Just as good courses don't guarantee exciting tournaments, weak fields needn't mean uninteresting golf, but that's unfortunately what we got in the John Deere Classic. It is of course exactly what leader JT Poston and his backers would've been hoping for, but the only jeopardy on the PGA Tour last week concerned when exactly Emiliano Grillo would throw in a clumsy mistake to effectively confirm Poston's win, and in the end we'd all have been far better off had Poston gone out in 29 and allowed us to get an early night.
Don't let that fool you into thinking we'll get a repeat at the Barbasol Championship, another low-grade shootout which could never have attracted a strong field. That was clear from the moment the PGA Tour confirmed it would co-sanction the Scottish Open, making this something of a double-opposite: that is to say a tournament with players from both main tours who aren't eligible for the more valuable event which rightly takes centre stage.
We might still get a cracker, and intrigue is enhanced by those 50 DP World Tour players, all of whom have the opportunity to secure a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour. It is, of course, a big ask. This might be a weak field where world number 129 Kevin Streelman is the highest-ranked player, but it's something with which the home contingent are familiar. Just as links golf could catch out a few in Scotland, so might the bright lights of the PGA Tour here in Kentucky.
At least the on-course challenge is as straightforward as it gets. Keene Trace is a 7,328-yard par 72 with wide fairways and fairly generous greens, it should again play soft, and the rough is reportedly sparse. With a large membership and hot, humid, difficult conditions, the quality of the greens might be the best defence along with water hazards, though it was an out-of-bounds line which cost Poston victory here last year, which instead went to Seamus Power.
Anyone in any doubt as to what this relatively small event might do for a career ought to look to Power, now firmly in the Ryder Cup reckoning, so while the dollars and truncated FedEx Cup points might not be as significant as those offered in the Scottish Open, for someone this might be a career-changing week. The difficulty, with Streelman just about clinging onto favouritism at 20/1, is in identifying who that might be.
There's no doubt Christopher Gotterup is the talking horse, as a powerful, brash youngster who didn't need to putt at all well to finish fourth at TPC Deere Run. Now with a chance to earn PGA Tour membership and avoid a trip to Korn Ferry Tour Finals, he could hardly have asked for a better course upon which to unleash his long drives and I wouldn't put anyone off backing a player with such potential in a field which so lacks it.
However, as Poston showed in some way there's nothing like a touch of class when it comes to Sunday and I can't get away from the claims of CHESSON HADLEY, who had been on my radar last week and just narrowly missed out on a place at three-figure prices.
It was nevertheless an excellent performance which added substance to his form, which had amounted to little before fifth place in the Travelers a week earlier. Just as he did last summer, Hadley appears to have snapped out of his malaise and he'll hope he's done so early enough to avoid needing to salvage things at the Wyndham Championship, which is what it came down to in 2021.
The fact he got the job done there is another reminder that this four-time Korn Ferry Tour winner, who won the PGA Tour's Puerto Rico Open in his rookie season eight years ago, has that class I talked about. It's why he's one of very few players here with a notable major championship performance to his name and it wasn't all that long ago that he finished ninth at Pebble Beach.
That's something he's done already at the low-scoring AmEx back in January as well as at the Honda Classic under contrasting conditions, and it's been a really solid year all-round for one of the more consistent Korn Ferry Tour graduates.
Hodges was made to wait a long time with his win coming in the pandemic-hit 2020, but did enjoy some benefits last summer when getting a start here at the Barbasol, and playing well for the first three rounds. He shot a pair of 67s and gained strokes with his ball-striking, but a lack of experience and some short-game struggles ultimately kept him out of the spotlight.
I actually put up Cook at a massive 750/1 just four starts ago in the Byron Nelson based on continued improvements in his long-game and the fact a low-scoring test like that one ought to suit. The case is much the same six weeks down the line and while the price of course is not, that's a reflection of how sharply we're dropping in grade.
It also reveals that while Cook missed the cut after an exciting start that week, he has since underlined that he's close to rediscovering his best form. Twice in three subsequent starts he's finished inside the top 20, including behind Rory McIlroy when 13th, and making the cut in the Travelers means there's a robust look to his form all of a sudden.
That will no doubt have stung the Canadian but the bigger picture is he's playing well now, shooting par or better in his last eight rounds, making six cuts in a row, and showing last week that he's one of the better drivers in fields like these.
In fact his entire long-game was good in Illinois, where on Sunday he hit 13/14 fairways and 15/18 greens, and he putted well for three days. The only thing he did wrong was let one mistake multiply at the 15th hole, which bled into a three-putt from nowhere at the 16th and saw him finishing in a big share of 10th.
No doubt, Schmid will have plenty of support back in the US and that will help, as will the fact he's played a couple of events over here already albeit without much success. They came when he was an amateur, however, and as a professional he's already threatened to win several times in Europe and South Africa.
Keene Trace should be a good fit. Schmid is a huge hitter who ranks eighth in strokes-gained off-the-tee this season, while he's also well above average in approach play and a tidy 35th in birdie average. The one problem so far has been his short-game but it might not stop him stacking up birdies across four reachable par-fives.
Skinns was the halfway leader at a low-scoring Byron Nelson, also played on the eve of a major and with a much stronger field. Since then he's missed three cuts in four but two of them narrowly, and his latest round was a seven-under 64 in the John Deere Classic on Friday.
At 192nd in the FedEx Cup he's another with a job to do and as a two-time Korn Ferry Tour winner, who went to college in Tennessee but hails from England and would dearly love to grab that Open spot, he's exactly the sort of flier who tends to pique my interest in tournaments like this.
As is Kohles, who also went to college in a neighbouring state and has shown progress with his irons lately, but it's Wu's performance on home soil in Illinois which has really caught my eye.
Further support and information can be found at and .