American Express
American Express
Jan 13, 2025American Express
It was a disappointing week for us at the Sony Open as for the second week running in Hawaii we drew a blank.
Heading in to Sunday we did have an opportunity to bag a return through Maverick McNealy as the Californian sat one shot outside of the places and three shots off the lead. Unfortunately though Maverick had nothing in the locker on Sunday and a closing 73 saw him tumble down the board.
The event itself was won by Nick Taylor who took advantage of stumbles down the stretch from JJ Spaun and Stephan Jaeger to chip in for eagle on the 72nd hole and bag a spot in a play off with Nico Echavarria. With Echavarria then three putting on the second play off hole the trophy was Taylor’s.
Arriving here after a horrid second half of 2024 but with two consecutive seventh place finishes at Waialae the Canadian’s win was definitely one for course form over current form.
So after its two week stint in Hawaii the PGA Tour moves across to Palm Springs, California for the start of the traditional ‘West Coast Swing’ played at this time of year with the first event of this stretch being the American Express.
This event is the first of two Pro Am events in a three week stretch [The other being the AT & T National] with both events played across three courses.
As has always historically been the case the event rotates over three courses with the players playing one round each on The Stadium Course, The Nicklaus Tournament course and La Quinta over the first three days with The Stadium Course then hosting the final round.
The American Express first debuted on tour as the Palm Springs Classic in 1960. Since then it has gone through many guises and course changes and is most synonymous with the late Bob Hope who was the tournament host for many years, with the event being known as The Bob Hope Desert Classic and then the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic for many a year.
Over the more recent years the tournament has struggled to find a long term lead sponsor and after stints from Humana and CareerBuilder it found itself without a title sponsor in 2019 and with its future in real jeopardy.
Fortunately however it was announced at the back end of 2019 that American Express had signed a ‘multiyear’ deal to take over as lead sponsor of the event and initially Phil Mickelson was installed as tournament host with the aim of helping the event regain a profile more akin to its previous heyday. Now though of course Mickelson is no longer in that role for obvious reasons.
The field is a reasonably strong one with the market headed up by Xander Schauffele. Last years two time Major Champion is then followed by Sungjae Im, Patrick Cantlay Justin Thomas and Sam Burns.
COURSES
The courses used this year will be as follows;
The Stadium Course
The Nicklaus Tournament Course
La Quinta
The Courses used for the event have changed over the years and the current rotation has been in play for the last four editions.
The Stadium Course is the current host course and having had a brief stint in the rotation in the mid 1980s was reintroduced in 2016, so this will be its fifth year in use of late.
The Stadium Course is a Pete Dye design so it is certainly worth looking at form across other Pete Dye courses used on tour with TPC Sawgrass being an obvious point of reference.
The Nicklaus Tournament Course was also added to the events course rotation in 2016 replacing the PGA West Nicklaus Private Course. Prior to 2020 the Nicklaus Tournament Course greens were changed to Tiff eagle Bermuda. In addition they were also expanded in size.
La Quinta Country Club has been the staple diet of the event for 50 years and, up until last year had been used with no breaks since 2010.
All players get to play one round on each course over the first three days before a 54 hole cut is made. The players who make the cut then play the final round at the Stadium Course.
Those betting in running should note that of the 3 courses La Quinta yields the lowest scoring average, whilst The Stadium Course is the toughest nut to crack.
The greens on all 3 courses are Bermuda.
While the current course rotation [with the exception of La Quinta missing out in 2021 due to Covid]] has only been in play for the last nine editions of the event it is worth noting that the now defunct PGA Tour Q School used to be played at the Stadium Course every other year and it is certainly worth cross referencing results from this event which was last played in 2012.
HISTORY
With the courses used for the event having undergone such a radical overhaul since 2016 it is probably not worth looking back further than that year.
The winners of the nine editions from 2016 have been as follows;
2024 Nick Dunlap
2023 Jon Rahm
2022 Hudson Swafford
2021 Si Woo Kim
2020 Andrew Landry
2019 Adam Long
2018 Jon Rahm
2017 Hudson Swafford
2016 Jason Dufner
With still fairly limited data to go on it is perhaps too early to say whether patterns in relation to these winners are coincidence, however in 2019 I noted that all of the first three winners had performed well on their previous start, which was their first one of the new calendar year.
In Dufner and Swafford’s case they had finished 9th & 13th respectively at the Sony Open the week before, whilst in Rahm’s case he finished 2nd at the Sentry ToC in 2018 before skipping the Sony Open.
2019 shock winner Adam Long though blew this blossoming trend out of the water completely as he had missed his previous three cuts on tour including at the Sony the week prior and 2020 winner Andrew Landry continued things in the same vein as he arrived here on the back of five straight missed cuts stretching back to the previous fall and was whatever price you liked!
