golf

Robn Golf Week 3: Find A Teammate

The Robn Golf 2024 Sweepstakes rolls into the Bayou for Week 3 where 80 teams of two will drop like marbles onto the humid bermuda grass at TPC Louisiana and scatter at random.

Leaderboard: Hogan Ekes Out Davis For Lead, Leary, Owono Jockey For Third
RBC Notes: Scottie Wins Another Snoozer, But Robn Markets Feature Drama Elsewhere
Week 3 Zurich Classic Card: Let's All Bet A Weird, Un-Handicap-able Event

Missile Strike

The Cruise Missile is your leader after two weeks, eking out Evan "Better Hair Than Mark" Davis, who got a huge 250-point bump from being the only contestant to successfully predict the exact three-stroke margin of victory (shout out Scheffler's meaningless bogey on 18).

Tim Merck is your Week 2 individual winner. If we had a weekly payout, Father Christmas, it would be yours. But we don't.

Some notes from particular Week 2 markets on the card:

Bogey-Free Round: Cantlay and Si Woo missed bogey-free rounds by one shot each. Cantlay did it three times, almost exclusively due to poor putting: He bogeyed the 12th in the first and second rounds, and the 18th in the third round.

Si Woo had some incredible saves from exotic locales (such as paved residential roads and neighboring fairways) but still missed a stroke on 15 in the first round and on 17 in the third.

In other markets, like Individual Top 20 and Group of Four Top 40, players seemed to do everything they could to deny Robn'ers points, but ultimately snatched victory from the jaws of self-destruction.

Top 20:

Xander, Si Woo and Ludvig all shot +3 over their final ten holes Sunday but still managed to cling to Top 20s. The former two finished tied for 18th, netting Jon Merck some much needed points after an o-fer in Week 1.

Tom Hoge wasn't on our card, but if he had been, Robn'ers would have been clenching those cheeks over his quintuple bogey on 18 Sunday that took him from T-5 to T-18th as well.

A double-bogey on 13 took Fitzpatrick out of the top 20 by one stroke. RIP to Chad Geren, Greg Brooks and Tyler Brown.

Group of Four Top 40:

Spieth, also among the minority of listed players who never had a bogey-free round, bogeyed three of his final six holes Sunday, but still finished in 39th, sealing sweet pointage for Ray Owono, Alex Aragon and Jon Merck.

Even after a three-over par Sunday that saw him drop precipitously, Rory only fell to T-33rd, salvaging a Top 40 finish. This would have been sweet music to The Cruise Missile's, D.J. Leary's and Brooks' ears, were it not for Zalatoris already having torpedoed their Top 40 Group picks.

Glorious Canada Market:

Hughes faded down the stretch on Sunday, including a bogey on 18, but his challenger Hadwin got out of the way, bogeying two of the final four holes.

Jon Merck was the only one to win this market, despite holding a dim view of most Canadians.

Stroke Margin Of Victory:

Once again, our Stroke Margin of Victory market had only one winner. Shout out to Evan Davis for being the only participant to select three strokes - made possible by a Monday morning Scottie bogey on 18.

2RL:

Poston missed a gimme six-foot birdie putt on Friday on 18 - it was the final stroke of the field's play that day. It would would've put him in sole possession of first place with everyone in the clubhouse after two rounds.

Instead, his miss sealed up a five-way tie with, among others, Collin Morikawa. The flub instead gifted your field leaders Hogan and Davis an extra 110 points.

Poston still came back to win the group of five market. He finished at -14, while all four others finished tied at -11. Shout out to Brooks and Geren as Poston's only selectors.

Below are the Week 2 responses:

Below are the Week 2 Graded responses:

Your full Week 2 Leaderboard is here:

R-B-C? More Like Been There, Ceen That

A quick note on Scottie Scheffler's dominance.

Scottie was around +400 to win, depending on your shop.

Here were the next 10 golfers with the lowest odds to win outright, and their respective finishes (remember, the RBC had a more limited field of only 69 golfers).

Only four of them even made the Top 20.

Xander Schauffele +1000; T18
Rory McIlroy +1200; T33
Ludvig Aberg +1200; T10
Patrick Cantlay +1400; T3
Tommy Fleetwood +1800; T49
Collin Morikawa +1800; 9
Max Homa +2200; T55
Matt Fitzpatrick +2200; T30
Will Zalatoris +2500; T44
Cameron Young +2500; T62

It wasn't just his dominance. While Scheffler performed relative to his odds, the rest of the top contenders some were counting on to give him a run for his money, with Cantlay, Morikawa and Aberg as the wire-to-wire exceptions, under-performed.

Speaking of Aberg, he was on track to become the second recent player to finish runner-up to the same winner in back-to-back weeks.

Wyndham Clark did it earlier this year, and in so doing also fell second to Scheffler both times. (What a time for Clark to be playing the best golf of his career, by the way, during untouchable Scottie time).

Before Wyndy did it, though, the last time it happened was 1983.

At Bay Hill and Sawgrass last month, Wyndham Clark became the 1st player to finish runner-up to the same winner in consecutive weeks on Tour since Lanny Wadkins (to Gil Morgan) in Jan. 1983.

Ludvig Aberg is now tracking to do the same thing… and there’s 1 thing in common…
— David Gordon (@dgord_tweets) April 20, 2024

Once in 40 years, then nearly twice in two months. A three-over-par back nine for Ludvig was largely what kept it from happening.

Week 3 Card

Scottie is not in the field this week. But even if he were, you couldn't pick him to win outright, because the Zurich Classic of New Orleans is the only two-person team event on the PGA Tour.

Rounds 1 and 3 are played in a Four Ball format.

Rounds 2 and 4 are a Foursomes format.

The field is massive - there are more two-person teams (80) at the Zurich than there were individual players at last weekend's RBC (69).

The field will cut at the top 33 teams (including ties) after Friday.

There are many in the OWGR Top 25 missing from the field beyond the dominant World Number One. No Ludwig. No Clark. No Homa, Harman or Fleetwood. No Spieth, Henley, or Hideki. None of the LIV-defectors.

Also notably absent this year is Louisiana-native, Sam Burns, who is expecting his first child. Burns and Billy Horschel have been a formidable duo at the event, finishing top-10 in each of the last three years.

Among the notable pairings: