Torrey Pines is a tough course ! Usually the top players contend here although we have had some surprise winners over the years and you could say the defending champion, Luke List would be one of them. The roll of honour does include major winners, Jon Rahm, Jason Day (twice), Justin Rose, Patrick Reed,Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson (three times), Jose Maria Olazabal, John Daly, and Tiger Woods (seven times). All strong off the tee players with Reed & Olazabal maybe somewhat different.
Its SG:T2G & SG:APR that I'm looking at here and I'm keen to take on hat-trick seeking Jon Rahm who has yet to go win the next week having won the weekend before. I was interested in Tony Finau of course but not at the price so have looked further down the market to analyze the chances of firstly, Gary Woodland who has been cut already in from 100s to 70s/80s. I was also keen on Hayden Buckley who has been showing improvement with a runner up finish in Hawaii LTO and a TOP-5 just 4 starts ago at the ZOZO Championship. Buckley arrives with 4 TOP-20s from his 7 starts this season and although his debut twelve months ago resulted in a MC on a -1 score, he can learn from having played before and outplay best odds of 80/1 - 8 places. If I think Buckley is worth chancing @ 80s here then I have to consider Woodland @ 70s. In his 13 appearances at Torrey Pines including US Opens, he's logged 5 TOP-20s and his US Open win came at nearby Pebble Beach so California can be seen to be good to him.
To complete my staking plan I went back to looking at J.J. Spaun but @ 50/1 - 8 places decided to pass as I was looking for 66s (?) and instead had a stab at Matthew Nesmith @ 150/1 - 8 places. Spaun is playing very consistently with 4 TOP-15s in his last 4 starts. The 32 year old California won his first PGA Tour title last year at Texas and ranks in the TOP-50 for SG:T2G this season but 50s was deemed a bit short despite the consistency of late. It's a mere stab at NeSmith who I haven't followed a great deal to date but he ranks very highly tee to green and approach play and if he can putt this week might just make a run at the places at decent odds.
My 15-man shortlist below suggested I should have considered Thomas Detry, but my tissue seems quite askew to the prices on offer throughout the field so I settled on the 3 selections as per above.
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