RBC Heritage | Fantasy Golf Preview & Picks, Sleepers, Data - DFS Golf & DraftKings

What's up, guys? Rick here with your preview for this week's RBC heritage, the schedule rolls on unbelievable schedule, by the way, masters, which was fantastic last week, RBC heritage signature event this week. Next week is Zurich and then there are two signature events leading into the PGA championship. So that is five out of six weeks, a major or a signature event. It's, it's absolutely crazy. So we are rocking and rolling right now. A couple of things I am on the broadcast for PGA tour live this week. It's the bet cast, which runs all four days. And I will be in Pontavidra, Florida for that at PGA tour studios. So that will adjust the schedule just a little bit for me because of travel and other obligations. But the live chat is still going to be on Wednesday. It's just going to be 30 minutes earlier. Just make sure you're subscribed and all that fun stuff. You'll be able to see it. The RBC heritage contest on splash or weekly listener league has been boosted to $30,000 in guaranteed prizes still with that $25 an entry. Let's not, let's not go backwards, right? Let's, let's ramp this thing, let's ramp this thing up, continue it, fill this, have no problems, all that fun stuff. I got to admit, I think we're going back to total earnings maybe next week. If I can remember to send a note over to the splash guys, the total stroke just doesn't do it for me. And we did a poll the week before last. I think it was and I think dollars is more popular. Anyway, long story short, let's, let's get right on into this. And we are looking at Harbor Town, stark contrast from Augustine National where distance range supreme, you can be pretty wayward. And then there's a lot of other skill sets that come into play. Harbor Town, not so much. You are not going to be able to be wayward. Power is nice, but position range supreme. Here is the overhead and the first hole, I mean, this is just could this be a better visual of what you are going to get at Harbor Town, a fairway that runs out at about 310 yards. Your landing zone is fairway width of 38 yards and total width of, let's see if I can get this right, total width of 63 yards, but effectively much smaller. These trees that are hanging over this landing zone, the trees that close up this, this shoot that you have to hit through, which now that shoot is only 20 yards wide. Not only is hitting the fairway good enough, it's, it's critical hitting the correct side of the fairway also going to be critical because if you think about this, let's, let's look at this together, right? Like if I drop a T, I'm sorry, drop the pin back right. All right, this is the second hole. If I hit a drive that lands here 310 yards on the right side of the fairway, there's no way I'm accessing that pin, right? There's just, I can barely see it. I'm shaping everything. I'm working everything. The nature of this are these, you know, they're not necessarily sharp dog legs. They are, I'd call them subtle dog legs, but because of how narrow everything is and because of the overhanging trees and because of the tight corridors, it feels more extreme than that. If that makes sense, it just feels like the dog legs are more extreme. We've seen guys try to hit more driver than than previous years to try to get as much as you can out of it to varying levels of success. So you can kind of play this however you want, but it does end up getting guys in a lot of similar positions off the tee where they're hitting from the corners of dog legs, right? There's only, like this is hole number eight. There's only so much of this you could possibly bite off, right? You only have an option to, yeah, there you go. You only have an option to hit it to basically this 30 yard area here. If you go driver 310, you get it. You now have like 15, 15 yards more. 15 yards shorter shot in, but there's just not, you can't, there's just nothing you can do. It's not like you can hit a double breaking drive, right? You can't hook it for half and then cut it for the other half. That would be sick if you could. Maybe we'll get a knuckleballer at some point in, in golf history, but it just, just can't do it. So it ends up with guys coming in from the same positions to what are some of the smallest greens that we have on the PGA tour. So very small greens, which obviously starts to ramp up your scrambling numbers because guys are going to be missing these greens. The most correlated stats, the success are par five scoring, putting from 20 to 25 feet, launch angle, putting from over 20 feet, approaches from 50 to 125, strokes gained around the green. So what does that say to me? Okay. So scoring stuff. So bonus puts 20 feet and out, par five scoring, that's a scoring stat, the around the green play and wedge play, right? I don't see distance on here. I don't even really see driving accuracy on here until driving accuracy is actually pretty far down the list. And that is because you're guys hit more fairways than than tour average here, right? Because they are forced to kind of lay back off the tee because they have short, their hands are tied. It's like you might as well just hit the fairway because missing the fairway is such a huge critical mistake. So that's the type of player we're going to look into and course history has been very, very strong here. So before we even just get into this, like let me just show you guys, because I want to set the table at least