Opinion & Analysis
2022 RSM Classic: Betting Tips & Selections

This was supposed to be around 600 words why Tony Finau was going to win back-to-back for the second time in five months. Sadly, with Tuesday’s withdrawal, not only has the best value in the field gone awol, but the RSM Classic reverts to its status as the bizarre end-of-season chance for a lesser name to win.
While the DP World Tour ends its season at the end of the year, Sea Island Golf Club hosts the ninth event of the ‘new’ 2022/2023, before two novelty events take us through to the new year.
Coastal but gettable, the mix of the Seaside and Plantation courses pray for the wind to make any barrier to good scoring, but despite the potential disasters, winning scores over the past five years average 20-under.
2017 winner Austin Cook said that there is a big plus for players with previous looks at the courses, while Scott Brown and Webb Simpson disagree on the new, undulating greens – the former stating that if you get on the wrong side of the green, “it’s a tough two putt“, whilst two-time runner-up, Simpson, says that with the slopes, ” you can really use those slopes to help you and get the ball in the hole.”
The same thing, but different.
With ‘Big Tone’ out, this becomes an unappealing tournament to bet on. However, with winners Chris Kirk, Kevin Kisner, Mackenzie Hughes and Talor Gooch (along with Simpson) showing a bit at various Open Championships, there is a clear link between coastal conditions around the globe.
This now becomes a much easier event for the likes of in-form Seamus Power and Brian Harman to win.
The latter has made 11 of his last 12 cuts (since July), finishing in the top-20 at the lucrative and elite Tour Championship before a run of 15th, 23rd and latterly, running-up to a rampant Russell Henley in Mexico.
The only issue I have with the local 35-year-old is the lack of an individual victory over the last five years, but with a recent Open record of 19th and then tied-sixth, his claims are there to see.
Power also has decent claims after playing the best golf of his career.
Always well regarded, it took a spell at the lower level for him to find his game, but
There were periods during ‘Lockdown’ and soon after, when he seemed unfazed by the sport, mentioning it was good living and not particularly focussed on the trophies.
That seems to have changed now, and after winning the 2021 Barbasol Championship, the Irishman has steadily climbed the rankings, his latest victory in Bermuda (significant for wind and greens) and third at the Mayakoba seeing him rise to 30th and available for all the major tournaments in 2023.
Power lost many strokes with his irons at the latter part of last season, but has clearly sorted out the issue. With no strokes-gained data available at either Mayakoba or Bermuda, the old-fashioned numbers report him ranking 9th and first for greens-in-regulation. With that quality putting on Bermuda greens a tremendous bonus, he has to go close, and further any claims he has to a place at the 2023 Ryder Cup.
Back up Power with Joel Dahmen, another in-form golfer and winner of the coastal Corales Puntacana Championship in 2021.
There was a period during Lockdown when the 35-year-old seemed more interested in being a social media personality than a competitive golfer at the highest level. That has changed, with his 10th at the U.S Open a sign of what was possible.
Fans have had to wait a while, but in five outings since the turn of October, Dahmen has made all five cuts, with two top-20 finishes improved upon with a bronze medal in Mexico and a place on the front page in last week’s Finau rout.
These finishes could have been even better. Going into Sunday, Dahmen was 11th at the Sanderson Farms – Mackenzie Hughes has won the RSM and in Mississippi – 8th at the Zozo, and 6th in Houston, all numbers that must see him go close here.
Hit fairways and greens and you’ll compete here, and over the past three months Dahmen ranks 10th for driving accuracy, 29th for greens-in-regulation, 20th for scrambling and 26th for putting average. With the hot favourite our, he is a genuine 20-1 shot.
Aaron Rai is a proven wind player. So much so, that like compatriot Tommy Fleetwood, if you back him you want it to blow, with rain another positive.
Still, he is the consummate tee-to-green player, and with every indication in last weekend’s 7th place that he is ready to match his top-10 finishes at Torrey Pines, and top-15s in Canada and at the Mayakoba.
