Sleeper Picks: John Deere Classic

Daniel Summerhays … With his record at TPC Deere Run since 2013 – 4-for-5 with four top 15s and a career-low 62 in 2013 – he should have our attention. However, every once in a great while, a golfer who also should be in the Power Rankings slips into this grouping based solely on course history as a benefit of the doubt, because current form has escaped him. In 13 individual competitions on the PGA TOUR this season, he’s made only four cuts, none of which resulted in a top-50 finish. He arrived in the Quad Cities having missed five straight cuts and with eight consecutive rounds over par. The 34-year-old on conditional status still has the capacity to be a lights-out putter and scorer, it’s just that he needs to plug into that potential on this course once again. C.T. Pan … If you understand the long game of reaching and maintaining status on the PGA TOUR, then his trajectory is pretty much on target with his projection prior to his rookie season of 2016-17. Like so many decorated collegians, the former standout at the University of Washington has been laying a foundation of experience inside the ropes while learning the ropes of everything that goes with the road-warrior mentality week to week. While he’s yet to record a top 10 this season, he’s connected for six top 20s, three of which in his last five starts to cement his TOUR card for 2018-19 when the flood gates could swing open as they often do for a third-year talent with his pedigree. As it pertains to the formula that can work for his debut at TPC Deere Run, the diminutive 26-year-old ranks 19th in greens hit. Trey Mullinax … Despite manufacturing a schedule with conditional status a second-year TOUR member, he’s headed for the FedExCup Playoffs for the first time, so everything between now and then is a bonus. A T6 at the FedEx St. Jude Classic in early June is his only top-55 finish during his current 4-for-9 stretch, but it’s also why he’s dangerous. Currently 43rd on TOUR in birdies-or-better percentage while standing over scoring opportunities and T32 in par-5 scoring. Also placed T19 at TPC Deere Run as a debutant last year. Wesley Bryan … Although mired in a Sophomore Slump, there have been signs that the 28-year-old is climbing out of it. After enduring a 1-for-8 drought from February through early May, he’s survived five consecutive cuts, including a season-best T12 in Memphis a month ago. Save the trick shots, his strongest skill is with the putter, so the timing of its importance in what tilts towards a putting contest this week helps explain why he’s finished T8 (2016) and T3 (2017) in his only two appearances of the John Deere Classic. Perhaps best of all, with six weeks before the FedExCup Playoffs begin, he knows he’s already exempt through next season by virtue of his breakthrough victory at Harbour Town in 2016-17. With the pressure off, he can step on the pedal. Peter Malnati … When a relative unknown wins as early in a wraparound season as he did at the Sanderson Farms Championship in 2015, and then goes quiet during the interim, it’s natural to forget that he’s been fully exempt ever since hoisting the rooster trophy in Mississippi. Now grinding at 156th in the FedExCup standings, he’s been pecking away at leaderboards for three months, going 7-for-9 albeit sans a top 25. He’s also without a top 25 in his last two trips to TPC Deere Run, but as one of the best putters on the circuit who ranks 40th in connecting on par breakers after hitting GIR, this is as good a time as any to showcase what got him all the way here in the first place.

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