might not pack the star power of some of the market leaders, these guys have been absolutely tearing it up this season, posting six combined top-5s, including Kitayama’s victory at Bay Hill. College teammates at UNLV, these two have probably played as much team golf together as anyone in the field and so this should be a very comfortable environment for them. Kitayama is long off the tee and steady, and Montgomery is an absolute demon on the greens, leading the Tour in putts per round and one-putt percentage and ranking 8th in birdie average. I’m telling you– watch out for this team.
Ryan Palmer/Scott Piercy (46.0)- Neither of these guys have played particularly well this season, so this week is a golden opportunity for them to bank some cash and FedEx Cup points. They’ve both used this tournament to kick-start their seasons before, so this is not uncharted waters for them, and they nearly always answer the bell at TPC Louisiana, with Palmer winning this tournament in 2019 when partnered with Jon Rahm and finding the top-10 two other times since the switch to a team format, and Piercy having experienced similar success, hoisting the trophy with Billy Horschel in 2018 and finishing T13 the following year, followed by a T21 last year. So here are two guys who have proven themselves on this course and in this format, though separately, now teaming up with plenty of motivation. The birdies will be flowing in this group, and I’m happy to take a chance on them at a price like 46.0.
Greyson Sigg/Brice Garnett (64.0)- This tournament has been used by certain players as a springboard to big things later in the season, as there’s something about the shared burden of the team format that seems to free certain guys up and allow them to achieve things they had been struggling to achieve individually. It seems that at least one of the contending teams fits this mold every year– last year in was Doc Redman/Sam Ryder, the year before it was Richy Werenski/Peter Uihlein– and I believe the Sigg/Garnett team is a prime candidate for such a breakthrough this year. Sigg is a talented player who has logged three top-15s this season but is coming off back-to-back missed cuts, while Garnett is just two starts removed from a top-10 in Puntacana and has made 4 of his last 5 cuts. Garnett has also experienced some success in this event, finishing 4th in 2018 and 11th in 2021, so he certainly knows his way around TPC Louisiana. If you’re looking for a live longshot this week, this team fits the bill.
