Max Homa once again reminded us that he is one of the elite closers in the game as he captured his sixth TOUR win in the past 25 months. He was able to hit some big shots down the stretch at Torrey Pines to outlast a world class leaderboard featuring Collin Morikawa, Sungjae Im, Jon Rahm and Tony Finau.
His biggest competition down the stretch turned out to be Keegan Bradley, who has really found something on the greens over the past year and will be one player to watch in 2023.
Now, we head up the California coast to famed Pebble Beach for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. It's a shame that this event — and more so these courses — have gotten lost a bit on the schedule as this is a natural week off for many of the top players in the world as they prepare for back-to-back elevated weeks starting with the Waste Management Phoenix Open next week.
Jordan Spieth will headline the field, likely at short odds alongside Viktor Hovland and Matt Fitzpatrick. Thankfully, this will be the last of the multi-course rotation events this year as we start to build into the meat of the season.
This is an event where we can take some longshot opportunities as the format is across three courses, plus the fact that there is potential for a distinct draw advantage before the 54-hole cut can level the playing field. We'll want players who are strong with their wedges this week as short approach into these small greens will be much more important than off the tee, where distance is essentially a non-factor.
AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am Players To Watch
Seamus Power
Last year, we saw Seamus Power blitz out to a five-shot lead into the weekend at this event. He set the 36-hole scoring record with consecutive 64s, but couldn't keep it going to that level and eventually finished T9. Fast-forward 12 months later and he is now the 28th-ranked player in the world with a win under his belt from the fall at the Bermuda Championship on another coastal course.
Power's a great fit for these courses and this event. I am hopeful that he will slide down the board just enough to have some value behind the top end players and we can start our card with him leading into this week's tournament.
Joel Dahmen
I usually like to stick with players who have some recent form as there is certainly something to shaking the rust off in tournament play, but I may make an exception this week. We haven't seen Joel Dahmen in 2023 as he and his wife had their first child, but this is a great venue for his return.
Dahmen has two top-15 finishes in his last three trips to this tournament and is another player who has shown some coastal course preferences in his career. He also comes in after closing out the fall red-hot, posting three straight top 10s to end 2022 with two of those being top-5 results. I can't ignore the fact that it's his first event, so I will want some heavy odds to buy him for an outright, but I expect we may get that.
Taylor Moore
I spent a lot of time over the past two rounds at Torrey Pines following the shot tracker for Taylor Moore as he was a part of some of my DFS lineups, and I came away really impressed with his ball striking. He was throwing some darts in tough conditions at a difficult course, which led to his T11 result. It played out in the Strokes Gained Data, too, as he ranked sixth on approach in the final round and gained more than four shots with his ball striking.
While the courses he will head to around Pebble Beach couldn't be more different than Torrey Pines, I love the confidence and overall form he showed a the Farmers. He posted a T16 at this event last year and is also a player with a heavy preference for the poa annua greens he'll see this week. All of this lines up to make him a good longshot pick when odds open on Monday.