five starts in their career in this field at Harbor town. I'm sure it's going to be like, can't lay speed. Yeah. So can't lay eight starts 2.11 strokes game per round. Post in a second burger, Jordan, spieth, mav McNeely, JT, Tommy Fleetwood and Matt Fitzpatrick are all one stroke or more players per round. That's a lot to have that many guys with at least five starts at the same course, all gaining at least one stroke per round or more. And then you start looking at like, you know, the top 20 rates significant. Patrick can't lay finishes either top 10 excuse me in 75% of his starts. JT Post has done it in half of his starts. McNeely and Justin Thompson over 40% of their starts. So you're just getting a lot of really consistent results here. So we are going to lean quite a bit on course history for this week. But this is the cheat sheet. This is my website rickrunk good dot com. If you liked the way that I talk and think about golf, do me a favor and hit subscribe. I just looked yesterday 61% of you who watch these videos are not subscribed. Goes a long way for me trying to get to 50,000 appreciate you very, very much. Org offers over $10,000 lead by Scottie Schuffler, Zander, Shoffley Tommy Fleetwood and Matt Fitzpatrick. Scottie Schuffler, who were all of the talk about how miserable and bad he's been this year, looked fantastic last week at the masters. He drove it beautifully. The distance control was back to being the best in the world. And he didn't even putt particularly well left a lot of strokes out this man. I believe this is the first time it's ever happened. Play the weekend at Augusta National, bogey free. It the stat I think goes back to like 1942, which is when they started keeping track of it of this. So there's a chance that in the first eight editions or so, someone else did this, but it's very likely that no one in the history of the masters has done what Scottie Schuffler just did all the weekends. And now he's going to a place where he's had great success. He won a couple of years ago and distance control is still going to be a big benefit, right? He is going to be able to separate himself on those second shots. He's a little bit cheaper this week. So it's a lot of it's a lot about it's a lot about roster construction and how much you can get him into your lineups when you've got Zander, Shoffley Tommy Fleetwood and Matt Fitzpatrick finishing out this list here. Do any of these guys jump off the list at you? Any of these guys say, oh, we've, you know, we've got to play one of these at the discount over Scottie Schuffler. I'm not sure. I think Tommy Fleetwood might be my favorite. There is still something brewing about what Zander, Shoffley is doing. It's just an absolute backdoor top 10 last week and he still lost strokes around the green. And he still lost strokes with the putter. His history here is good, not great. It's a mixed bag of putting in fact, he's only gain strokes putting here twice. They've been big gains. That is probably something that gives me a little bit of a concern, but it does feel like he is on the verge of breaking out. Tommy Fleetwood probably a pretty disappointing finish, right? The weekend for Tommy was not what he anticipated. I think he was inside the top 10 going into the weekend at the masters and he plays himself out of it into a tie for 33rd. Again, his history here better than Zander's in my opinion, but not not spectacular. It's classic Tommy where he gains throughout the bag picks up strokes and all four major categories, which then leaves us with Matt Fitzpatrick who lost strokes, planning last week, something that if you do that, I'm not going to beat you up over. And then he's going to one of his favorite golf courses on the planet, a place where he's won a place where he had a fourth place finish. So I have actually have a pretty difficult time. separating between these three. There are pros and cons for all three of these guys. You know, we're going to know on Wednesday what the projected ownership for these players are. We might make a leverage play, which is something that, you know, the longer you waited for Rory McElroy to make to make lineups last week, probably the more likely it was that you got Rory McElroy into your lineups because of what the the ownership discrepancy was. But yeah, it's difficult for these three. I think if you made me rank them, I think it is probably, it's probably Tommy by a hair, Zander then fits, but it's all very, very close. The thing that's exciting about Zander is if he puts well and if he's like, he look, he seems to be very close to winning by three or four shots. Tommy and Fitsy, I don't think just have that, you know, classic built in upside of Zander, who's a two time major winner, top five player in the world for a very long time. So that's probably the only difference that I can, that I can make between, between those three golfers. Okay. Now, this is a lot of really good options in the 9K range. It's a signature event. It's, you know, it's stacked, right? So any one of these guys in the 9K, I think is, is, is rather interesting. Let me point out a couple of things. We are still kind of waiting to see if Conmorec, how is going to play this event or not. He looked miserable, looked like he could barely walk and ends up finishing T seven at the masters. One of his best, I think it was his best putting performance ever again over eight strokes putting. This is a golf course that obviously sets up really well for