This article is part of our Golf Barometer series.
It's been a melancholic few days in the golf world since Max Homa's unconventional playoff win over Tony Finau on home turf at Riviera Country Club, but the PGA Tour's focus now shifts to the first WGC event on the 2020-21 schedule, as The Concession Golf Club in Florida provides the game's best with a new puzzle to solve. The Puerto Rico Open will simultaneously play host to a much weaker field, though a collection of players trying to improve their status on Tour always provides great drama regardless of name brand.
Let's take a look at a handful of season-long fantasy options who've shifted in value throughout the month of February.
VALUE RISING
It's been ages since Spieth's play last warranted an inclusion among those rising in value, probably looking all the way back to May of 2019 when he compiled three consecutive top-8s from the PGA Championship through the Memorial before a relatively-disastrous 2020 campaign. He's already surpassed the $1M mark in official earnings throughout his first 10 starts this season, however, most recently going T3-T4-T15 from the Waste Management Phoenix Open to the Genesis Invitational. Spieth ranks just 228th out of 236 on Tour in driving accuracy, but that hasn't kept him from a quality birdie average of 4.41 tweeters per round. He also resides sixth in proximity from the key range of 150-175 yards, eighth in SG: Around-the-Green, eighth in one-putt percentage and sixth in putts per round.
The Aussie
It's been a melancholic few days in the golf world since Max Homa's unconventional playoff win over Tony Finau on home turf at Riviera Country Club, but the PGA Tour's focus now shifts to the first WGC event on the 2020-21 schedule, as The Concession Golf Club in Florida provides the game's best with a new puzzle to solve. The Puerto Rico Open will simultaneously play host to a much weaker field, though a collection of players trying to improve their status on Tour always provides great drama regardless of name brand.
Let's take a look at a handful of season-long fantasy options who've shifted in value throughout the month of February.
VALUE RISING
It's been ages since Spieth's play last warranted an inclusion among those rising in value, probably looking all the way back to May of 2019 when he compiled three consecutive top-8s from the PGA Championship through the Memorial before a relatively-disastrous 2020 campaign. He's already surpassed the $1M mark in official earnings throughout his first 10 starts this season, however, most recently going T3-T4-T15 from the Waste Management Phoenix Open to the Genesis Invitational. Spieth ranks just 228th out of 236 on Tour in driving accuracy, but that hasn't kept him from a quality birdie average of 4.41 tweeters per round. He also resides sixth in proximity from the key range of 150-175 yards, eighth in SG: Around-the-Green, eighth in one-putt percentage and sixth in putts per round.
The Aussie has now gone without a missed cut in 10 consecutive starts dating to the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in early October, picking up three finishes of T11 or better at the Genesis Invitational, Sony Open and Bermuda Championship along the way. Jones' T8 at Riviera Country Club last week launched him to 46th in the FedEx Cup standings, having already collected more top-25s this season than the entirety of his 2019-20 campaign. The former ASU Sun Devil has gained strokes on his approaches in five of six starts since the beginning of the calendar year and he's 18th on Tour in SG: Putting.
NeSmith pieced together three straight top-20 results from the WMPO through the Genesis Invitational after rebounding from back-to-back missed cuts with a T48 in late January at the Farmers Insurance Open. The 27-year-old has ascended to a career-best 142nd in the Official World Golf Ranking during his second season with a Tour card, but even more impressive are his ball-striking metrics. NeSmith ranks eighth among his peers in SG: Approach, 18th in SG: Tee-to-Green, 39th in SG: Off-the-Tee and he leads the entire PGA Tour in GIR percentage through 720 holes played.
VALUE FALLING
A back injury was to blame for van Rooyen's withdrawal from the Masters in November, but the issue didn't seem to linger into his return at the European Tour's DP World Tour Championship in mid-December where he tied for 14th. Since then, however, van Rooyen posted disappointing results of MC-T56-MC-MC from the Sony Open through the WMPO while falling to 63rd in the OWGR. He's lost strokes off the tee in three consecutive showings as he heads to the WGC-Workday Championship at The Concession, which features a lengthy par-72 layout measuring 7,474 yards.
Munoz was possibly the most underrated player on Tour throughout the 2019-20 season, as he advanced to the TOUR Championship for the first time and ultimately finished eighth in the FedExCup Standings with five top-10s and a win at the Sanderson Farms Championship. The Colombian is now regressing to normalcy with just one top-10 through his first 12 starts of the 2020-21 campaign, and he's finished T43 or worse in five of six performances dating back to a missed cut at The RSM Classic. Munoz's putting has been a primary issue, but he's also outside of the top 100 in GIR percentage.
Dahmen's fall series was respectable, as he made the cut in six of seven starts from the Safeway Open to the Mayakoba Golf Classic -- a stretch highlighted by a top-10 at the ZOZO Championship where he moved to 58th in the FedExCup Standings. He's since fallen just 113th, however, missing the cut in four of his first five showings to begin the 2021 calendar year. He advanced to the weekend at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, but finished the week with zero scores of 70 or better en route to a T60. In fact, Dahmen has broken 71 just once in his past 11 tournament rounds. He's on the negative side of each Strokes Gained category besides SG: OTT, due to his ranking of 25th in driving accuracy.
INJURY UPDATE
Cantlay's withdrawal from the WGC-Workday Championship at The Concession on the Wednesday night before Round 1 certainly comes as a surprise, though a reason for the WD should become available in the coming days. He just rattled off four straight top-15s from the Sentry Tournament of Champions through the Genesis Invitational, so this hopefully isn't an injury-related development for the seventh-ranked player in the world. Nonetheless, the WGC-Workday Championship's field is back down to the original size of 72 entrants as an alternate was not dealt Cantlay's now vacated spot.
