PGA - Byron Nelson Championship

By: Brian Gabrielle
http://www.bgsports.com


Aaron Oberholser, John Rollins and Sean O'Hair are three to watch this weekend when the PGA takes on the TPC at Four Seasons course in Irving, TX, for the Byron Nelson.

They’re putting in a skate park where I hit wedge-to-six iron when the weather is nice. We've had a sunny, warm spell lately. I hit balls all weekend. The skate park is supposed to be done by the summer, which will effectively end my short iron work because I don’t want to brain a kid with a slice. It almost happened anyway.

I aim for a tree and had been at it for half an hour, nobody else at the park, dialed in with my 9-iron. Bad shots ended up only as far away as thirty feet or so. Most were inside 20 feet.

Then a gaggle of park-goers parked under a nearby tree -- they were about 60, maybe even 70 feet away. I saw them, of course, and didn’t think about stopping or moving because I hadn’t hit a ball close to that other tree. It was left of my tree and I was going left-right with the shots, meaning I was addressed toward the left tree and the people. I told myself to err on the side of over-drawing it right. That’s what I told myself.

What happened was I didn’t close the face at all and the ball sailed perfectly straight, right toward the people who'd just parked under the tree. I yelled but they didn’t seem to hear and I lost the ball tracing behind the head of one of them. Nobody appeared to be down, but I must’ve looked some shade of alabaster when I came up to them and saw that the ball was maybe ten feet behind a woman who said it did, indeed, go right over her head. I apologized profusely. She said, No worries. Another said, It’s a beautiful day to play golf. Then they got back to their 40s in paper bags.

At this week’s EDS Byron Nelson Championship, take Arron Oberholser in the outright (40-1), 1/6 unit: Oberholser started off the season with a back injury at the Mercedes. He came back almost two months later, the end of February, and hasn’t missed a cut since. He’s not just making paychecks, he’s making good paychecks, with two top-10s, the last of which came at the Shell Houston Open the week before the Masters.

Looking at some of the winners of the Byron Nelson in the last ten years, like Jesper Parnevik, Shigeki Maruyama and Ted Purdy, I see similarities to Oberholser: smart players, not overflowing with talent, but they know how to score. Oberholser finished T13 last year.

Take John Rollins (40-1), 1/6 unit: Mustn’t forget about Rollins. His quick left coast start hasn’t yielded to a drop off a la, say, Jeff Quinney. Rollins is still playing well, with only one ** and no finish above T33 all season. That includes T19, T5 and T28 in three Florida tourneys and a T20 at Augusta.

Take Sean O’Hair (20-1), 1/6 unit: I’ve been watching O’Hair closely and picked him last week. His T15 in New Orleans followed a T14, T14 and T7. He’s a native Texan who has a good track record at the Byron Nelson, registering a T19 last year and a 2 the year before. Again, I think he just needs to light a fire.