him because it rewards accuracy and precision. But we're going to wait to see if we can get any quotes. If he even ends up teaming it up, if he gets their Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday tries to play a practice round, all that fun stuff because the only thing that he's done wrong here is he's been miserable on these putting surfaces. And if we get what we've seen from him, which is the restrate events, which is gain strokes putting, that could be really interesting. But I think he comes with a pretty significant risk tolerance there. You'd have to have a pretty significant risk tolerance. Russell Henley, I've probably said this before, but if I could make, if I could build a golf course for Russell Henley would look a lot like Harbor Town, one that rewards his accuracy off the tee. He's not only one of the most accurate players off the tee, but he has, I believe number one in distance from edge of fairway, which means when he misses, he misses very small, which is great because if you miss big key, if you miss him as big here, you're cooked. And you see that from his results. Last five years, he has four top 20s. He did miss the cut in 2022. He's always gain strokes on approach here during that stretch. He's always gain strokes around the green. He made a run last last week. He made a run on Sunday. The man picked up nine and a half strokes on approach. So he's ready for an event that is an iron contest, like, right? He's ready for that. Might be the best in the world right now. Well, you know, for four round sample size, but Henley probably leads this range for me. Cantlay, I will have exposure to Patrick Cantlay. It'll be top 10 stuff. It might be first round leader stuff. It might be like prediction market stuff where I can get in and out on Cantlay without having to get to the resolution of the event. Vintage T12 last week where he didn't play all that well. As soon as he got into it, he backed up two strokes. He's done everything but win here. He's got five or six top three finishes. The other thing that's interesting is he is a very strong player on short golf courses, which this absolutely qualifies as. So if you go back, I don't know, just go back to 2021. I don't know how far back I have to go, but yeah, there it is. So it's chef. There's number one, 1.8 strokes per round on short courses. Patrick Cantlay is number two. Justin Thomas is three. Russell Henley is four. Okay. So that is something to really consider. And I like him in markets where I don't have to take him to the resolution of the event. You know, if he starts the week with at 25 to one, at some point, he gets to five to one. I can just say, Sionara, it's been fun. Thank you, Patrick. Have a good, have a good day. The, I'm interested to see what people do with Cam Young. I think he's the weight and see option. He's one of the best players in the world. In fact, it's the third best player in the world, but you know, that's OWGR. Just look at the stats. They're crazy. Good. Will people penalize him or a week Sunday? Will they look at his power off the tee and say, oh, well, this is not the golf course for him. Remember, when he was a rookie and he had all those runner-up finishes or all those close calls, one of them was here. It was a T3 in 2022 where I was like, wow, he really doesn't fit this place. And he goes out and finishes T3. It has not been as good since which I will recognize. I hear that. But I'm interested if he's 15% owned, it's different than 25% owned. So we'll, we'll wait and see on Cam Young. We'll know more on Wednesday, but really can't go wrong with a lot of these guys. I like Henley and Ludwig. Can't lay in specific scenarios. Jake Napa has proven that no golf course on planet Earth is troublesome for him. He's just going to find a way to get around here. I finished 60 second here last year losing five and a half strokes around the green. That is not something that we've really seen. Five and a half strokes around the green in his repertoire since then. So he's cleaned that part of his game up. He's probably a solid third or fourth option for me in this range. Okay. I find Colin Moore, Kawah difficult to do the coach speak with, right? And understand what he's saying. I find Jordan's speech to be very difficult in figuring out what he's saying and how that tetheres to reality. If you believe Jordan's speech, this is a great spot for him. He's $8800. He's a past champion here. He's got not only that win, but he had the runner up finish following it in 2023. He's telling us he's hitting the ball better than he has ever hit it to his credit. The numbers are not lying about that. Gain six and a half strokes on approach last week. He gained two at the Valero. He gained four and a half at the Vals bar, five at the players and two and a half at the API. That's his last five. The putter believe it or not has been the problem. He's lost 10 strokes putting in his last eight rounds. It's been a very good putter here. This is to me one of the higher risk higher reward spots. If you have not used Jordan's speech in one and done and you are nervous about this week because it is a statistical outlier or whatever. This might be a really good spot to use him because he is obviously capable of winning. He's playing with immense confidence. We've got to figure out the putter. And if the problem with Jordan's speech is that he can't put, I think that that gets figured out pretty quickly. Speaking of guys who can