In all of our podcast shows and articles throughout the week, we were quite bullish that driving distance would be one of the clear separating statistics on a wet Riviera. This became true if you look at the leaderboard and see the likes of Rory McIIroy, Aldrich Potgieter, Cameron Young, Ryan Fox, Xander Schauffele, Min Woo Lee, Jake Knapp, Kurt Kitayama, and Adam Scott who are all considered long hitters OTT on DataGolf.

Our staff had some incredible DFS shouts on Tommy Fleetwood, Cameron Young, Kurt Kitayama and Ryan Fox. Additionally, Andy took a strong stance on why starting your lineups with Rory was a more favorable strategy than playing Scottie Sceffler. Take a listen to the recap video below:

As is the case with most Florida courses, PGA National is on an incredibly flat piece of property, and its defining characteristics are its hazards. The Nicklaus/Fazio design features 26 individual water hazards, and water comes significantly into play on 15 out of 18 holes. This is an example of penal architecture in its truest sense. There is no real strategy or shot options to this course.

The architect is asking players to simply hit it here, and if players hit it anywhere else, they will likely be taking a penalty stroke. Many think that water actually creates more interesting golf, but when a course features this many hazards, it actually encourages a completely homogenized strategy. Players do not have much of a choice on many holes other than to club down off the tee and hit the ball in the same spot, taking their medicine and avoiding penalty strokes at all costs.

Due to the sheer amount of water in play, firm greens, and the potential for wind, PGA National has historically played as one of the hardest courses on the PGA Tour. Seven out of the last 10 years, it has played as a top-10 course in difficulty on the PGA Tour. Yet those days of the Honda are gone.

For inexplicable reasons, the Cognizant changed its 10th hole from a par four to a par five, which resulted in the easiest scoring average in tournament history in 2024, and then in 2025, it played over a stroke easier than that. From 2020 to 2023, the tournament scoring average had been between +0.21 and +1.82, depending on the softness of the turf and the wind. In the last two years, we have seen a very soft golf course and low winds, with the course playing -1.09 strokes under par in 2024 and -1.62 in 2025.  

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

Off the tee Stellenbosch is not a very difficult golf course. The fairways are on the narrower side, at an average width of 30 yards, and are treelined. But the trees are quite sparse and other than a couple of spots should offer recovery options towards the green. They also tend to only be in one row close to the fairway, where smaller misses could get blocked while wider misses go over to the other side with a clear shot at the green. These wider misses can find the native rough, which looks wispy rather than thick and is quite playable (although this is from one year old videos and may have been thickened to be more penal for this event).

The general rough closer to the fairway also appears to be very minimal. There are very few fairway bunkers throughout the course and no water in play off the tee, with the main penalty danger the OB which comes into play mostly at the 6th and 8th, but also a few other times for really wide misses.

This is a driver-heavy golf course, with any doglegs only slight and fairways maintaining their width without bottlenecks that would encourage layups. The lack of penalty for misses also encourages driver rather than using less club for accuracy. The long 585-yard par 5 5th favors distance in order to reach in two shots and if they move the 17th tee up, then it would also favor distance at just over 300 yards to the front edge. But with only 2 par 5’s, and one of them reachable for the whole field at only 529 yards, distance isn’t a prerequisite.

Only on the dangerous 8th would I favor accuracy over distance, with a couple of the thicker tree lines on the 1st and 14th favoring a balance between distance and accuracy. The sheer number of drivers tends to increase driver importance, but with an expected lower missed fairway penalty and not too many holes needing outright distance, I think this is more of a second-shot golf course where general driving is devalued. I would still favor distance over accuracy, but at only 7200 yards being a shorter driver is not a disqualifier.

For the rest of Bexico’s article, click here.

I finally recorded my first top 10 selection of the year with Cameron Young finishing T7 at the Genesis Invitational. After a rocky Thursday and Friday for Cam Young, he carded back to back 66s to win me $603,000 in OAD.

Since the Cognizant Classic is sandwiched between four signature events, this will be one of the worst fields we will have all year. This is a week where I believe you can just throw a dart down the odds board. I want to avoid top of the odds board chalk like Gerard, Lowry, and the Hojgaard twins.

This week, I am taking Haotong Li. For starters, Haotong Li is one of the easiest golfers to root for. That guy always has a smile on his face and is just enjoying being out on the golf course.

For the real analysis, Haotong started off the year strong with a T8 at the American Express and T11 at the Farmers Insurance Open. In both of those tournaments, he gained 10+ strokes from tee-to-green, mainly driving by his iron play. He missed the cut at the WM Phoenix Open, which was due to shooting a 42 (+7) on the front nine.

Haotong is going to have to improve with the flatstick as he isn’t a great putter in general and has struggled on Bermuda grass greens so far in his career. His ball striking numbers are too good to pass up. If he can just be slightly positive with the flatstick, I believe he will put himself in prime position to win this thing on Sunday.

2026 OAD total: $1,207,412

If you aren’t deep into golf twitter or just sports betting twitter in general, you probably missed out on a chaotic Monday morning this week. Let’s just say, some interns or analysts at DraftKings may have been fired!

The DraftKings story that surfaced on golf twitter occurred due to a handful players withdrawing from the Cognizant Classic Monday morning like Ben Griffin, Jacob Bridgeman, Adam Scott, and Patrick Rodgers. After this, DraftKings decided to set every player on the oddsboard at -10000.

