I’ve been pumped for this stop for a while now. I was building out a schedule to plan content around, and once I put together the swing season calendar and noticed a new name, I obviously dug in a bit. The first thing you find by Googling is a ton of sick ass photos of gorgeous vistas and rock formations.

In the end, this may turn out to be a terrible resort course that a b-squad field tears apart like the Carribean courses, but for now, I’m holding out hope that this one is a hit.

While it’s a weak field by OWGR ratings, seven golfers are teeing it up that have won already this season: Chris Kirk (The Sentry), Nick Taylor (WM Phoenix Open), Brice Garnett (Puerto Rico Open), Peter Malnati (Valspar Championship), Stephan Jaeger (Texas Children’s Houston Open), Harry Hall (ISCO Championship), & Patton Kizzire (Procore Championship)

No course history or much to work with on this stop, but Ron put together anything he could find for this course preview this week. Here’s an excerpt:

Black Desert Golf Course

With the course being so new, there is not much information out there about how it will play. What is known is that there are a couple of risk-reward par 5s along with two driveable par 4s. The 320-yard 5th hole finishes at an elevated green protected by a bunker and numerous rock formations. The green of the 326-yard 14th hole sits in a bowl hidden behind a wall of lava rock on three sides. Layups on either hole can lead to chances at birdie, while the more aggressive players have the option of going for the green off the tee.

“We certainly designed it to challenge the best players in the world,” Smith said, noting that yardage has been added to a few holes at the Tour’s request. “That’s something Tom and I did throughout our careers together. We always designed golf courses with that possibility in mind. Think about TPC Scottsdale (also designed by the pair), where one week of the year it’s got to challenge the best players in the world but 99 percent of the time, it’s a resort course. So you’ve got to be playable. I’m sure there’s some guys that are going to shoot some low numbers, but I can’t wait to see it.”

Weiskopf, and fellow architect Phil Smith, play tricks with golfers in other ways, putting a bunker in the middle of the third green (a 196-yard par 3) and including a couple of holes with water danger on two of the longest par 4s (holes 11 and 13) to enhance shot-making demands. The par-5 7th winds through a compelling maze of black-rock formations. From the back tees the par 3s range from 151 yards to 202. The 151-yard 17th is Weiskopf’s “spin-off” of the famous Postage Stamp par 3 (no. 8) at Royal Troon, where he won The Open Championship in 1973.

The course features short Kentucky bluegrass rough (2″) along with bentgrass fairways and greens. The greens are undulating and quite large at an average of 7,000 square feet with speeds around 12 on the stimpmeter. Thanks to the size of the greens, numerous challenging pin positions can be utilized to test the Tour players this week.

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Model

What I think I know from reading up on the place, looking at photos, and watching 18 flyover videos on YouTube:

• The rough isn’t terrible (2 inches), but obviously, you can get in trouble if you’re very wayward

• Fairways seem to be pretty sizeable, even in the landing areas. Most of the trouble is in spots that would prove more problematic for the resort crowd than the pros.

• The greens are on the big side, but there are some challenging areas surrounding them if you have a bad miss.

Noonan and I put together a model on the betting show yesterday. We made a synthetic total driving metric, and looked at form, approach, and scoring/aggressiveness.

You can look at the whole model on the site (if you’re a member) as well as Andy Lack, Matt Vincenzi, and Ron Klos’ models. Build your own, download it as a .csv, and have some fun finding your winning this week. Still just $29.99/month (or $10 for the full year).

Betting

Almost made it last week! 65/1 on Beau Hossler was good until it wasn’t. Thems the breaks.

This week, just some outrights again, hunting for a fall winner:

Erik Van Rooyan +4350
Ben Griffin +4250
Mark Hubbard +7000

Kevin Tway +17500

Weather

It is hot in the afternoons, but I’m not super sure how much these greens will bake out, considering this is normal, and they also usually have more winds than this. Speaking of, the winds will be lighter than they can be, probably helping scoring even further. No real chances of rain to speak of, just a nice week overall.

News and Notes

Spoke about this on the podcast, we’re heading back to Mississippi next year!

He’s a Horned Frog, but we claim him up here as well as a Fargo guy.

No notes, just worth watching

As always, bet responsibly, have fun, and enjoy the views.

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