Aberg won't struggle for invites next year and is firmly expected to have cracked the world's top 50 long before the Masters comes around, but as of today he's officially exempt only for full-field PGA Tour events. There will be no Tournament of Champions unless he wins here at Sea Island, that's for sure, and despite the inevitability of his ascent he does ultimately have to go ahead and earn the right to play in major championships.
I made the point on that these courses, Seaside and Plantation, somewhat undermine his brilliance off the tee – but Aberg has already won at Crans, a fiddly course in the Swiss Alps, and looked like he'd win again at Wentworth, again under conditions which require a good deal more subtlety than we sometimes unfairly expect of the modern golfer.
Horschel's best form is among the best in this field and while it has been absent for much of the PGA Tour season, he's played beautifully since the Open Championship. Returning to the US with 13th in the 3M Open, he signed off the regular season with fourth place at the Wyndham Championship where he played in the final group, and since then has produced four eye-catching displays in Europe.
First he went to Ireland and contended until a poor final round, then he finished 18th at Wentworth despite a slow start. Note that there, in the BMW PGA Championship, he faced the likes of Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick and Tommy Fleetwood, plus Aberg himself. Horschel is a bigger price for the RSM Classic, which seems a bit silly to me.
Griffin could and perhaps should have won twice over the past year or so, first when surrendering a big lead in Bermuda and then when beaten in a play-off for the Sanderson Farms. Both events are played on courses with bermuda greens where power isn't all that beneficial, and it's under such conditions that he's looked at his most effective.
We saw hints of that last year here at Sea Island when he opened with a 66, only for his poor preparation to catch up with him. Griffin had barely touched a club earlier in the week owing to a stomach bug and I think we can excuse the fact that he ran out of gas as an event he was desperate to play well in took shape.
He'll doubtless be relishing another go at it and having shot a round of 59 in practise at the easier Plantation Course, a par 72, and played countless rounds at Seaside, he's one of a number of residents who have no excuses on that front.
That was Hughes' PGA Tour breakthrough, right out of the gate as a rookie, and he doubled his tally in another end-of-year event in 2022, capturing the Sanderson Farms Championship under broadly similar conditions.
It's not been a great year since then, but Hughes effectively sealed his place within that 51-60 bracket on the FedEx Cup Fall with seventh in Mexico last time, during which he revealed that he'd been refreshed by a recent change in caddie.
Duncan is one of the most accurate players on the PGA Tour, ranking 14th in fairways and 15th in greens this season, and those skills helped him to down Webb Simpson here a couple of years after he'd contended on debut.
Although three missed cuts have followed, they've featured rounds of 63, 66 and 68, and prior to two of these appearances he'd been in terrible form. By contrast, 16th in Jackson at a course where he's seldom played well was followed by 18th in the Shriners, by some margin his best form in Vegas, before ho-hum rounds of 70 and 72 saw him depart early in Mexico.
Kraft was just outside the top 10 at halfway there, despite being on the wrong side of the draw, and has made every cut dating back to the Wyndham Championship six starts ago. Just two over-par rounds across the 24 he's played during this sequence speaks to a player who has found confidence again having never really fulfilled his potential as a former US Amateur champion.
Sea Island is on paper a good place for him to do that, as Kraft is among the most accurate drivers in the field and ranks 44th in putting. His lack of punch off the tee shouldn't be a problem here and while his RSM Classic record hardly leaps off the page, he was 21st and 22nd on his second and third visits, let down by a poor round at Plantation on the latter occasion.
He has though shot three rounds of 65 at Seaside, that's from just 10 spins in competition, and a six-under 66 at Plantation shows that it's just a matter of putting the pieces together. There's absolutely no guarantee that he will, but Kraft is one big week away from securing some kind of status for next year, and having got married at Sea Island 10 years ago, he returns with his game ticking over nicely.
Posted at 1600 GMT on 14/11/23
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