Moving on 2021 winner Si Woo Kim, whilst not really threatening the top of the leaderboard at the Sony Open the week before had posted a solid 25th place finish in Honolulu, which had put him on a lot of peoples radar’s, including I’m pleased to say ours! Next up 2022 champion Swafford produced an under the radar 48th place at the Sony in his first start of 2022 the week before winning here, while last year Rahm won here on the back of his win a fortnight before at The Sentry.
Finally to bring us up to date last years shock win for at the time amateur Nick Dunlap once more blew all trends out of the water!
Despite the lack of form coming in from the 2019, 2020 and 2024 winners there was one constant in the eight champions from 2016-23 in that they had all teed it up once previously in the calendar year, giving them a crucial ‘warm up’ edge over those who were dusting down the clubs for the first time that year. Again though for obvious reasons Dunlap defied this trend last year.
Moving on and one trend, which has developed since the change in course roster in 2016 though, and which I can’t help thinking is not a coincidence, is that since the introduction of a Pete Dye course as the host course we have seen players more renowned for their prowess from tee to green and as ‘Ball strikers’ come out on top.
This is particularly the case with Dufner and Swafford, however Rahm is of course strong in all departments including this area, while if we look at the end of year stats for 2019 winner Adam Long it is the long game [if you pardon the pun] that he had flourished in that year rather on or around the green.
Looking at the 2020 leaderboard champion Andrew Landry’s strength comes in his accurate driving while Ancer, Scheffler, Straka and Burns who all finished prominently are all high quality ball strikers.
As for 2021 Champion Si Woo Kim in the Korean we of course had an out and out Pete Dye specialist who no doubt flourished here further due to the extra round on the Stadium Course that year.
If we then look at last years leaderboard we’ll see former TPC Sawgrass Champion Justin Thomas in third while Kevin Yu a player renowned for his tee to green prowess was alongside him.
Another point to note is that although this is a ‘West Coast’ event if we look at the final leaderboards over the past five years this is not an event dominated by players who hail from/are based in California or the surrounding states, in fact it is players from the Southern/Eastern states who have dominated here.
To back this up we can see that both Si Woo Kim and Landry are Texas based, as are Ancer and Ghim who finished top five in 2021 and Scheffler, who along with Ancer again finished in the top three in 2020.
In 2023 Sea Island resident Davis Thompson chased home Rahm while Georgia and Carolina guys Chris Kirk and JT Poston featured prominently.
Adam Long hails from Louisiana and is based in the golfing mecca of Jupiter, Florida. Dufner is an Auburn man as is Nick Dunlap and Swafford is a Georgia man. In fact aside from Phil Mickelson the only other recognised Cali guys to make the top six here over recent years are Schauffele, Cantlay, Na, Steele, Lovemark and Michael Kim last year. Something, which we can probably put down to the Bermuda greens.
From the point of correlating courses while we need to bear in mind Pete Dye tracks it is also noticeable that players who have performed well at the two Jack Nicklaus layouts used on the Tour have shown up well here.
To delve in to this further and of course two time winner here Jon Rahm is a specialist at Muirfield Village while 2021 champion here Si Woo Kim has an excellent Memorial record over recent years. Delving further and Denny McCarthy who came close to victory at the Memorial last year was sixth here in 2022. Chris Kirk triumphed at The Honda last year not long after finishing third here, 2022 Honda Champion Sepp Straka has a top five here and Lee Hodges posted top tens both here and at the Honda that same year.
Go further back and Jason Dufner and David Lingmerth who battled out the finish here in 2016 are both former champions at the Memorial.
Finally if we bring it up to date last year Kevin Yu went on to post a ninth place at the Honda after his third here while runner up here Christiaan Bezuidenhout was fourth at the Memorial later in the year. Standing dish here Adam Hadwin popped up with third at the Memorial last year and to round things off the winner here Dunlap was 12th.
Finally on this front one event on the Korn Ferry Tour has historically caught my eye, The Ellie Mae Classic At TPC Stonebrae, also in California.
To explain further if we look at the history of this event from 2015 to 2020 we will see that 2021 winner Si Woo Kim is a former champion at TPC Stonebrae while 2019 champion here Adam Long, finished fourth at the Ellie Mae Classic the year before, delve back a year further we will see that the players who finished first and second at the Ellie Mae in 2017, Martin Piller and Brandon Harkins, finished third and eighth respectively at the Amex a year later. Finally, 2015 Ellie Mae runner up Jamie Lovemark finished sixth here in 2016.