put, Maverick McNeely and Jacob Bridgeman are probably my two favorite in this range. If you go to the start of, let's just go to 2026, everybody in this field, I bet you Bridgeman and McNeely are probably very close to the top of the list here in terms of strokes game. Pudding. Bridgeman is second, 1.12 and McNeely. Oh, he stinks. He's like 20th, 0.35. So what we have here are a couple of items. McNeely is actually putted better at Harbor Town. Then he has this series. He never lost strokes. Pudding here and he's picked up like 20 strokes in his 18 starts. He has two top four finishes. The play coming into this week has been incredibly consistent and well rounded off the tee has been great. The tee degree numbers have been fantastic. He missed the cut at Riviera. That's the only bad start in 2026. He has a bunch of top 20s. Otherwise, this is a really good spot to plug him in and see if he can go out. He's also good on short golf courses. Jacob Bridgeman. So we've played, I think there have been like 19, 18 or 19 something like that signature events in since they've started doing this a couple of years ago. Bridgeman has only played in eight of them. So smaller sample size than most, but he's got one of the better records in terms of just raw strokes game. The winner of Riviera helps, but that's not the only thing. An eighth place finished at Pebble Beach where he, I mean, short golf course small greens, T8 signature event. Then you look at what he did last week. So he finally lost strokes with the putter. It was only two and he putted better on Sunday. If you lose strokes as a debutante putting at the masters at Augusta National, I do not care. I don't care one bit. I don't care at all. I imagine he is going to bounce back. He picks up three and a half strokes putting here last year. Jacob Bridgeman might be my favorite play this week. That's all things considered $80, $200 price tag, the upside, the bounce back, the contrast, the everything. $80, $200 just might be my favorite. I think there's probably going to be some other good guys that come out of here, but what is the fatigue factor on J Day and Justin Rose and Shane Lowry playing late into master's Sunday? I mean, Justin Thomas would probably be my third favorite, maybe my second favorite. And this event last year is well ahead of schedule in terms of being back after the back surgery. The short game is always fantastic. The approach play at this golf course because it rewards so much of his iron. situation. I mean, he's been great. I mean, he picks up basically multiple strokes on approach every single year that he plays here. So when I look at this, I probably say JT Bridgeman, like, you know, I don't do it this way, but if I were to consider locking two guys into every single lineup, those might be the two because it's also going to give me a lot of flexibility. And I think both of them can win this golf tour. And I think both of them are set up very well for making. He's probably a little bit higher risk, speed highest risk of all, but all worth some level of consideration. The seven K range is really interesting. There's a couple of honorable mentions stepstruck. You guys are going to kill me for saying that. I think maybe we'll lose pretty interesting. I think saw hit is pretty interesting. But I don't think they make the top three or so. Rio, he's Satsune, $7,700, one of the better T-Degrees players on the PGA tour this year. I mean, I mean, look at this. He picked up 10 strokes from T-Degrees players, three at the Valsbar, five in San Antonio. And he's a pot putter. And when he gains two or more strokes with the flat stick, he's going to be in the mix. And he finished T18 here last year. He's accurate off the T. He's actually pretty. He's decently he's long enough off the T. He's accurate as as all get up. And yeah, then turns into a great approach player just needs to put a little bit. So he's probably number one. JJ spawn. What version of JJ are we going to get? Are we going to get the version of like the first seven starts of his season where he was miserable? Are we going to get the Texas open win? Or are we going to get the masters miss cut? The miss cut, the masters wasn't the worst thing in the world. Again, he lost strokes, putting. He gained a stroke on approach in two rounds and he missed the cut by like two shots. Not a huge deal. It's not a really good golf course form. This one you would think would be a lot better. And the history hasn't been the fit would be you think it's great. The history hasn't been what I see is a guy who won two starts ago who is known for his accuracy his approach play in his pudding. Going to a course that should reward accuracy approach play in pudding. That's that's what I see. And he's pretty cheap at $7,500 to be able to get all three of those things. And I look, I think he has I know he has winning upside. I know that he won two starts ago and he's won a major championship in his career. JT Poston, talk about what version of JTR are you going to get? This probably worries me a little bit because even with his good results at Harbor Town, he's mostly losing strokes on approach and just short gaming this place to death. That's pretty unsustainable. You know, his best finish this year was the Texas open to 21st. A lot of miss cuts, a lot of bad finishes. Probably not going to fall into this one feels a little trappy. Sam Stevens, I don't know how closely we've been paying attention to this. Just seems like