We enter another week of the fall swing that we are trying to find players that thrive on easy scoring conditions and have shown the ability to make a ton of birdies. Specifically at Port Royal, host of the Bermuda Championship this week, the course will ask players to hit a ton of wedge shots. It’s your classic wedgefest!

Here are the top 10 players from 100-150 yards:

1. Greyson Sigg

2. Kevin Streelman

3. Matteo Mannassero

4. Andrew Putnam

5. Matt Kuchar

6. Eric Cole

7. Max McGreevy

8. Paul Peterson

9. Ben Kohles

10. Francesco Molinari

The debut of our new Monday Night DFS First Take show with Andy and Bryan the dentist is off to a hot start. Andy and Bryan spoke very highly of starting lineups with Ben Griffin. They also mentioned many names at the top of the leaderboard like Garrick Higgo, Carson Young, Matti Schmid, and Patrick Rodgers.

Here is our recap video:

Additionally, shoutout to our subscriber Kristen, who took down a bunch of single entry contests. Here is her insane lineup that she put together that made her over 10k:

Closing Stretch

Andy Lack

What Golf.com’s upcoming Top-100 World List may tell us about this moment in golf course architecture

Golf.com is on the precipice of releasing their new 2025-2026 Greatest Courses in the World list. The top-100 comes out November 19th, but they were kind enough to release the 50 courses that just missed the cut.  I have a lot of admiration for the way that Golf.com’s ranking system has evolved and come to be. I’ve gotten close with some of their panelists and will hopefully be having a rater on the podcast next week to discuss the top-100. This rater has played over 450 of the 500 eligible courses in the World.

I’m decently well traveled, but my knowledge of golf courses pales in comparison to every single rater for Golf.com. I’ve read a bunch of books on golf course architecture, but I have really seen little outside of the United States and Southern Ireland. Robin Williams summarized it well in Good Will Hunting, “If I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. I’m sure you know a lot about Michelangelo, life’s work, political aspirations, sexual orientations, the works. But I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel or ever looked up at that ceiling.” I definitively, cannot tell you what it smells like at Royal Melbourne, Cypress Point or Royal County Down.

Yet what I so greatly appreciate about the Golf.com list is that they use a rather small group of raters, some of them are architects, that are extremely well traveled and have a wealth of knowledge. Other lists deploy a much larger panel and a greater sample size. Thousands of raters that may not have played every course, but if you get enough different opinions, you can create a composite consensus that is considering the opinion of thousands of different golfers.

Golf.com’s philosophy is more rooted in the opinion of the few very best, than the opinion of many. I’m not arguing which style is better or right vs. wrong. Both schools of thought have advantages and disadvantages, but I have yet to meet a Golf.com rater that I didn’t learn from, so I am always eager to track their lists. 

The other aspect that I love about lists is it generally captures the moment of architectural trends. Just look back at the lists from the 70s and 80s where Torrey Pines was rated higher than National Golf Links of America. This encapsulates an era that significantly valued difficulty over creativity and playability. I’m glad that trend has been self corrected.

Even just looking at the courses that just missed the cut for the World Top 100 list, we can ascertain (we have been trending in this direction for a number of years) a growing appreciation for Golden Age architecture, and especially Golden Age courses that have been restored by a major architect like Gil Hanse or Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Golf courses like the Creek and Cal Club, originally designed in the early twentieth century were an afterthought to raters for much of the last 50 years, but highly lauded restorations by Gil Hanse (The Creek) and Kyle Phillips (Cal Club) are just two of many examples of how these Golden Age designs have been reclaimed.

To get even more in the weeds, you can generally tell which architects are hot right now, as well as those who are becoming less well thought of. For example, Brian Schneider’s Old Barnwell had an extremely strong debut, ranking nearly in the top-50 in America and just outside the top-100 in the world. It is very rare for a new golf course to debut this high, but it’s extremely well deserved, and a worthy harbinger of Schneider’s future success. Even watching Medinah No. 3 jump significantly up the rankings after an OCM ranking is most likely a sign that future OCM projects such as Fall Line will debut highly as well. And said influence is not one dimensional either.

An architect such as Brian Schneider has not been discerning about his appreciation and influence from architects such as Walter Travis, and heathland style golf. Do I expect more Walter Travis courses to be reclaimed and potentially rise in the ranks because of Schneider’s influence? It would not surprise me. I would certainly not be shocked if heathland style golf courses find their moment in the sun due to Schneider’s outspoken appreciation of this style of golf. Schneider is not alone either, as one of Fall Line’s courses, my prediction for best new course of 2026, is greatly inspired by heathland style golf. 