In 2021 with three of the four rounds played on the Pete Dye designed Stadium Course as opposed to two in previous years it made sense to focus more on form on other Dye tracks particularly TPC Sawgrass, which bears a lot of similarities to this weeks venue and was an obvious pointer and this lead us to Si Woo Kim. Even though the Stadium Course has reverted to hosting only two rounds again it is still worth of course cross referencing other Dye tracks.
With regards to previous course form and until 2020 there had been no pointers to any of the winners since changes to the course rota’s in 2016 as the best any of the four winners had managed previously on the current rotation was a 34th place from 2018 winner Jon Rahm. In 2020 though this changed as Landry had placed second here two years prior to his victory.
2021 winner Si Woo Kim had managed nothing better than 40th in two visits since 2016 however again we need to note that last years tweak to the rotation favoured him. For the last two years though we have had champions here who were bagging their second American Express trophies in the shape of Swafford and Rahm.
Whilst the addition of the Stadium Course to the rota has toughened things up slightly in terms of scoring this event is still basically a birdie fest and this can be seen by the fact that the winning number over the past eight years has been -29 -27 -23 -26, -26, -22, -20 & -25 respectively.
WEATHER FORECAST
We look set for a dry, sunny week with temperatures around the 70 degree mark.
The wind, which occasionally can be an issue here does not look to be a factor this week with nothing over 10mph in the forecast so all in all conditions look perfect for low scoring.
As I always so though this could all change!
PICKS
I have gone with six players this week as follows;
SAM BURNS – 20/1 – 2.5pts E/W - 1/5 odds 1st 8
I shall start this week of with Sam Burns.
Bar a slight lull around Easter time Burns produced a really solid 2024, notching seven top tens with the only thing lacking being a win.
A three time winner now on tour Sam posted the most recent of those successes at the Charle Schwab Challenge in 2022 so there is no doubt trophy number four is long overdue.
One of those top tens last year came in this event where after waltzing round The Nicklaus Course in 61 on Friday and posting 65 on the Stadium Course on Saturday, Sam was right in the hunt until the bitter on end Sunday. Unfortunately though a horror finish of back to back double bogeys on the final two holes saw him let the tournament slip from his grasp as he slipped down to sixth place. Sam will definitely feel he has unfinished business as he returns this year.
From a positive point of view that sixth place was his fourth top 20 here in five visits so clearly as an aggressive player capable of going low he enjoys the format and the test.
Sam started off 2025 as he finished 2024, notching another top ten as he finished eighth so I expect him to arrive here on a mission and raring to go. Add that to the fact that he is back on his most favoured Bermuda greens and this presents a great opportunity for the LSU grad to return to the winners enclosure and at the odds he is the one for me from the top of the market.
ADAM HADWIN – 80/1 - 1pt E/W - 1/5 odds 1st 8
Next cab off the rank this week is standing dish here Adam Hadwin.
The Canadian had a spell from 2016 – 2019 in this event where he did everything here but win, posting four straight top ten finishes including two runner up’s and a third place. In addition in that run he memorably posted a 59 in 2017 at LaQuinta CC. More recently after missing the event in 2020, while Hadwin then cooled off here to a certain extent he continued to perform solidly posting finishes of 32, 25 and 18th before getting back in the top ten with a sixth place finish last year when we were onboard.
Clearly then an event that will be circled on Adam’s calendar every year but what of his form of late and coming in to this week?
Well, looking back at Hadwin’s 2024 campaign he was once more knocking on the door of that elusive second tour win, posting four top tens including a best finish of third at the Memorial, which as we know ties really nicely here. Despite cooling off towards the back end of the season then more than enough to secure his spot in that all important top 50.
Adam has started 2025 solidly if unspectacularly, finishing 29th at the Sentry and then down the field in 59th at the Sony. Nothing great so far then this year, however If we look at his historical efforts in Hawaii in the four consecutive years he posted his top six finishes here we will see that on two of those occasions he finished well down the field, on one he had only played the Sentry finishing 32nd, while on another he was teeing it up for the first time in the calendar year. Meanwhile last year he arrived in California on the back of a missed cut at the Sony. Clearly then what Adam does in Hawaii appears to have very little bearing on the player that will pitch up at the Amex.
Finally of course one has to hope that Adam will take some inspiration from his close friend Nick Taylor bagging PGA title number five last week. Adam’s second really is long overdue!
All in all then Adam ticks all the boxes for me this week and he is a ‘must’ for my team.
SEPP STRAKA – 70/1 - 1pt E/W - 1/5 odds 1st 8
Another player who ticks an awful lot of boxes for me this week is Sepp Straka and at the odds on offer I can’t ignore him.