The 27-year-old gives away distance off the tee but, in turn, has led the driving accuracy lists on four occasions this year, perfect if the gusts do arrive. Hopefully, that facet allows him the freedom to have one of his better weeks with his irons – he flits wildly between very good and awful – and then uses his excellent putting to do a job.
Top-12 in strokes-gained-putting at The Memorial, Irish Open, Sanderson Farms and last week in Houston, he can take encouragement from a 16th placed finish on debut last year, when he struck four almost-equal rounds of 66/67/68/68. He is 5/2 to repeat that finish.
We are now in the land of the fantasy – or were. Now the event has opened up, I’ll take a chance with a couple of bigger prices for top-10 and top-20 finishes.
First-season PGA Tour player Ben Griffin is just one of a host of KFT graduates that could be anything over the next few years.
The Sea Island field contains more obvious candidates in the shape of Taylor Montgomery, with three top-10s and two top 15s in just six starts as a full PGA Tour player, as well as the Davis’ – Riley and Thompson – but the 26-year-old can oust the lot after being another to open his full top-level career with a series of impressive results.
After winning on the PGA Tour Canada in 2018, the North Carolina graduate lost his way and worked as a loan officer through 2021, still securing his PGA card via a 15th place on the Korn Ferry Tour standings.
While Griffin was making his way up the table, he finished 4th at the Wyndham, courtesy of a final round 64, before three successive missed-cuts back at the lower level.
After a further weekend off at his first full PGA event, at the Fortinet, Griffin showed much more at the Country Club of Jackson, lying in 10th at halfway before finishing a respectable 24th. He continued his run through the Shriners, when just outside of the top-30 going into Sunday, before three rounds of 65/64/66 saw him lead the Bermuda Championship.
Payday was going well until the 66th hole of the tournament, when an error on the green led to a series of mistakes that caused a 6-over back-nine.
Griffin admits he had a plan, but “got a little too comfortable”, and the episode understandably contributed to his worst performance of this brief spell – in Mexico.
However, Griffin is going nowhere, and his improved 16th in Houston last week (8th at halfway) was the sign of a player confident in his ability.
Having once had his qualifier fee paid by members of his local club, Griffin knows the value of work and whilst his overall figures are nothing more than steady, his numbers for many of the first three rounds are significantly better, even if hidden.
Ignore the missed-cut here in 2018, it seems of no relevance to this week, and look at his 18 holes played at Sea Island Plantation Course in July – a 59!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CfzaB2qOn8v/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Trey Mullinax is far more exposed than the likes of Griffin, but this seems a great opportunity to show up again, as he did when winning the Barbasol Championship in July.
Since his latest victory, his first since 2020, the 30-year-old has finished just outside the top-20 at St. Andrews, 5th at St. Jude, 12th at the limited-field BMW and in the top five last week in Houston.
Solid in most aspects of his game, Mullinax has ranked in the top-15 for putting in ficve of his last seven outings, finding at least five strokes on the field in those, with a gain of over 10 shots last week, on the Bermuda grass of Memorial Park.
Two of his three key victories have come in 23 and 25-under the card, so we know he can go low. He is streaky but on a run, can putt on the grass he faces this week, and looks a terrific bit of value on all fronts.
Reccommended Bets:
- Seamus Power Win/Top-5
- Joel Dahmen Win/Top-5
- Aaron Rai Win/Top-5
- Aaron Rai Top-20
- Ben Griffin Top-20
- Trey Mullinax Win/Top-5
- Trey Mullinax Top-20
Opinion & Analysis
The 2 primary challenges golf equipment companies face

As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Podcasts
Fore Love of Golf: Introducing a new club concept

Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Opinion & Analysis
On Scottie Scheffler wondering ‘What’s the point of winning?’

Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
View this post on Instagram
“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.