It’s been a decade, but we’re back at Trump National Doral. At 7,739 yards, it is one of the longest layouts the Tour plays all season, and it is going to demand every bit of that length from a field that is already missing some of its biggest names. Rory is out. Fitzpatrick just won two in a row and is taking a breather. Schauffele and Åberg are also sitting this one out. Normally, you’d say something like “the door is wide open” here, but there is one problem with that (Scheffler).

I still think there’s some value on the board this week, especially for a course that we haven’t seen since 2016. Morikawa is healthy again and ranks first in this field in approach play. Henley keeps showing up in the model. Gotterup fits like a glove here. There’s plenty of cases to be made.

This is the kind of week where doing the homework pays off, and we have done the homework, starting with Ron’s course preview article:

Doral

The historic Doral course at Trump National was first designed in 1962 by Dick Wilson. After it’s debut, the severity of the challenge it presented attracted it the name of “Blue Monster”, and that nickname has stuck over the years. It has been renovated by a number of golfing greats such as Robert von Hagge, Bruce Devlin, Raymond Floyd and the renowned instructor, Jim McLean. Several of these renovations in the 1990s and early 2000s moved it away from the original Wilson look, and the course lost some of its edge.

In 2014, with legendary architect Gil Hanse at the helm, the layout underwent a complete redesign. Hanse’s goal was to restore the course to its past grandeur by meticulously re-sculpting every hole. It was essentially a ground-up reconstruction aimed at restoring strategy while amplifying the course’s difficulty. The end result was a tougher, significantly longer, and more dramatic venue than ever before.

He recontoured every green complex, making them larger, more undulating, and better integrated with tightly mown runoff areas that place a premium on short game creativity. Surrounding bunkers were completely rebuilt with sharper edges and more penal positioning, often cutting into greens and landing zones to demand precise shot placement.

Hanse also reshaped nearly every fairway, adding movement and strategic angles rather than simple, flat corridors. He expanded and repositioned water hazards so they are more visually intimidating and more directly in play, especially on key finishing holes like the par-4 18th. The rough was thickened and the overall turf presentation shifted to firm Bermuda conditions, encouraging a faster, more links-style feel despite the South Florida setting.

In addition, Hanse lengthened the course and introduced more variety in hole design, forcing players to think their way around rather than relying purely on power. The Blue Monster is a literal beast of a course, spanning 7,739 yards, making it the second-longest non-major course on Tour….

Course Fit Model

My inputs for the week:

• SG: Tee to Green filtered to long and difficult courses (7,400+ yards): the single most consistent predictor at Doral, where tee to green excellence has defined every leaderboard

• Driving Distance / SG: Off the Tee: longer hitters outperformed shorter hitters by over half a stroke per round before the course was even lengthened; the gap is wider now at 7,739 yards

• Proximity from 200+ yards: over 30 percent of all approach shots come from this range, making long iron precision the biggest approach separator at this specific yardage distribution

• SG: Approach filtered to difficult scoring conditions on long courses: seven of the top nine finishers in 2016 gained over three strokes on approach for the week, the leaderboard mirrors the approach leaderboard almost exactly

• Bogey avoidance/penalty stroke avoidance in difficult conditions: 318 balls found water in 2014, water comes into play on 10 holes, and the miss penalty here is among the highest on tour; players who avoid the big number separate structurally from those who do not

Take a look at my full model as well as other expert models this week (and our consensus rankings).

Betting

Distance is playing a big role in my calculus, but I’m also leaning into guys who have won or damn near won this year when they “put it all together”. This is still a tough field and a tricky track.

Cameron Young +1250
Chris Gotterup +2750
Nicolai Hojgaard +4500
Gary Woodland +5500

Noonan liked a lot of the same guys and has expounded even further on why:

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How to Watch

TV

Thursday: 3-7 p.m. ET (Golf Channel)

Friday: 3-7 p.m. ET (Golf Channel)

Saturday: 12-3 p.m. ET (Golf Channel); 3-6 p.m. ET (CBS)

Sunday: 12-3 p.m. ET (Golf Channel); 3-6 p.m. ET (CBS)

STREAMING

Thursday: 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m. ET (ESPN+)

Friday: 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m. ET (ESPN+)

Saturday: 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. ET (ESPN+), CBS coverage on Paramount+

Sunday: 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. ET (ESPN+), CBS coverage on Paramount+

Weather

Some afternoon winds each day, with Saturday looking to be the worst of it. As of right now, Sunday appears to have quite a bit of precipitation in the forecast. It’s a ways out, but it’ll be interesting to see if we don’t maybe get threesomes for the final round, and possibly some earlier tee times.

News and Notes

MORE LIV DRAMA. Because of course there is. I don’t like jumping into the fray on this sort of stuff, but if they are claiming that they don’t want to compete with the World Cup, then it totally makes sense to move it to the college football season. Louisiana residents famously go nuts for international soccer and not LSU football.

This is a good representation of how hard it is to win on the PGA. This stat is sick as hell and yet he only has the one win so far

You could have given me 30 guesses on what state this was in and I’m not sure I would have gotten it.

As always, bet responsibly, have fun, and welcome back to Miami

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