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The TOUR heads in t0 the Florida swing for the Honda Classic at PGA National in Palm Beach, home of “The Bear Trap”. At last year’s Honda Classic Rory Sabbatini held off a strong Sunday charge by Y.E. Yang to win by a stroke for his sixth career PGA Tour victory. This year’s field features a lot of big names such as Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Lee Westwood, all who committed to the Honda early. Woods hasn’t played in this event since he was a fresh faced 17 year old amateur, where he missed the cut.
The Picks
A Group - Again a rather small sampling of players to choose from in the A group this week, but Keegan Bradley highlights this group. Bradley’s name seems to be consistently near the top of the leaderboard week to to week and he’s having a great sophomore season to back up his Rookie of the Year in 2011. He hasn’t finished worse than T22 in his five stroke play events this season. Missed the cut here last year but that was well before his season started to heat up. He’ll be looking for some redemption after that playoff loss just a couple weeks ago.
B Group – The B group is absolutely stacked this week and it makes for some difficult choices on who to start out with. Rory McIlroy continues to light it up wherever he plays. In his last 11 events worldwide he has eight top 3 finishes, which include 2 victories and 4 runner-ups. He looked a little sloppy in his championship match this past Sunday, but he’s impossible to avoid this week. I’m giving the nod to Tiger to start over Lee Westwood this week. Westwood and Mark Wilson will be on the pine to start. Both of those guys, as well as McIlroy played a LOT of golf last week, where Tiger was ousted in the second round and could be a little more well rested.
C Group - Ben Crane is consistently one of the best ball strikers on TOUR, and that is an asset that is a must for PGA National. He has three top 10s this season already, and ranks 13th in GIR. Backing him up I like rookie John Huh, who is fresh off his first PGA TOUR victory last week at the Mayakoba where he went in to an 8 hole playoff against Robert Allenby. I’ve been saying for weeks that this kid can very well be this year’s ROY.
Starting Foursome: Keegan Bradley, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Ben Crane
On the Bench: J.B. Holmes, Mark Wilson, Lee Westwood, John Huh
