Toms to make it a hatrick at TPC Southwind!

The FedEx St Jude Classic from TPC Southwind

The blog has been on a nice run these past couple of weeks (three winning selections with two outright winners) and hopefully we can keep that run going! I hope everyone got to see Tiger’s chip at the 16^th last week to effectively get the W. A quote from my blog post last week, “he can still play golf,” understatement of the century from yours truly. Other than Phil Mickelson and maybe Luke Donald I can’t think of any other player with the skills around the green to execute that shot, and to do it with the tourney on the line, the man is just different gravy at times! I really liked Jack Nicklaus’s commentary on the chip shot when he said “If he goes long, tournaments over, if he comes up short, tournaments over..” so he holed it! If you haven’t seen the shot yet, Click Here!

This week the PGA Tour we are at TPC Southwind for the St Jude Classic. David Toms has an impressive track record at in this tourney, with two wins (’03, ’04) and two runners up (’05, ’09) finishes. However he hasn’t had the most consistent of starts to the season, five top 20’s and four missed cuts among his twelve events he’s teed it up in this season. Stats wise Toms' is 2^nd in Driving Accuracy and 22^nd in GIR, which is what you want to see when you’re looking for stats to back your opinions up! However it doesn’t take a golf fanatic to tell you that to win nowadays on the PGA Tour you need to hole your fair share of ‘makeable putts.’ Toms doesn’t! He is ranked 165^th (One Hundred and Sixty Fifth!) in putts holed from between 5-15 feet, that needs to change this week, if it does I think he’s got a massive chance!

David Toms

In last week’s blog I touched on the fact that Dustin Johnson was returning from a back injury. He missed 11 weeks of golf and with his first trip to TPC Southwind he is obviously trying to get a few rounds under his belt before the 2^nd major championship of the season. Johnson had a solid tourney at the Memorial last week in difficult conditions, he was -2 going into the weekend before a 73, 75 over the weekend, but I’d say he would of been satisfied by that. His finishes pre-injury were pretty good, with three Top 10 finishes. He won't have rushed back from injury without putting the work in beforehand, and from what I saw last week his game is good enough shape to challenge here and get some momentum heading to the Olympic Club for the US Open.

My Top 10 selection this week is going to be Blake Adams. His week began on Monday at the US Open Sectional Qualifying in Columbus, Ohio, in which he posted -6 and qualified in 2^nd place to take one of the sixteen places on offer. He should be buzzing and after Harris English notched up a Top 10 (and a winning selection for the blog) in the same week (Crowne Plaza at Colonial) he qualified for the Open Championship I’m hoping Adams can do the same.

My Selections are:

David Toms @ 25/1 each way with BetFred

Dustin Johnson 22/1 each way with Stan James

Blake Adams @ 9/1 for a Top 10 finish with Ladbrokes