Sepp’s history in this event is chequered it is fair to say, however we struck gold with him here in 2020 when he bagged fourth place for us at 250/1 and there is plenty in his profile to think that this test should be right up his street.
Firstly we only need to look at his two PGA Tour titles and where they came, with trophy number one coming on the Nicklaus designed PGA National, which correlates well here, while his second tour title came on another track, which links really nicely here, TPC Deere Run.
If we then throw in his top five finish at Muirfield Village last year and his top ten finishes at the Pete Dye designed Sawgrass and TPC River Highlands over the years and he really does have the perfect CV for success here.
After a ninth place finish to wrap up 2025 at the Hero Sepp has started 2025 in solid fashion with a 15th place at the Sentry and a 30th place at the Sony. More pertinently for this week Sepp’s main strength his approach play was firing really nicely at the Sony as he ranked tenth in this department.
With the Ryder Cup no doubt very much in Sepp’s thinking he will be keen to make his mark early in 2025 and I very much like his chances to do just that this week.
MICHAEL THORBJORNSEN – 100/1 - 1pt E/W – 1/5 odds 1st 8
Next up I will go with a player that I think it will definitely pay to keep onside this year, Michael Thorbjornsen.
Thorbjornsen earned his PGA Tour card courtesy of topping the PGA Tour University rankings in 2024. As a result he gained full PGA Tour status for the back end of 2024 and all of 2025.
Since gaining that status Michael has posted three top ten finishes with the first of these coming when he was runner up to Davis Thompson at the John Deere Classic notching a 24- under total. Straightaway then this gives us a nice bit of correlating TPC form, particularly as Thompson was runner up here to Rahm a couple of years back, while also showing us that he has the aggressive low scoring mentality in his locker, which is needed here.
If we then look back further to the starts Michael got on the PGA Tour as an amateur we see that he posted another strong finish at the John Deere in 2023 when 17th , while in 2022 he finished fourth at the Travelers posting a 14- under total. Another great performance on a TPC layout then as well as giving us a nice piece of form on a Pete Dye track.
The one slight concern is that Michael withdrew from last weeks Sony Open before the off, however I will trust that the reason for this was nothing too major hence he is teeing it up this week.
A native of Ohio Thorbjornsen attended College at Stanford so he should certainly be comfortable in the area and having played the Prestige College Golf Tournament at PGA , all be it on a different lay out he will be no stranger to the type of conditions on display this week.
To sum up then Thorbjornsen is clearly a player headed to the higher echelons of the game and I am keen to side with him here on a layout, which should suit him well.
ADAM SCHENK – 150/1 - 1pt E/W – 1/5 odds 1st 8
Next up I will take a chance that Adam Schenk can build on last weeks return to form.
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first in that Adam’s record in this event is pretty poor with four missed cuts in seven visits and a best of 14th. That said though Adam really does have eye catching form on correlating courses including TPC Deere Run where has two fourth place finishes and a sixth and Muirfield Village where he was seventh on his last visit in 2023. Furthermore he has a fourth and a 12th in the desert at the Barracuda, which links well here with last years champion Dunlap.
Enough then for me to forgive his poorer efforts here before however what I really like about Adam this week is that he is a ‘streak player’ with a history of stringing good results together.
To expand further last year he followed his fifth place in Texas with a superb 12th on debut at Augusta, while in 2023 he followed his second place at the Charles Schwab with a seventh at the Memorial and later in the year his seventh at the Rocket Mortgage with a fourth at the John Deere.
The second half of 2024 was no doubt hugely disappointing for Adam but at the odds on offer I am happy to run with him to build on the momentum he found in Hawaii last week and produce another big performance.
BEN KOHLES – 400/1 – 1pt E/W – 1/5 odds 1st 8
Finally this week I will give another chance to a player I risked here last year, Ben Kohles.
While Ben didn’t reward us here last year he produced back to back bogey free 66s at La Quinta and the Nicklaus Tournament Course over the first two days before stalling slightly over the weekend at the Stadium Course posting 71 and 69 to finish 47th. Still though it was a reasonably encouraging effort for him to build on.
Roll on the clock twelve months and Ben returns after a season, which saw him retain his status reasonably comfortably largely due to a runner up finish at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. A finish, which saw him post a low scoring total of 22- under on a TPC layout, which certainly bodes well for this week.
A neat and tidy player Ben ranked second on tour in driving accuracy last year while last weeks season opening 53rd at the Sony saw him rank fourth in this department and 20th in Approach Play.
A native of Texas, which sits nicely with past winners here as I mentioned last year Ben bases himself in Jacksonville these days so he really should be familiar with TPC Sawgrass, which should certainly help him here. I’m happy then to roll the dice on Ben at huge odds to make an impact this week.