You might wonder, what’s the big deal that they set the entire field odds to win the Cognizant Classic at -10000? If you placed a wager on a golfer to win the tournament before they changed everyone’s odds, DraftKings offered you a cash out. Because the players odds changed to -10000, the cashout payout was essentially paying out the entire ticket. 

This is an example that someone posted on twitter:

For the people that were offered cashouts, they obviously accepted it for the full payout as fast as they could. I know a ton of people that after they cashed out, they instantly withdrew the money into their bank account so DraftKings couldn’t take the money back. It was a wild morning in our ISN discord as some subscribers also realized this phenomenon and were able to take advantage.

This is probably a decent liability that DraftKings now has to deal with. There are a lot of questions that people are asking that we don’t have the answers to. If you cashed out and immediately withdrew the money before DraftKings could take it back, do you have to give the money back? Will they limit or suspend the accounts that were able to take this free money? 

Some people were suggesting that DraftKings could give these people a negative balance in their account which wouldn’t allow them to bet until they transfer the money back to their DraftKings account.

I am not sure why the DraftKings trader just didn’t take down the entire market to begin with, instead of making every player -10000. Subscribers in our discord pointed out how slow the company was this morning to change the odds board after players withdrew. Taylor Pendrith withdrew last night and he was still on the odds board Monday morning. 

DraftKings has made it a priority to be the first book to post odds for the upcoming tournament at the very earliest Saturday night and at the latest Sunday afternoon. However, I guess it backfired that they didn’t have their ducks in a row and didn’t adjust to the couple withdrawing properly. 

I am fascinated to see what happens to the people that were able to take advantage of this opportunity. I wish I was able to make a quick buck from this mistake. I was too busy making some excel spreadsheets look pretty at my corporate 9-5 job. Oh well, this probably won’t ever happen again, or will it?

Is Viktor Hovland the Most Interesting Man on Tour?

When Bryson DeChambeau left the PGA Tour, the fans lost his incredible press conference soundbites after he was asked about the mechanics of his golf swing, any equipment changes or improvements, and any on course management changes where he feels he has an advantage. 

Some examples of DeChambeau’s greatest comments were calling out Cobra for producing low quality driver heads, soaking his golf balls in epsom salt, why you should keep the flagstick in when putting, and calling Augusta National a par 67. How could we forget in 2020 when he put on a ton of weight to add distance off-the-tee and told everyone he drinks 6-8 protein shakes a day. 

It’s hard to top DeChambeau as the mad scientist and physicist in professional golf, however, over the last couple of weeks, Viktor Hovland is taking a page out of DeChambeau’s playbook.  

Viktor Hovland’s driving range sessions have been must watch TV so far this year. At the Waste Management this year, a video surfaced on Twitter that Hovland was wearing pool floaties around his biceps while working on his iron game. In a post round interview, Brentley Romaine asked Viktor Hovland about his new golf swing gadget, he said 

“It did help, for sure. It was a good idea; low key I called myself a genius for coming up with it.”

At the Genesis Invitational last week, on PGA Tour Live on ESPN+, he was also seen using some sort of resistance band. 

There are certainly some things that Viktor Hovland is working through with his golf swing and trying to find the right training aid to find the right swing feel. 

Brentley Romaine also reported that during the couple days before round 1 at the Genesis Invitational that, “Hovland was the last man on the practice area when he wrapped up on the far left side of the range. At one point, he had four drivers out to test.”

Looking into Hovland’s strokes gained stats this year so far, Hovland lost strokes off-the-tee at the WM Phoenix Open and Pebble Beach. At Pebble, he gained one stroke off-the-tee. His approach numbers have been great, however, he’s been struggling around and on the greens.

We saw flashes of Viktor Hovland being a mad scientist when talking about his swing. After his win at the Valspar, which in my opinion seems to be quietly forgotten, Hovland said that, “Like I hit a lot of disgusting shots, but they just so happen to go where I look.” 

This is just one of the many quotes that Hovland said in many press conferences last year. Ever since he shockingly split with Joe Mayo after his 2023 season where he won the Memorial, BMW Championship, Tour Championship, while being arguably the best player at the 2023 Ryder Cup, Hovland has been obsessed with finding his old golf swing that he feels he lost. He is on the record for saying that he made a mistake leaving Mayo and he went down a rabbit hole of swing thoughts. 

He is currently still in that state of trying everything to get back to his elite self. Some people find Viktor Hovland quite annoying and are tired of his bit (I am talking to you Kyle Hewett), however, this version of Hovland is great and entertaining for professional golf. You need these types of nerdy personalities talking about their golf swing. I find it very entertaining and fascinating to watch them. 

If you ever go to your local range, you probably see a handful of people with random golf training aid gadgets that they maybe bought off of the TikTok shop. Hovland is just one of those lunatics right now. If you look closely, it might just be Viktor Hovland at your local golf range with pool floaties. Or maybe Hovland is on to something and we all need to be using pool floaties to lower our handicap.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise at all but our very own tennis analyst Rishi hit TWO winners on the ATP and WTA AGAIN in the same weekend. Rishi hit Jess Pegula 11/1 at the WTA Dubai 1000 and Sebastian Korda 12/1 at the ATP Delray Beach 250.

A ton of our subscribers tailed Rishi and had some good paydays this weekend.