Even though Lexi Thompson wasn't able to become the second woman to make a PGA Tour cut and follow in the footsteps of Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945, the 28-year-old should hold her head high as a trendsetter who pushed toward the cut line all of Friday before falling just short of her ultimate goal.
Thompson rallied by shooting 4-under through her first 11 holes of the day to get to 2-under par for the event, a number that at one time looked to give her a 50-50 shot at playing on the weekend.
In retrospect, it turns out she would have needed another birdie somewhere during the final seven holes if she wanted to play four rounds, but all of that became a moot point when she fired a 2-over total during that closing stretch to slip her down the board and outside the history-making result.
As a golf fan, I hope more LPGA players get an opportunity to play on the men's circuit over time. Thompson showed that a lack of opportunity, more than anything else, might be the biggest reason no woman has made a PGA Tour cut in nearly 80 years.
Her top-40 performances for strokes gained off the tee Friday and strokes-gained approach Thursday was a more-than-admirable effort for the 11-time LPGA Tour winner.
If you haven't already, you can find me on Twitter @TeeOffSports. There, I provide a link to my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user input to create custom golf rankings. That sheet is released every Monday, so be sure to check it out and construct your own numbers from the database.
Shriners Children's Open: Round 3
Adam Hadwin -120 Over Cameron Champ (bet365)
I was happy to see Beau Hossler get across the finish line vs. Lucas Herbert from the perspective of an entire tournament. Herbert's volatility was something I talked about this week with Jason Sobel on 'The Gimme' and Roberto Arguello and Nick Bretwisch on 'Links & Locks.'
Obviously, things don't always play out as cleanly as that wager did by allowing our opponent to miss the cut, but I am going to head back into my bread-and-butter matchup zone to try and take on our current 36-hole co-leader in Cameron Champ.
Champ hasn't been bad by any means, posting a projected output that has him at nearly 4-under par for the event. That would have gotten him into the weekend and inside the top-45 participants.
However, there is a stark contrast when you consider my model didn't view the American as an expected cut-maker entering the week, which adds to the problems before we even start to consider his eight-shot disparity in actual vs. baseline performance.
I've written about that version of my model quite often, but for those new, the template for what my data is looking to find comes down to how someone is striking the ball throughout the event and then compares it to their baseline short-game metrics over a two-year span.
I am a firm believer that the around-the-green and putting data can be more boom-or-bust from round to round, meaning a player overachieving in that area runs a heightened risk for each day if they are not striking the ball in the fashion that the results might show.
We see that factor with Champ overachieving in Round 2 by 63 places on the leaderboard after losing negative-0.84 shots with his driver and irons and continuing this astronomical run around the green, earning more than 1.90 strokes during each round over the field.
That is a number that comes out of nowhere when we consider Champ's short game was only projected to be better than Tommy Gainey at Shriners after losing with that area of his game in 16 of his last 17 tournaments.
Maybe lady luck is on his side this week in Vegas, and Champ can continue this scorching pace. Nonetheless, this was a matchup that my model would have had about 40 points higher pre-tournament. My numbers don't see why anything should have shifted when Hadwin has posted three top-10 finishes at this venue in four years vs. Champ's three consecutive missed cuts.
I will be laying the minimal juice here for a wager that seems to have been overcorrected to account for one person co-leading the event.