Ultimately, just like any form of art, golf course architecture is highly subjective. Yet it is also heavily influenced by the cultural moment. I doubt a single member of the Golf.com would argue that Torrey Pines is a better golf course than National Golf Links of America, but in 1975, that was a popular opinion. I love lists for a number of reasons. I love to argue and deliberate with my friends about what is overrated and underrated, but lists also serve another purpose. They define the present, but more importantly, tell us where we are going.

Josh Segal

Ben Griffin Caps Off a Great 2025 Season

If there was a breakout player of the year award on the PGA Tour, Ben Griffin would undoubtedly have won that piece of hardware. 

After his third win of the 2025 season, Ben Griffin joins Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler as the only players to win at least three times. Griffin won the Zurich Classic with ISN favorite Andrew Novak, the Charles Schwab Challenge and the World Wide Technology Championship. 

What do Ben Griffin, Rory, and Scottie also have in common? Well, Ben Griffin switched his putter last week and debuted the Taylormade Spider Tour X Black Putter. As Jack Hirsh on X pointed out, both Rory and Scottie use the same putter. 

Also on Griffin’s 2025 resume, he made the Ryder Cup team, finished T8 at the PGA Championship, 10th at the US Open and took home nearly 12 million in prize money. He is currently the 9th ranked player in the OWGR and 5th on Data Golf.

Ben Griffin has cited a lot of his success to his off-season speed training, which resulted in him becoming a better overall off-the-tee player. From last season to now, Griffin added 10 yards in driving distance, and improved his ball speed from 172 to 176 mph.

We have been seeing many players over the years focusing on gaining distance and speed as that has been one of the successful models to play well on the PGA Tour. We saw Xander Schauffele add significant speed in 2024, the season where he went on to win two major championships. 

Ben Griffin was one of my favorite players to watch last season. There’s just something about those aviator sunglasses that really make Griffin pop off the television screen. It will be interesting to see if Griffin can keep up his stellar play into 2026. With a ton of confidence, I believe Griffin is in for another monster year.

Is Golf Primed for a Sports Betting Scandal?

The sports world was turned upside down when it was announced a couple weeks ago that Chauncey Billups was involved in a rigged poker scheme with a few of the major mob families. We also received more news that Terry Rozier was arrested by the FBI for being involved in a sports betting scheme by committing prop bet fraud by telling people to bet his unders. This comes after Johntay Porter did the same thing with his prop bets back in 2024. 

Additionally, the MLB is current facing scrutiny for two relief pitchers on the Cleveland Guardians for rigging pitches in another sports betting scheme:

Many people have asked me if golf is a prime sport for betting schemes to happen since golf betting is getting more and more popular. 

My answer is that any sport can be subject to a sports betting scheme. For a golfer to rig their own prop bets, it’s certainly easy to pull off, considering that golf is an individual sport. 

The easiest market to rig would certainly be to miss the cut. There is so much data we have on all these tournaments and the history that it's not that hard to figure out where the cut line would be. 

In the prop betting market, some popular markets to rig would be over/unders round scores, shoutout Twitterless Steve who is the king of this market, and over/unders on birdies, fairways, and greens in regulation. A player could easily three putt on purpose, duck hook a drive into the water off-the-tee, or airmail a green by hitting the wrong club. 

The other side of this is what are the chances of getting caught? People were calling for legal sportsbooks to be banned after all these betting schemes became public. However, one of the reasons why these players got caught is because of the technology that these books have to track player and line movement. 

Sportsbook saw a significant amount of handle on some of these player props that made them suspicious of what was going on. I believe that this is certainly possible in golf, and it would be easy to track. Golf is not one of the most popular sports to bet on, and receives far less handle than NFL, NCCAF, NBA and NCCAB. You might be able to get away with it for the Masters since that is the best bet on golf events of the year, but still not as popular as other big sporting events. 

For example, if there’s a significant amount of money placed on Jordan Spieth’s over, that bet can easily be flagged since golf is not a popular sport to bet on. It’s harder to track the major sports because there’s so much money being wagered and even more games and markets to keep track of.

Would it surprise me if we wake up one day and the lead headline on twitter is that a player was rigging his own prop bets and giving people intel? Certainly not. Illegal sports betting has been going on forever. For all we know, it’s already been happening and is currently happening as we speak.

As highlighted last week, Kyle Hewett is on a hot streak with anytime touchdown bets. Kyle’s hot streak continued in week 10, going 5-4, with his biggest long shot being Tez Johnson and Parker Washington at +250.