3-min read · 592 words
§ THE BOARD · CADILLAC CHAMPIONSHIP WEEK
The Blue Monster Bites Back.
The tour goes to Doral this week, and for the first time since 2016, it feels like it means something. The Cadillac Championship at Trump National’s Blue Monster — $20 million, 72 of the world’s best players, late-April Miami heat — is the first Signature Event of the post-Masters stretch. And it has a problem.
Rory McIlroy isn’t playing. Neither is Xander Schauffele, Ludvig Åberg, or the man who just won the week before at Harbour Town, Matt Fitzpatrick. All four are ranked inside the world’s top 15. None of them are in Miami this week.
What you’re left with is a Signature Event headlined by Scottie Scheffler — which, to be clear, is still worth watching. Scheffler is the world No. 1, the four-time PGA Tour Player of the Year, and the most relentlessly consistent ball-striker in the game. But a tournament billed as golf’s elite gathering looks different without its second, third, and seventh-ranked players.
Three to watch.
Scottie Scheffler — World No. 1
At Harbour Town last week he finished solo-second, having closed with a 4-under 67 to force a playoff — only to watch Fitzpatrick hole a 13-foot birdie to win it. He came second at Augusta too, shooting 64-67 over the weekend and losing by one. He is in form and he is motivated, and the Blue Monster — wide fairways, long carries over water, generous rough — is exactly the kind of course that suits a player whose ball-striking margin is this wide. Watch him go low in rounds two and three and be clinical when Sunday counts.
Tommy Fleetwood — World No. 7
The quiet favourite. Fresh off Augusta, where his unfussy, brand-agnostic approach had him looking composed and playing that way. Fleetwood is a European player built on consistency — his strokes-gained ball-striking numbers over 36 months are elite and his wedge game is underrated. Doral rewards players who manage a course rather than simply overpower it. On paper, he has no weaknesses. He is due a significant result in the American spring, and this might be the week.
Cameron Young — World No. 4
The one American in this field capable of making the week genuinely unpredictable. Young has length that plays on the Blue Monster’s demanding par-fives — the 5th and 10th are reachable in two for someone with his ball-speed. Three top-10s since the Masters and the quiet air of a player who has started to believe his own numbers. He is overdue a win at this level. This course might unlock him.
The Sunday read.
The Blue Monster finishes with three significant water holes. Whoever leads at 54 holes will be tested going home — and unlike Augusta, where McIlroy’s nerve was the defining story, this field has no obvious lead-protector. Expect a shootout. Expect Scheffler to be in it. The question is who is standing beside him on Sunday afternoon with a chance to win the thing.
The Cadillac Championship is a new title on a returning course, and it arrives with conspicuous absences. But golf is played on the course, not on the entry list. The Blue Monster is one of the great tests of ball-striking in America, and Scottie Scheffler is one of the great ball-strikers of this era. That much is enough. — The Clubhouse
KEEP READING