The golf course was largely unchanged for 75 years until 2003, when local architect, Ron Pritchard, led a restoration to bring back Ross’ original bunker placements, green shapes and fairway contours. Ahead of 2018 BMW Championship, Gil Hanse led a further restoration, removing a ton of trees and further restoring the original Ross greens. The greens will really be the star of the show next week. They are extremely challenging, large, and undulating, and lag putting skill will be an important ancillary metric. 

Aronimink is littered with a whopping 180 bunkers, and sand ability will also pay dividends this week, although they aren’t particularly deep bunkers like the ones we saw at Oak Hill. This would truly be a phenomenal golf course to host a major championship if the golf ball traveled 275 yards in the air instead of 300 yards-plus, as a lot of the fairway bunkers can be carried by not just the longest players in the field, but also those with moderate distance.

On the scorecard, Aronimink is just as long as Oak Hill, but it will not play as long as Oak Hill because most of the holes are straight instead of doglegged. The fairways are also demonstrably wider than Oak Hill, and the greens are nearly double the size. The extremely narrow fairways at Oak Hill, which were almost impossible to hit and produced a driving accuracy percentage of 45%, really increased the importance of distance, but the fairways at Aronimink are actually wide enough that accurate players will have an opportunity to separate themselves with their accuracy.

These fairways are more similar to the size of Philadelphia Cricket Club, which featured just a 55% driving accuracy percentage but still highlighted driving accuracy and tested players in a very different way than Oak Hill off the tee. If I had to guess, we are likely looking at a 55-58% driving accuracy percentage, paired with a 65% driver usage percentage, which is a far cry from the impossible to hit fairways at Oak Hill, Winged Foot, and Oakmont

For the rest of Andy’s preview article, click here.

Last week, Rory McIIroy let us down after that abysmal round 3 performance. It was statistically one of his worst rounds in quite a while. Overall, Rory finished T19, totaling $242,100 dollars for me in OAD.

We are onto the PGA Championship and I am taking Bryson DeChambeau. 

There has been a lot of talk about Bryson’s future given that PIF is pulling funding after this year of LIV Golf and Bryson is saying he might just do YouTube Golf full time. Am I concerned that these are distractions? Yes. However, Bryson has been dealing with off the course distractions his entire career so if he plays poorly, I don’t believe it will be the reason why.

Let’s talk about his game right now. Am I concerned about his approach play? Absolutely. I walked with him yesterday for a couple of holes. I saw him hit some monster drives per usual. Additionally, I saw him hit some good iron shots and some pretty poor ones.

I believe Bryson could be overlooked this week after his missed cut at the Masters. Look at his PGA Championship history: T2 last year, 2nd in 2024, T4 2023, T4 2020. With his recent success at this major championship, I am willing to find out if he has improved his golf game since the Masters.

You can only use Bryson at a major championship and I believe this is the spot to use him. I don’t think it’s a good course fit at Shinnecock next month and his Open Championship history is subpar.

Some guys I considered were Jon Rahm for similar reasons like Bryson that you can only use him at majors, however, I want to save him for the US Open or Open Championship. I considered Tommy Fleetwood as a potentially lower owned play and if you want to get crazy, I don’t mind taking a shot on Rickie Fowler.

2026 OAD Total: $10,076,522

In case you missed it, Inside Sports Network has partnered with 6of6 Golf. We have mentioned it on multiple shows and we are very excited about this new app.

Essentially, 6of6 is a premier golf DFS tracker. It gives you data on every lineup that you have entered on DraftKings, supplying you the probability of getting a 5/6 or 6/6 lineups. It shows what your projected payouts are for each contest, along with your total exposure across all contests. Personally, my favorite feature is that the website will tell you in each contests who you are rooting for to play well and players you need to fade to improve your standing in that specific contest.

I have been consulting with the founder of 6of6 since inception and it’s a great app to use to sweat your lineups in real time. If you want to learn more, check out our announcement video, along with some pictures of the website. Please use our discount code ISN at checkout for 33% off.

As stated in last week’s newsletter, I was on the grounds in the afternoon yesterday at the PGA Championship and will be there again the next two days. I wanted to provide some thoughts on the course and showcase a handful of amusing pictures. 

Yesterday was my first time ever at Aronimink. As a golfer who grew up in the Philly area, I have always wanted to play the course. I have played many of the really nice courses in the area on the Lower Merion High School Golf team, however, Aronimink and Merion East were not in the rotation. 

