The Course Report
Zurich Classic
About TPC Louisiana
Team golf? What is the PGA Tour thinking? To be frank I’m excited to see the alternative championship format, as players this week will be hosting its first and only team event of the PGA Tour season. The location is the wonderful TPC Louisiana located just outside New Orleans in Avondale, LA. The team event began in 2017 and has since been one of the more different and entertaining tournaments on tour simply because its format is so contrasting from a traditional tournament. If you think it is going to change anytime soon I would not be so certain. The player’s sincerely love this configuration and the change of pace. Thursday and Saturday rounds will be a best ball format, while Friday and Sunday will be your standard alternate shot style of play.
Once again, the golfers will challenged by a Pete Dye design with his typical undulated fairways, smaller greens, hazards, plenty of collection areas, and the always fun drivable par-4’s.
The course itself is littered with cypress and oak trees, and utilizing the natural terrain of the area, provides plenty of water hazards for the pros to manage. Still, we are looking at alternating shots between golfers, so do not be surprised when you see incredibly low scoring at the end of the day. The course has often found itself to be one of the easiest scoring environments on tour and expect this week to be no different.
DraftKings will have daily fantasy sports for this first time for a team event. Anticipate similar scoring rules, but with a few exceptions. The first being that you may only draft one player from a single pair, and you will ultimately get the better score of the two in the 4-ball round. In addition, keep a keen eye for any pricing issues. Everyone is anticipating that the pairings will be listed at the same price, but you never know what type of wrinkle DraftKings will throw at you this weekend.
Architect: Pete Dye
Greens: Bermuda Grass Greens
Length: 7400 – Par 72
Water Hazards: 5 Water Hazards – 7 Holes
Bunkers: 100
Weather Forecast
Past Winners
Rahm and Palmer dominated the first three rounds, and there concerns over a mundane round 4 produced little concern for the duo.
What sealed the win was actually in round 2 when the team shot a disgusting 65 in the alternate shot round of the tournament, which ended up being the best for the entire weekend. Both golfers were dailed in with their irons, and it seemed that every putt was dropping with ease.
Mutliple lead changes in teh final round, contention between 6 playing pairs came down to the back 9. Plenty of player pairs had opportunities to grab the lead, but ultimately Horchel and Piercy would close with a 5-under 67 to take the touranment by one over Dufner and Perez. Overall, the duo shot a 22-under 266, and for Billy it was his second win on this course in the last six years.
Cam Smith and Jonas Blixt ended up the winners of the initial team event. Smith and Blixt needed four playoff holes to eliminate the South Carolina duo of Scott Brown and Kevin Kisner.
Appraoch was key this weekend, which led to multiple birdie and eagle opportunites. This was the first team even on PGA Tour in 36 years.