he's getting better all the time. You know, he missed the cut at Bay Hill by far the worst start of his of his year off the T's great approach play. He's great. The putters are improving a little bit. He's a phenomenal T to green player. If we go everybody in this field T to green 2026, how high is he on this list? He's right here. He's between Justin Rose and Jake NAP. Pretty darn good. If you ask me, considering the fact that, you know, he's played 10 times. He's got one top five finish. A lot of really good finishes in there. That's exciting to me. Sudarshan Yellow Maraju on an unbelievable run run of the lifetime. Fifth, sixth and 14th. His, his course fit, you'd think is not great, but we really haven't seen him in this situation before, right? Like this really short golf course playing the golf that he's playing right now. He's a, he is, I believe, I believe he's accurate enough. His wedge play is exciting, right? From 150 yards in, he's a fantastic player. I'm running Sudarshan right back out there, right back out there again. I think there's some pretty fun value in the 6K range starting with Max Homa. Really, really impressive T9 last week where he gained a ton of strokes on approach and a ton of strokes with the putter. That's usually a high upside type of, of combination. His record here is not good. He's never been able to figure out the putting surfaces, but it does feel like we're getting a slightly better version of Max Homa in 2026 than in previous years. I'm like a 5.5 out of 10, not sprinting to get Max Homa into lineups. I don't know if I can say the same about Gary Woodland where I might be sprinting to get him into lineups. He's $6,800. Again, he won two starts ago. Then he played well at the Masters and finished 33rd. So ever since that interview, I mean, seriously, since that interview where he gets everything off his chest about PTSD, he's gone 14th, first, 33rd, and he says he feels just a weight off his shoulders. He's gained 16 strokes from two degree during that stretch. The putter is awesome. The putter had been awesome before that, dating back to Tory. And yeah, he is going to not be able to tap into the driver as much, but his power will come into play on the second shot and the putter has been a lot better. Ricky Castillo. I don't really have anything nice to say about Ricky Castillo, other than the fact that I think he can just get the ball in the hole better than guys that are similarly priced. I don't know what he's good at. I don't know what he's bad at. I just know that he can beat his peers. If you look at the far right column, he is beaten the field in like 11 of his last 12 starts. That's really what I'm asking for. I mean, he won in Puerto Rico. He had the fifth cognizant, a third last year at the RSM. This is more of just like a I trust Ricky Castillo more than some of these other guys. Sunday, him is so interesting. He played, he gets off to this really bad start coming back from the injury, miscut, miscut, then fourth at Valspar. We're still struggling on a lot of approach shots. But this is such a good golf course, and it has been in his careers played here. What is that? Seven times and the last five have all been 21st or better. If there was a place to be early on the SungJM, this would be my favorite place for him to be to be early on him. And then of course, it wouldn't be a harbor town statistical outlier short, what, you know, accuracy over power situation. If we didn't talk about Brian Campbell, who probably has to do something like this again, game eight or nine strokes in the short game categories, but he's probably not going to lose two off the tee because he's very accurate. Finish 30 second here last year, losing strokes, putting, losing a lot of them three and a half strokes, putting. There's a pathway and he's the min price. So would open up a lot of flexibility. The custom model for this week, Rick Rungood.com. The custom model for this week, I think we can be pretty spot on course history, which is harbor town. I always forget what letter things start with. 20. We're going to do that, like kind of like that bonus putting range, right? Like the the 20 to 20 to 20 to 25 feet and an out range. We're going to do the bonus putting. We are going to do driving accuracy for 25. We are going to do just stroke scan approach last 24 for 10. But then what we're going to do is we're going to double up on that and do some of the wedge regions, the wedge buckets, like 75 to 125 yards. And look at this. Look at this. We have got a model. That's how unique this place is. We've got a model where Scotty Sheffler is not even in the top four. Handle is one. I get it. We would two burger three didn't talk about burger. Bitsy for Fitzpat Sheffler five, Strocker six, more cow a seawoo, Gerard, spieth. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I get it. I get the fleetwood. I get the rowy one or the Russell fleetwood one, too. I get speed at 10. That's kind of exciting. JJ spawn is 15 that $7,500. David Lipsky is 13 that $6,000. SungJays 20th at 6,700. It's going to be a weird week. Embrace the weird. What a run a golf run. Seriously, this is so, so good. Wednesday live chat. And if you want to tune in, it's ESPN plus all four days for the bet cast for PGA to our live, which is fun. I think I'm sitting on the couch this week. So I'll be in like every everything. But yeah, I appreciate you guys. Gosh, masters. So good. So good. All right. Let's keep it wrong. Chats soon.