The FedEx Cup Fall Series has already produced some drama, with Saheth Segala breaking for his first win in Napa and Luke List winning last week’s five-man playoff. With two events left on the fall calendar and five more for him, the golfer continues to jockey for status.
Next up is the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin. Although the arena lacks the intensity seen in the past, the event will still attract a lot of attention as Lexi Thompson accepted a sponsor’s invitation. It will be a rare opportunity to see LPGA stars competing against male players.
The field size shrunk a bit this week, with just 132 golfers teeing up (compared to 144 last week), playing in a tie for the low 65-hole range and passing the 36-hole cut line.
course
This week’s venue is TPC Summerlin. Although he has been participating in the event for decades, he only started hosting it on his own in 2008.
The course was designed by Bobby Weed in consultation with Fuzzy Zoller in the early ’90s.
The scorecard shows a par 71 of 7,255 yards. It doesn’t seem too short, but given some altitude and solid, fast conditions, the track gets shorter fairly quickly. Compared to the average stop on the PGA Tour, there are far more approach shots here from the 100-150 yard range.
Off the tee, the course has options. Webb Simpson said this about the course a few years ago: I can’t think of any other course we would play. When you hit the driver, you can hit it as far as possible. This golf course has doglegs, runouts, and bunkers. ” On the contrary, players like Patrick Cantlay have had a lot of success here in the past and believe that his confidence in his driver was the key to that success. He draws driver more often than the field, and he’s rewarded with more wedges and short irons. Overall, this is a course where the user can hit the driver if he wants, but at the same time it does not give the bomber a huge advantage.
Looking at the grass, I saw TPC Summerlin resurfacing ahead of last year’s tournament. The fairways were lined with Bandera Bermuda, and the greens were filled with Dominator bentgrass. They already featured Bermuda fairways and bent greens, so no major changes were made, just a switch in type.
If you’re looking for correlated success across the PGA Tour, courses like Sedgefield CC, PGA West, TPC River Highlands, Pebble Beach Pro-Am Rota, and TPC Scottsdale are great choices. Common themes include location (west), scoring environment (easy), and course length (short).
Featured golfers
tom kim
He has been busy since Eastlake with two top 20 finishes on the DP World Tour. That’s encouraging since he endured his ankle injury at the British Open, but he’s had five top-25s in five attempts since then and shows no signs of slowing down. do not have. Kim is his defending TPC champion at Summerlin and he should be considered one of the favorites to raise the hardware again this week.
Ludwig Aberg
There was no hangover for this young Swede who flew straight from Rome to Jackson, Mississippi last week. He played slow and shot 18 under, qualifying for the five-man playoff. Although Aberg lost on the first hole of the playoff, he has now finished in the top 15 in the world for five years in a row with first and second place finishes. Not to mention his strong performance at the Ryder Cup, where he was with some of the best golfers in the world and was definitely able to pick a few of their wits. For Aberg, the sky is the limit.
adam hadwin
The Canadian doesn’t need to shave off any fall points as he finished inside the top 50 of the FedEx standings. So it makes sense that he shows up at TPC Summerlin this week. Hadwin’s overwhelming success on the PGA Tour has come in the desert west. He has finished in the top 10 in four of his seven starts at TPC Summerlin and boasts three podiums at PGA West. There are more questions about his playing condition since he’s been off for seven weeks, but there’s no question about how much he loves a good desert course.
Adam Schenk
Continuing with the theme of Adams, who has been dormant since the FedEx Cup Playoffs, Schenk also shows up this week to take on a new challenge at TPC Summerlin. He became the 54-hole leader in the 2021-22 edition, the first 54-hole lead of his tour career at that point. Schenk is still looking for a breakthrough win, and it’s generally a good idea to continue playing a course if it turns out he was previously leading on that course after three days of play. . Like Hadwin, there is a question mark over his form as he has been rested since Eastlake.
Matthew Nesmith
He arrives from a T-25 finish at Jackson Country Club. He was T-4 from day one, but faded the last three days. Even after he missed the cut in Napa, he had a great performance for him. Now he is back on his TPC “his own course” in Summerlin. I say that because Nessmith has 12 career top-15 finishes in stroke play, three of which came at TPC Summerlin. That includes a career-best finish on the PGA Tour, a runner-up finish at last year’s tournament. Nessmith is No. 72 in the FedEx Cup fall standings, but he could quickly emerge into the “Next 10” conversation if he continues on a consistent course this week in Las Vegas.
Field ranking
1. Tom Kim
2. Ludwig Aberg
3. Kim Si Woo
4. Cam Davis
5. Eric Cole
6.JT Poston
7. Adam Schenk
8. Andrew Putnam
9. JJ Spahn
10. Nikolai Heugaard
11. Adam Hadwin
12. Emiliano Grillo
13. Tom Hoge
14. Bo Hossler
15. Aaron Rye
16. Vincent Norman
17. Mark Hubbard
18. Lucas Herbert
19. Justin Hsu
20. Christian Bezuidenhout
