PGA FORUM

THIS IS AN INAUGURAL EVENT

When: June 37-30

Where: Detroit, MI

Course: Detroit Golf Club | A par 72 playing at 7334 yards

Last Year’s Winner: N/A

Last Year’s Cut: N/A

Coverage: PGATourLive | Golf Channel | CBS

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RG Golf Forum League

Happy Meal Standings

Admin Note: The mod team is working to keep these daily threads more on topic – Golf strategy talk for this week’s contest. Post referring to last week’s contest will be moved to the correct thread. Any off topic posts or posts containing full lineups will be deleted..

New course this year and no real history. Should be an interesting week. Time to dig for course that correlates

They have golf courses in Detroit?

Ok, so here is what I know:

Detroit Golf Club is a 36 hole Donald Ross design; The North Course is a regulation Par 72 course; for the tournament they will use 17 of the holes from this course and 1 hole from the shorter Par 68 South Course.

The 3rd hole of the tournament course is the one hole being used from the South Course – looks to be about a 390 yd Par 4.

Jerome Bettis lives on the course and is a member.

Also this week starts a run of 2 weeks in a row of new PGA Tour events- this week in Detroit and next week in Minneapolis.

After Minneapolis, we have the John Deere and then a new (well first time since 1951) Open Championship Course in Royal Portrush. Gonna be lots of work to learn 3 new courses in 4 weeks.

I live in Metro Detroit and I have tickets for the practice round on Tuesday, the grounds open up to ticket holders at 10 am. This will be my first time attending a PGA event of any kind. Is there are tips anyone would like to offer for watching practice rounds, in general? Do the players jump around holes quite a bit, or play them in numerical order? how often do players usually spend practicing? Is it best to pick a guy or two and try to follow, or post up at a hole? Apologies if any of this are dumb questions!

It makes me wish I would have attended a couple of 3M championships back when the event was free as part of the Sr Tour at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, MN. I know Hazeltine well which has hosted big events in the past. As like most PGA events the course next week is private and only accessible to play by a select few.

Should be a really fun stretch to see how these new courses play out.

Some players only play 9 holes Tues-Wed so if you see/hear someone you want to see is out on the course, I’d go straight out there – usually they have a board that shows who has teed off for practice rounds.

I’d suggest waking a few holes with a group you wanna watch then find a spot where you can see a couple holes (usually this means an approach/putting on one hole and a tee shot on another adjoining hole). Then when another group you wanna watch comes through, go follow them for a few holes and then find another good spot for a bite to eat and a beer where you can watch multiple holes again.

As this is the first time here for most (all) guys, they will spend a bunch of time putting and chipping around greens to try to get a sense of the different pin locations.

Players will play the course in order other than some will try to start on the back nine of just playing nine.

Most guys who are going out to play will warm up for 30-45 mins; go play 9 or 18 then disappear for an hour to 90 minutes to do a bit of media if requested and have a quick bite then many will go practice for a while.

Firestone?

More on the course hole by hole yardage

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/golf/2019/04/26/heres-hole-hole-look-detroit-golf-clubs-setup-pga-tour-tournament/3590019002/

Anyone know the type of greens?

15-20% bent, remainder poa

In last week’s cash games, Chez Reavie and Jason Kokrak were both about 30% owned. If you could divine which was the better play, you did well. Almost everyone with Reavie-but-not-Kokrak won, whereas almost everyone with Kokrak-but-not-Reavie lost.

I picked wrong, but this is a new week with no mistakes in it.

Taking a page outta my man BIFs book, gonna try a new approach this week. Gonna do a little research tomorrow and not even look at salaries, only look at the field.

Just pick the guys I like, 6 guys, regardless of DK price, not even gonna look at salaries. Just gonna write those 6 guys down and enter that lineup. If I leave $1000 on the table so be it, obvi if it exceeds $50k I’ll tinker but not gonna let DK prices influence me this week, go with my gut and let the chips and salary fall where they may

Here is a visual too of the course with what is needed to score eagle/birdie or escape with par.

https://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/rocket-mortgage-classic/course.html

I’ll be attending this event as well, I cannot wait!

Find the hole that is the furthest away from the entrance and post up there at the green. As a general rule, people don’t walk that far and you will have way less congestion there. Walked out to 8 at Bethpage and it was like watching your own private tournament! Have fun dude!

Thanks for the tips!!

Based on what I am finding it seems like the course is somewhat like TPC River Highlands that they played this past weekend as far as the type and mixture of grass is concerned. Other Donald Ross designs played recently include Aronimik from the BMW Championship played last year and East Lake for the Tour Championship. Even though I believe both are primarily bentgrass, but you can maybe use history of who has done well at Donald Ross designs in your research.

Aha – just going to put “courses that Jerome Bettis lives on” into my algos, one sec

It goes in the SG:Bus category.

They sure swapped that front 9 all around.

Just a few first observations looking at the course yardage and map. Seems like a lot of driver/3 wood – short iron par 4s. 2 maybe 3 of the 4 par 5s are reachable. 14 is the questionable par 5 with the pond in front and guarding greater than 90% of the green. Will be interesting to see if they move the tees up on 8 one day to make it driveable. Given the bunker placement and the usual tricky Donald Ross designed greens, I don’t see this being a big birdie fest. Depends on how penal the rough is and the weather though.

He’s no Gamez but check out David Berganio Jr. this week, solid 50 year old with the sponsor exemption this week.

ICYMI though I assume most of you already know. This was updated May 10,2019.

https://futureoffantasy.com/bentgrass-or-poa-annua-performance

Very excited to see coverage of some new golf courses these next couple of weeks!