The final round of the 2022 Farmers Insurance Open was great viewing in primetime on Saturday night. In the end, it resulted in an improbable first TOUR win for Luke List who erased a five-shot deficit coming into the round with a 6-under 66. He was able to force a playoff at 15-under with young Will Zalatoris who failed to capitalize on an eight-foot birdie putt for the win on his 72nd hole.
List and Zalatoris played the 18th once again in the playoff, and it was List who hit his approach first to the par five, sticking it to inside of a foot. He would tap in for birdie and waited to watch Willy Z try to tie him. Unfortunately, it was the same story for the former Demon Deacon as he pulled his putt to the left, giving the longtime TOUR player, List, his first career victory.
This week, the TOUR will head up the Pacific Coast to Pebble Beach for the annual AT&T Pro-Am. Following a year away from the three-course rotation and Pro-Am version of this event in 2021 due to the pandemic, they are back to the long rounds and presumably a Saturday with coverage of Larry the Cable Guy playing golf alongside the professionals.
I'll keep my focus on the TOUR players heading into the week, and there are certainly a few that have a track record around this event. One in particular was in the hunt throughout the final round on Sunday at Torrey Pines.
Best Buys
Patrick Cantlay
The unquestioned top player on the board to start the week will be with World No. 4 Patrick Cantlay. He was the 2021 FedEx Cup Champion and Player of the Year on TOUR and has started hot in 2022. He has a fourth- and a ninth-place finish to start the year and will come into Pebble Beach as the player to beat.
Cantlay is a West Coast kid, and it has always shown in his trips to this course and event. He comes in off of a third-place finish last year where he was in the hunt for the win down the backstretch, but he ultimately fell short of champion Daniel Berger. The only real question on Cantlay is how low will his odds be on Monday, and is he worthy of playing as a near single bullet card?
Jason Day
You'll be hard pressed to find better results at a single TOUR event for any player than what Jason Day has posted at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He hasn't finished outside of the top seven in any of his last five trips to this tournament. He has been simply fantastic at this event and is now coming in off of a tournament at the Farmers where he was tied for the lead through 15 holes of the final round. He would finish a respectable T3 and showed us flashes of the player that was once World No. 1.
My biggest concern has nothing to do with Day himself, but rather that a combination of a weak field and his recent result will have him much higher on the board than he may have been otherwise. I will be looking quickly when odds are released on Monday to see if they leave him further down the board, but I am not anticipating being able to buy in. I will instead look to play him in DFS and possibly for placing position if the outright odds are too short for my liking.
Kevin Streelman
Another player that found the weekend at the Farmers was Kevin Streelman. He didn't close out the week the way that he wanted to, but that was mostly due to some issues with his putter. He will now head up the California coast to a tournament he has loved playing over the years. Similar to Day, Streelman has had some fantastic results with his last five trips to this tournament all resulting in top-14 finishes, including a runner-up in 2020.
It takes a certain type of player to be able to handle everything that is thrown at them this week, and Streelman has shown he has the ability to handle it all. He will be a name I am looking for when odds drop, as I think we can find some value with him, and I love the form that saw him gain more than three shots on approach over the weekend at Torrey Pines South.
