golf

Robn Golf Week 6: And You're Going To Hear Me Ror?

Xander and Rory danced around one another on Sunday in the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship. It looked like it would be a photo finish... until Rory turned on the jets and the two went in very different directions, very quickly.

1. Geren continues ascent to second; Hogan eclispes 2k points; Ryblatowski wins week
2. All's Wells That Ends Wells: Can Rory ride recent lightning to PGA Champ win?
3. H2H Matchup Parlay, Top American and Who Did It Worse markets return to the card

Then There Were Three

The field jockeyed for position this week in advance of the year's second major and the wheat separated from the chaff. A top three have emerged roughly 300 points above the pack with just three weeks to play.

Third-place Matt Ryblatowski won the week (his second such win), edging out second-place Chad Geren by just five points, 515 to 510. Geren narrowly missed his third-consecutive week won, but in so doing shrunk the gap between him and leader Sarah Hogan (herself a 475-point winner) to just 25 points.

The leading trio, along with fourth-place Jake Williams, were the only participants to hit both of their Top 25 finishers this week. Alex Noren's clinging to a T-24 finish in spite of finishing +3 over the final two holes Sunday, was particularly helpful for Geren, Hogan, Williams and Kevin Tone.

Meanwhile, a fateful double-bogey on 17 tainted an otherwise great Sunday from Jordan Spieth, and pushed him one stroke out the Top 25, hurting fifth-place Evan Davis' selection. Davis had a particularly unlucky T-25 run when Hideki Matsuyama, his other choice, got bit by the withdrawal bug. The WD also torpedoed several of your H2H Parlay Market selections.

Bogey-free rounds were especially hard to come by this week, with only Rory and Viktor Hovland posting 18 holes' worth of clean cards. Ryblatowski somehow got both of them.

Also notable was the T-30 Group market: Of all the selections, only the Si Woo/Burns/Jaeger and Hovland/An/Im trios won. Congrats to familiar names Hogan, Geren and Ryblatowski, as well as 460-point-week winner and sixth-place Tim "Father Christmas" Merck and seventh-place DJ "The Samurai of Sioux Falls" Leary.

All's Wells That Ends Wells

Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy danced around one another on Sunday in the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship, several shots ahead of the rest of the field. It looked like these two stars of the game would take the event down to an electrifying photo finish – exactly what the PGA needed after multiple weeks of not-name-brand golf – until Rory turned on the jets on the back nine.

The two went in very different directions, very quickly. The victory for Rory came just two weeks after winning the Zurich Classic, aka his team-based love fest with Shane Lowry.

"Punching bag" and "can't win" were on-air words used to describe Schauffele, who was aiming for his first win since the 2022 Genesis Invitational, which is a tournament named after a car that by all anecdotal evidence doesn't exist. I've never seen a Genesis in the flesh. Have you? Yet, it is the most well known Genesis since Sega (apologies to the Book of). And everyone has at least seen a Sega Genesis.

We invoke Katherine Perry in the headline this week to highlight our lead photo. The photo is of Rory eight years ago. But he's roaring. Because of his confidence. At the moment this photo was taken. Which was eight years ago.

He only roared metaphorically this past week – but this is exactly where the rub lies headed into Week 6.

This is PGA Championship week. The golf world is descending on Valhalla Country Club (side note: what a two-week sports stretch for the city of Louisville).

The course is described on www.pgachampionship.com as "faster, firmer and even more demanding," which is how Mrs. Robn describes me after [REDACTED].

Counting the Wells, Rory has now won 17 tournaments since he last won a major (including four Wells Fargos, three tour championships and two CJ Cups and two RBC Canadian Opens, the final tournament of Robn's eight-week competition).

Said last major was in fact the PGA Championship, 10 years ago, on this same Valhalla golf course. But can he get it going in the spotlight? Can he roar? The 200,000 expected spectators in Louisville sure can.

A new father (no, not Alex "Ranger of The North" Aragon, not Jon "Not Pfizer, But..." Merck, and not quite yet yours truly) might have something to say about whether Rory continues his success.

Scottie Scheffler, still the hottest thing in golf, is a +400 favorite at DraftKings to win outright. Notably, that same sportsbook had Scheffler at +325 to win the PGA Championship three weeks ago, at which time he disappeared for three weeks to help his wife give birth. Rory sits at +750 as of early Tuesday morning.

There's some rumblings about Brooks Koepka at +1300, who had fighting words for... himself? ... after finishing 45th at the Masters last month, and has vowed to do more to defend his 2023 title at the PGA.

Then there's Xander himself at +1400, who will have to de-Eeyore himself and get back on the horse.

After that, it's a morass. Godspeed.