I primarily walked the back nine yesterday with ISN subscriber and founder of 6of6 (you should subscribe) Leo. 

My first takeaway from Aronimink was that I was truly blown away by these green complexes. These greens are quite large, especially for Philadelphia golf standards, as the courses I grew up playing on had small greens. The greens are heavily undulated and contoured to the point that they should play difficult for the pros. They played firm and had some pace to them like Xander stated in a press conference. 

The greens are the true defense of this golf course and I believe the pin locations will dictate how the PGA of America wants scoring to land.

Another takeaway I had while being on property was that there isn’t much strategy off-the-tee. This isn’t a golf course where you are nervous to hit your shot or need to talk it over what line you want to take off the tee. The majority of holes at Aronimink are pretty straight. There aren’t many doglegs or lines off-the-tee that players who are long can take advantage of.

The one hole that you can take advantage of being long off-the-tee is 6, where I saw Bryson late yesterday afternoon cover the bunkers on the 6th hole, leaving himself a flip wedge into the green. It was truly impressive stuff.

My favorite hole is the 5th hole, which is a 175 yard par 3. It will probably play shorter since it's downhill. I love a good short par 3, yet I believe we have lost the art of a short par 3. Just because it's short, doesn’t mean it can’t challenge these guys. Watching Brian Harman hit a 3 wood into a 250 yard par 3 or the regular professional golfer hit a long iron isn’t entertaining. 

The 5th green is very complex and if you miss the green, it could be a tricky up and down depending on the pin location and the lie. There are also a couple bunkers in front that I saw give guys some trouble yesterday. 

I will be on the grounds tomorrow to continue to see how the course is playing and follow some of my favorites. I’ll be going on BKAD tonight at 8pm to break it all down again. Additionally, in case you missed it, I also went on our premium show last night too and provided more informative thoughts on the course.

Bryan

How I got to ISN and why you should join

The other week Josh came to me and asked me to write something for the newsletter. Normally I am fraught with topics to talk about (as evidence that many of you members see about as much posting in the discord as Dave), but I am drawing a blank as we near our next big week of the year: the PGA Championship, so let me say a few words about Inside Sports Network, my journey to get here, what it means to me and why I think you should consider joining this amazing crew of people.

Most of us have day jobs and I am no different. I work in healthcare as many of you know and it can be quite the grind on the whole day to day. Oftentimes I would get off work and just want to think or do literally anything else outside of what I studied growing up. I have always been a bit of an action junkie and just never had the time in my 20’s in school, so I found my way to wagering in a pretty unique way that I will save for discord members only.

Suffice it to say I found Steve, Capper, BK and Andy about 5 years ago (in the midst of coming out of a global pandemic) when I started getting seriously into wagering on golf. Shortly after, about a year later, I started playing PGA DFS and from that I evolved to other DFS sports as well.

Fast forward to the end of 2024 where Andy announced he was leaving his gig to start his own company. As a fan of his for years, I could not wait to be a part of it when he finally had the product completed and ready to launch. (True story: My only regret as a part of the ISN family is not paying Mr. Musk for twitter so I could’ve reached out as a founding family member). 

Getting to know many of the new friends and faces (as well as seeing many old ones from other discords) was one of my favorite memories of meeting adults I have had in a long time. I call each and every one of these folks my friends and cannot wait to talk golf and general DFS all day long in between patients.

Many of them have given me specific conceptual recommendations that have made me some pretty serious money in the last year and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t massively appreciative for that. Sometimes as an individual, you can struggle to see the whole picture and that’s what a sharp community can help you realize. This place keeps me grounded and sane and since that point of time I have been lucky enough to join the staff as a contributor. 

Since its inception, this place has really morphed far beyond its early stages and that is all a testament to Andy’s vision for what a DFS company should be. This truly is a place for you as a PGA DFS player to bounce ideas off people. It is a community for the members more than anything and that’s what I try to embody when I represent ISN.

After a few months, we could not keep all the non golf chatter to a minimum, so there are many other channels in the discord and, while there are no official offerings or data sets in there, I can promise you that our membership knows DFS/Betting VERY well, additionally to golf. I hang out in the MMA, NHL and the movies chat mostly additionally to the golf, but I promise you there are people at all times sweating the sports you want to sweat too. It is extra content that is of no additional cost to you.

It was a great week for our subscribers in our community who won big at the Truist Championship. Shoutout to our very own Andy Lack on finishing 3rd in the $10 18 max last week.