Photo: Geoff Shackelford/Golf Digest
The American Express is a tournament that has been an intriguing watch for many years now. With the tournament being played at three different courses over the four days, the content stays fresh to watch and always holds your attention. This is with a strength of field being far below average in recent years. That is all set to change this year. More top players are playing in this event, despite this event not getting the tag of designated status. Rahm, Cantlay, Scheffler, Schauffele, Finau, Sungjae, Cam Young, Zalatoris, and Tom Kim are all playing in this weeks event. With solid midfield talent and some of the brightest stars in the game, this should be the best American Express in recent memory.
The Courses
The three courses that compose this tournament are La Quinta Country Club, Stadium Course at PGA West, and The Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West. La Quinta is historically the easiest scoring wise. Tipping in at just over 7,000 yards length is not the courses natural defense, and to be honest there isn’t much about the course that inherently keeps the scores low for the pros. The Nicklaus Course seems to be the most fair test of golf during this tournament. If you look at who data golf projects as the best course fits for The Nicklaus Course in the top 5 you find Rahm, Scheffler, and Cam Young. It is clear that this course allows the cream to rise to the top, a sign of a solid course. The Stadium Course is infamously one of the toughest courses on tour. In fact after tour players essentially boycotted the course from 1988-2015 making the return to the tour schedule in 2016. The course has bold dramatic features, including “The San Andreas” bunker on 16 that is 18 feet deep. The closing stretch mimics that of TPC Sawgrass and is one of the most challenging and intense closing sequences on Tour. This event has a 54 hole cut as everyone plays a round at all of the three courses, with the final round taking place on Sunday at The Stadium Course.
The Picks
Looking at the top of the odds board, we find Scottie Scheffler. Last week we looked at some unusual suspects in our picks, this week we are sticking to a slightly more traditional slate especially towards the top of the board. Scottie’s last 4 starts have not seen him finish outside of the top ten. With needing to be able to navigate three different courses in the span of one tournament, you cannot rely on course fit data the way we can some other events. With Rahm winning at TOC and people wondering if he should be regarded as the top player in the game, I think Scottie has some extra fuel this week when he tees in up at The Amex. The man has about as well rounded of a game as you can find, his iron play is truly supreme, and he may feel that he has to reassert himself at the top of the game in a way. Scottie’s floor this week is a top 5 and we like him to take the win this week.
As we travel down the odds board we see Luke List. List has traditionally posted some strong results on the west coast swing of The Tour. He has two finishes just barely outside of the top 20 his last two starts at The Amex. He is coming off of a T11 at Sentry TOC. We like his chances to bag a top ten finish this week at The Amex. He shares similar odds to players like Callum Tarren, Lee Hodges, Stephan Jager, and Alex Smalley. List is a player who is of a slightly higher quality than those guys and he is a good value pick this week at the Amex. We do not have much recent for for him to go off of. He made most of his cuts in the fall series and the Sentry TOC performance a few weeks ago is enough for us to feel decent about having higher expectations for him this week.
Now finally down the odds board a ways we find Russel Knox. He has a couple of decent finishes at this event over the course of his career. His current skills profile on data golf will not knock your socks off. He lacks length of the tee and his putter has been cold. However, what is encouraging is that he is one standard deviation better than your average tour player in approach currently. With none of these courses being absolutely massive courses where you need to be a bomber, if he can keep up his solid approach play, and his putter just gets back to an average level, we could see Knox post a good finish at The Amex this week. Knox is on the board around guys like Stewart Cink, Taylor Moore, and Adam Long. We think there is good reason to believe in Knox more than the rest of the guys around him on the board in this area.
A bonus pick for this week! We almost went with Finau this week over Scheffler for the top of the odds board this week. At FPG we fully believe that we are entering a true breakout year for Finau. He is another player that we are almost certain will have a top 5 finish this week. For so long we have seen Finau’s data golf profile just be pulled towards the top by his length. Right now his length isn’t even the most positive part of his game. Putting, approach, around the green, are all higher than his Driving Distance relative to the average PGA Tour player currently. Part of this is the increased average length on tour, but more than that, it is the development of the rest of Finau’s game. We love Tony this week and every week this year!
