Let’s not overthink it this week. We have a sample size big enough to know what skillsets are required to flourish at the Wyndham Championship. Players who have succeeded at Sedgefield have separated from the field with driving accuracy and with either elite iron play or a hot flatstick. 

Sedgefield Country Club is one of the shortest courses on the PGA Tour schedule. Players will have to play to certain positions and may even club down more often than not to solidify playing from the fairway. 

We want to find the golfers in the field who have historically played well on these types of courses. Over the last three years, here are the top 12 players in the field who have gained the most strokes on short golf courses:

Andy Lack

I have been eyeing a Christiaan Bezuidenhout breakthrough over the last couple of months and Sedgefield is a perfect venue for the South African. Bezuidenhout has emerged as one of the most accurate drivers on Tour this season, gaining significantly to the field in driving accuracy in his last nine starts, and his iron play has vastly improved over the last month as well. Bezuidenhout has quietly nabbed top-15 finishes at the Genesis Scottish Open and U.S. Open in the last two months, and he always possesses loads of upside on Bermuda greens.

There’s most likely three tournaments left in your OAD season: Wyndham Championship, FedEx St. Jude, and the BMW Championship. It’s now or never to try and sneak into the money or hold your position. In this newsletter segment, I have been writing about my picks in our staff ISN OAD league. I am in first by a wide margin (sorry had to vic lap). I will highlight my pick in this week a pick if I was trying to make a jump.

My frontrunner pick is Matt Fitzpatrick. He is the tournament favorite on majority of pools and should be at least 20% rostered in pools. Fitzy is coming off three straight top 10 finishes, notably a T4 finish at the Open Championship. Fitzy is fairly accurate off-the-tee, ranks as the 13th best iron player in the field, and has great history putting well on bermuda surfaces.

If I was trying to make up some ground and haven’t used Ben Griffin yet, I believe he’s the right choice here. Over the last 36 rounds, Griffin ranks 9th in the field in strokes gained on approach. He is the best putter in the field on bermuda surfaces and ranks 4th in strokes gained on short positional golf courses.

If you want to go even further down the board, I like taking a chance on Denny McCarthy, who is a short course merchant.

The moment we have all been waiting for…the highly anticipated Happy Gilmore 2 was released on Netflix last weekend. On Monday night, I finally got the chance to plop myself on my favorite part of the couch, with a bowl of popcorn by my side, and watch Happy Gilmore make his return to the links. 

Going into the movie, I was in the camp of not having any lofty expectations and being of the mindset of accepting the movie for what it is. I was fully ready to enjoy and appreciate the silliness of the plot line, parlayed with all the corny jokes from the poorly acted professional golfers and celebrities. If you are turning Happy Gilmore 2 expecting to be wowed by the acting and cinematography, don’t even bother wasting your time. 

The plot line was obviously very farfetched on how Happy killed his wife with a drive during a tournament and his life all went to the dumps after and quit golf. However, to counter my own point, I thought what Adam Sandler and his team did a great job of was keeping the identity of what made the original movie great. 

I thought they did a brilliant job incorporating some golf jokes into the movie. For example, the scene of Happy with Will Zalatoris, who we have joked ever since he broke out at the Masters that he looks just like Happy’s caddie, was great when he saw Zalatoris in the locker room and then played with him in the first couple rounds of the Tour Championship. 

The scene that took over the headlines and might be the most remembered was Scottie Scheffler getting DQ’d from the match between the PGA Tour vs Maxi Golf, Scheffler said “oh no not again” before getting handcuffed by the police. They continued with the bit showing Scheffler in jail with some fellow prisoners watching the tournament from the cell. I was glad that Scheffler signed off on that and continues to make a joke out of the unfortunate situation from the 2024 PGA Championship. 

Overall, I enjoyed Happy Gilmore 2. There were times of the movie that I laughed out loud and other times that I said to myself “this is so ridiculous”. The movie is for a specific target audience, as it’s not for the movie critics that complained that the plot line was terrible

Adam Sandler rightfully stayed true to the Happy Gilmore identity and thought created a fun movie to tune into. I didn’t enjoy the sequel nearly as much as I did the original movie, but the movie couldn’t have exceeded those expectations.

ISN Major Championship Draft Results

Back at the start of the year when ISN first launched, one of our first pieces of content was 8 of our staff members did a majors draft. Whoever’s roster earned the most money at the major championships wins the pool.

As a reminder, here were the teams that were drafted:

Folks, the final results are in:

1. Kyle: $13,656,367

2. Coby: $10,849,555

3. Ryan: $7,350,368

4. Boston Capper: $4,707,156

5. Steve: $4,217,212

6. Andy: $4,082,095

7. Brian: $3,161,310

8. Rishi: $2,677,826

Highest Major Total:

1. Masters: Coby: $7,276,780

2. PGA: Kyle: $5,083,063

3. US Open: Ryan: $3,641,164

4. Open: Kyle: $5,319,686

Lowest Major Total:

1. Masters: Andy: $557,813

2. PGA: Ryan: $578,908

3. US Open: Boston Capper: $264,556

4. Open: Rishi: $138,040

Congrats to Kyle for winning the inaugural ISN Majors pool! The golf gods really threw him a bone, handing him the first pick to select Scottie Scheffler.

Additionally, he had the most impressive pick in the draft selecting Harris English with the last pick, aka Mr. Irrelevant. English finished T12 at the Masters, T2 at the PGA Championship, T59 at the US Open, and 2nd at the Open Championship.

There are also some funny draft picks looking back on it: Nick Dunlap in the 5th, Sahith Theegala in the 3rd, Mack Hughes in the 7th etc. It’s so hard to draft your team even before the season starts, but that is what makes it so fun and chaotic. Till next year!

ISN’s Best Ball Content

I consider the start of the fantasy football year when the calendar turns to August. The algorithms are starting to pump the classic fantasy football content about who is going to breakout, and which players will bust, all over social media. 

At Inside Sports Network, we are now going to start posting some best ball content for our subscribers. 

We created a best ball channel in our discord that is designed specifically for our subscribers that want to know what contests to play, discuss draft strategy, and simply chop it up about players we love and hate. Over the last couple of weeks, the best ball chat has been humming and I can’t wait to continue to talk ball with everyone as we get closer to the start of the season. 

On the content side of things, Rishi and Kyle will be releasing a mega best ball podcast on their draft build strategy and their player rankings. 

Kyle is putting the finishing touches on his player rankings that obtain a bunch of valuable information like ADP on DraftKings and Underdog, sportsbook over/under lines on yards and TDs, and strength of schedule. 

Finally, we will be doing some live mock drafts on our YouTube channel so you can see the in-draft strategy of our experts. This will be some of our best and chaotic content because these drafts will cause much debate and raucous between us in real time. 

Fantasy Football draft season is one of my favorite times of the year, and it’s only going to be ramped up from here.