Fantasy Golf: Hot Topics

November 10, 2009 8:50am CST

Hot Topics of the Week

The Finish Line

We made it.

The end of the season is here. It is November and turning cold in most towns, but the PGA is going to squeeze one more competitive week out of the calendar and give these professionals one more shot to earn. There are names you will recognize, commodities you have used (and avoided) for fantasy leagues this season, that will be fighting to earn a secured an opportunity to do so again next season. There are others that simply want to put a positive exclamation point on the end of the experience.

There are some that just enjoy working with the Children's Miracle Network and want to contribute to something positive (you better believe both Davis Love III and Justin Leonard sit in that camp).

For fantasy owners, the feeling is the same. If you are still focused on the results you are fortunate to be enjoying a successful fantasy season. If you are focused on 2010, you are one of many hoping to find a lesson or two that will give you an edge next year.

We've hit the books and studied the courses and pondered the potential for hundreds of golfers this season, and we've had a ton of fun along the way. The return of Tiger may have provided the casual fan with the source of exhilaration needed to tune to the tourney of the week, but for the fantasy enthusiast, this has been one of the more challenging and rewarding seasons in recent memory.

We've watched the rise of Rory McIlroy, the return of Steve Stricker, and highs and lows for Phil Mickelson. We have watched Robert Allenby and Anthony Kim battle on and off the course. We watched Padraig start with struggle and end with elation. We watched the deconstruction of Sergio, the reconstruction of John Daly, and the never-ending construction of the game's future.

Jeff Overton, Webb Simpson, Jeff Klauk, Scott Piercy, Martin Kaymer, Ryo Ishikawa, Danny Lee, Tadd Fujikawa, Ross Fisher, Ryan Moore, Dustin Johnson, Brian Gay, Y.E. Yang, Lucas Glover, Nick Watney, Matt Kuchar... all names you may not have known coming in, and all names you should know as we leave.

Retief Goosen, Angel Cabrera, Rory Sabbatini, Zach Johnson, Pat Perez, Mark Wilson, Nathan Green, Jerry Kelly, Bo Van Pelt, Martin Laird, John Rollins, Heath Slocum, Troy Matteson... all names you may have forgotten coming in, all names you aren't likely to forget as we leave.

The cream of the crop may not change much from season to season but any and everything outside of that group does, and that is what makes the pleasure of enjoying the PGA season spiced with a fantasy team so rewarding.

And I don't know about you, but I've enjoyed every last minute of it, and regardless of our feelings about it all, the end is here and the small-yet-tortuous break from the links is ready to haunt us all... but we get one last hurrah. Enjoy this last tourney my friends.

The finish line for this season lies dead ahead, and so does the start of the next.

Stock Up

Ryan Moore
We wanted to celebrate Moore as the final Stock Up candidate for several reasons.

1) Moore started the season without an official sponsor, wanting to find the right fit for him after feeling the big boys failed to meet his desires. Last week he signed an intriguing (and for this writer, inspiring) deal with Scratch Golf, an upstart giving Moore partial ownership in the company to get him onboard (type "Ryan Moore + Scratch Golf" into Google and you'll find the details).

2) We were riding Moore at this time last season as one of our young hopefuls to follow moving forward, and he has served us well.

3) He deserves it.

The kid of Arizona has enjoyed a phenomenal season, posting 16 cuts made in 27 PGA starts including six top-10 finishes (a career high), $2.2 million thrown in the bank (a career high), and his first career PGA win (the Wyndham Championship, right in the midst of the FedEx Cup Playoffs).

To be fair he has some ups and downs over the second half of the season, but only three of those missed cuts have been suffered over his last 12 starts. In that stretch Moore has earned five finishes in the top 10 with a T11 at the AT&T National thrown in for good measure.

Now he enters the final tourney of the season coming off consecutive top-10 performances, finishing T7 at the Timberlake Shriners followed by T8 at the Frys.com. He had one round of 70, two more at 69 and 68, two at 67, and three more astounding cards reading 66 or better (including an amazing 63 on Friday at the TPC Summerlin) over those two starts.

He's on fire, in more ways than one, and we thought you'd want to know and recognize as you ponder your options for next season.

Stock Down

John Rollins
Rollins logged a much-needed win at the talent-stunted Legends Reno-Tahoe Open, sandwiched by two rewarding outings for fantasy owners (T8 at the Buick Open, T24 at the PGA Championship), but since that time the career golf grinder has struggled since.

The FedEx Cup playoffs launched and Rollins wasted no time in dismissing himself from the competition. He started with T73 finish at The Barclays (shooting 76 on Sunday), followed by a missed cut at the Deutsche Bank Championship to put an end to that challenge, though he did earn a spot thanks to the win in Tahoe (just over the cut line) for the BMW Championship where he disappointed again, finishing T38.

Rollins then put the sticks down on the Atunyote Golf Club where he failed to get a whiff of the cut line at the Turning Stone Resort Championship, shooting 71-73 to fall short of the weekend. Then he took it to the Frys.com Open where he was off the mark again, carding rounds of 73-72 to miss the cut.

Consider this... over his last seven starts, Rollins' worst round of the week has come on his final day (whether he goes for two days or four). That's a trend to avoid for your fantasy squad as we enter the final week of the season.

PGA Bubble Watch: Top 125 Money Leaders
RANK / PLAYER / EVENTS / EARNINGS
115 Ryuji Imada 25 $706,393
116 Cameron Beckman 25 $704,086
117 Michael Bradley 16 $698,547
118 Jeff Quinney 25 $697,105
119 Roland Thatcher 15 $681,630
120 Richard S. Johnson 25 $677,157
121 Ricky Barnes 22 $672,436
122 Steve Flesch 26 $668,051
123 Robert Garrigus 24 $657,482
124 Rich Beem 25 $637,045
125 David Duval 21 $623,824
126 Chris Riley 21 $614,901
127 Jeff Maggert 27 $613,191
128 Tim Herron 26 $603,226
129 Matt Jones 16 $593,514
130 Jimmy Walker 23 $590,025
131 Will MacKenzie 23 $586,836
132 Nicholas Thompson 30 $571,777
133 Todd Hamilton 28 $571,218
134 Stuart Appleby 25 $562,836
135 Ross Fisher 10 $553,971

PGA Money Leaders
PLAYER / EVENTS / EARNINGS
Tiger Woods 18 $10,508,163
Steve Stricker 23 $6,332,636
Phil Mickelson 19 $5,332,754
Zach Johnson 26 $4,583,212
Kenny Perry 25 $4,445,562
Sean O'Hair 24 $4,316,493
Jim Furyk 24 $3,946,515
Geoff Ogivly 21 $3,866,270
Lucas Glover 27 $3,693,353
Y.E. Yang 24 $3,489,515

PGA Scoring Average (Adjusted)
PLAYER / ROUNDS / AVG
Tiger Woods 62 68.05
Steve Stricker 79 69.29
Jim Furyk 83 69.48
Zach Johnson 88 69.58
Tim Clark 78 69.66
David Toms 94 69.66
Hunter Mahan 92 69.69
Kenny Perry 91 69.79
Steve Marino 98 69.90
Sean O'Hair 76 69.95

PGA Top 10 Finishes
PLAYER / EVENTS / TOP 10
Tiger Woods 18 15
Jim Furyk 24 12
Steve Stricker 23 12
Sean O'Hair 24 10
Kevin Na 26 9
Zach Johnson 26 9
Kenny Perry 25 9
Phil Mickelson 19 8
Hunter Mahan 26 7
Lucas Glover 27 7
David Toms 26 7
John Senden 29 7
Ernie Els 20 7