LIV Golf heads down under for their first event since the Masters, and I have my LIV Adelaide Picks below. The Grange Golf Club hosts this event for the second consecutive year.
Last year, Talor Gooch won the first of his three international events in Adelaide, Australia. Some are saying Gooch is the greatest American born golfer to play on foreign land… If only he was with us in Rome for last year's Ryder Cup! Enough of the Gooch talk — let's take a closer look at the golf course and the keys to success ahead of LIV Golf Adelaide this week.
The Grange Golf Club club is a longer track that will provide the normal Australian Sand Belt style of golf. The course will play over 6,800 yards but the firm and fast fairways will shorten the track a lot. Last year, their were a lot more wedges and short irons than we would have expected on a course of this stature.
A majority of this track will play as fairway and sand, like most Australian tracks do. There are a few holes that have some short rough, which is unusual for golf in Australia. This will do a better job of keeping the ball out of the fairway bunkers or natural areas, which will ultimately make the course easier.
Although the fairways played extremely firm and fast last year, the greens were surprisingly soft. I believe this was done on purpose because LIV Golf wanted to make the course play as easy as possible, leading to birdies which really got the Australian fans going. In short, Greg Norman and his crew are looking to make this event play as similar to the WM Phoenix Open as possible.
Key LIV Golf Adelaide Metrics
When there's a score of 19-under through 54 holes, golfers need to make a ton of birdies. The key to making birdies is pounding greens in regulaton and rolling the rock. Below, we will take a look at the best LIV golfers in terms of Greens in Regulation Percentage and Birdie or Better Percentage.
Greens in Regulation
- Richard Bland 75.19%
- Jon Rahm 74.81%
- Paul Casey 74.44%
- Joaquin Niemann 74.07%
- Branden Grace 73.7%
Bland and Rahm have elevated their iron play throughout the LIV season while Niemann has taken a step back since his hot start.
Birdies per Round
LIV Golf Adelaide Picks
It has been a great LIV season thus far. Through five events, I have grabbed two winners using the 7x ROI Card Construction Structure.
- LIV Vegas: Dustin Johnson +1600
- LIV Miami: Dean Burmester +3200
Fade Cameron Smith
Everyone and their mother will be looking to back Cameron Smith in his homeland of Australia this week. I get it, Smith had a great result at the Masters and is the face of Australian golf. However, when you look closer at the numbers, Smith has had a very unsustainable set of results.
If you know anything about Smith, he is a great chipper and putter. With that being said, he posted one of the best Strokes Gained (SG): Short Game weeks of his entire career at the Masters when he gained over 11 shots to the field when combining SG: Around the Green and SG: Putting.
That is great and all, but he was very mediocre with his ball-striking, which means he needed the chipping and putting to bail him out and save pars. That is not a formula that will translate this week to make birdies and win an event near 20-under.
Smith has been pretty underwhelming on LIV Golf this season as well. Through four events, he ranks 12th on the LIV Golf Standings, which is far below his baseline as he is easily a top-five player on the tour. I believe Smith will disappoint this week and could be a great golfer to fade in any market.
Jon Rahm +700
We're doing it with a single-bullet outright card on John Rahm. Looking at his stats, he ranks first and second in the key metrics that we are looking for in Birdies per Round and Greens in Regulation.
He is also the only player on LIV Golf to finish among the top 10 in every event this season and is ready for a breakthrough. Rahm looked visibly upset at the Masters that he has not been up to his standard so far. While he did not play his best at Augusta, he still gained strokes ball-striking in the loaded Masters field. I believe that could be the motivation Rahm needed and can see him breaking through here.
You may view Rahm as a difficult conditions golfer, but looking at his seven wins dating back to 2022, four of them have came at 20-under or lower. Rahm is not afraid to take it low, and that is what he will do this week at LIV Adelaide.
