The thing with good parties is that while at first it might feel like they live and die on who turns up, by the end of the night you really don't remember who was meant to be there. Golf could do with one of those right now, so the timing of the Waste Management Phoenix Open could not be better in that respect.
The field absolutely could be better and that, too, is a matter of timing: the PGA Tour's rotating Signature Events for 2024 include Pebble Beach last week and Riviera next, so anyone with half a mind to skip Phoenix anyway had every excuse to do so.
Xander Schauffele and Viktor Hovland changed their minds after the entry deadline, which is either hilarious banter by both of them, a little bit insensitive in the current climate or yet more bad news, and they're joined by Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Tony Finau, Tommy Fleetwood, Jason Day and Ludvig Aberg in taking the week off.
Scottie Scheffler's prospects of landing a course hat-trick didn't exactly need a boost but they have one and at 5/1, you can certainly see the case for getting stuck into the favourite. The fact that Scottsdale might be the premiere ball-striking test on the PGA Tour, a place where decidedly ropey putters have often dominated, provides another layer of comfort.
I won't put anyone off. Nine of the last 14 winners here, dating back to 2010, ranked fourth or better in strokes-gained approach and that includes Scheffler a year ago. He undoubtedly boasts the best long-game in golf and it isn't especially close, so if you can swallow the odd shoved putt from inside five feet and aren't concerned about the various other high-class golfers who came up short in their own hat-trick bids lately, then this can all be made very simple.
Personally I'd rather take the chance to back JORDAN SPIETH at the same sort of price he went off when widely selected last week, where the only thing wrong with his display was how he putted.
That club is generally not what it once was but he had at his very best with it in The Sentry and, while it's not necessarily been the case here, is often more effective away from the bumpy, unreliable surfaces found at his beloved Pebble Beach.
I reckon Spieth is no less happy at Scottsdale. In fact, his tee-to-green stats at this golf course are superior to all his other places of comfort, such as Harbour Town, Copperhead, Pebble Beach and Colonial. That's why he has four top-10s, including when rediscovering his game three years ago, and all have come about because of top-class displays of approach work.
Matsuyama has struggled a little since that golden 2021 and it's more than two years since he won the Sony Open, but he popped up following two missed cuts to finish fifth at Sawgrass last March and thereafter produced a sustained run of solid golf.
There really didn't look to be much wrong with his game for the most part, bar that putter of his of course, and finishes of 30th in the Sony and then an improved 13th at Torrey Pines to begin 2024 suggested he might be able to press on in the coming months.
Without going over old ground, I felt the discourse around his Ryder Cup selection underlined where some people can go wrong in assessing form. Instead of looking at field strength and consistency, some pundits talked about a lack of top-10s, failing to recognise that 12th in the US PGA is significant better than say ninth in a 3M Open.
Anyway, the point is Lowry played a lot of good golf last year. He managed three major top-20s, plus others at Riviera, Memorial, the Travelers, the Scottish Open, the BMW PGA Championship and the season-ending DP World Tour Championship, all of them in very good company.
An emotional winner in November, van Rooyen had been playing well in the run-up to Mexico and has continued to do so since. His form figures read 8-16-30-16-23-1-32-22-52-25-20 and as far as 2024 goes, he's played 15 rounds so far and each has been under-par.
Finishing 20th last week represented a marked improvement on a return of 43-MC at Pebble Beach and over his four starts so far this season, he's been excellent either off the tee or with his approaches, but so far hasn't married those two.
That could change at Scottsdale, where he gained strokes in both ball-striking departments last year at a time when his game was more miss than hit. His previous appearance, a missed cut, came during a poor run to begin 2021, and on the face of it this should be a really good course for his powerful game.
Van Rooyen has top-25s at Summerlin, PGA West, San Antonio, two events in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi which represents a solid bank of desert form, and his first PGA Tour win came on the border between California and Arizona and under similar enough conditions to these.
Certainly, I feel Scottsdale is far more suitable than Pebble Beach and, coupled with the weaker field, that means he only need keep the wheels turning to be threatening the places. Rarely are things that simple but at 100/1 he's the best outsider on the board.
Among those at even bigger prices, Jhonattan Vegas is getting closer following his return from an injury absence. He's been in the top 10 for strokes-gained tee-to-green on his last two visits, including a year ago, and having missed the cut by one in the AmEx, shot a second-round 65 at Torrey Pines' North Course.
Another step forward could make him a factor while Las Vegas resident Harry Hall is another who might be playing better than his results suggest, but the run of big-priced PGA Tour winners must end soon and I'm hopeful it might be with Spieth, rather than Scheffler.
Posted at 1300 GMT on 06/02/24
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