Following his spectacular one-week turnaround from the American Express, one that further proves that trying to predict who might win a golf tournament is nothing more than a fool’s errand, we leave Justin Rose and his relentless demolition of Torrey Pines in the rearview mirror and head back into the desert for this week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open.

Where we will, again, attempt to predict who might actually win.

This means nothing.

Whilst undoubtedly one of the most popular events on the PGA Tour in terms of yearly attendance, it was always going to be a matter of time before the WM Phoenix Open fell victim to the insidious curse of virality that saw the beer-fuelled crowd trouble that marred the event back in 2024. But when you look at the tournament itself in isolation, outside of the celebrities and the gimmick of the stadium hole, it’s a shootout. Simple as.

7,261 yards from the tips. A par-71. Receptive greens. Generous Bermuda rough. Large, undulating green complexes that get the ball rolling towards the pin. There’s a reason the winning scores here tend to be in the high teens or, as the past few seasons have shown, the twenties. It’s your quintessential mid-card PGA Tour course; a straightforward hunting ground where big hitters and even purer putters tend to be the apex predators.

Because whatever about being the greenest show on grass, when it comes to your scorecard at TPC Scottsdale? It’s all about being in the red.

 

ORACLES’ FOURBALL

HAOTONG LI (LI HAOTONG)

Golf is a difficult sport at the best of times. But trying to play it when your heart isn’t in it? It’s nigh on impossible. And no matter the success that you’ve had in the past or the money you’ve made, confidence in golf is everything. Once that goes, it can be extremely difficult to get it back, especially at the highest level.

So, when you take a golfer like Haotong Li, for example, someone who was the poster boy for Chinese golf as far and away their most successful export in the men’s game, and see that even he was close to quitting golf back in the early days of Covid when his game deserted him, it just shows how easy it is to fall out of love with this complicated game of ours. But, in the end, if you truly love the game, that’s what always brings you back to the grass. And, as was the case for him, it seems as though that little bit of distance and time away from the pressures of the game was exactly what Haotong needed to reset.

Because, despite struggling with his game in the years since his temporary hiatus, Haotong has still managed to win twice on the DP World Tour, bringing his total number of wins to four. And when I say struggle? In 2023, the year after he won the BMW International Open, Haotong only made the cut twice from the twenty events that he played that season. I mean, that could’ve very easily been a debilitating blow to his confidence, one capable of sending him right back to that same dark place where retirement was very much on the table. But, instead, Haotong kept going. And after a career-best season in 2025, one that saw him win the Qatar Masters, finish second at the Turkish Airlines Open, and grab six top-10s (one of which was a T-4 at the Open), Haotong earned himself a PGA Tour card for this season.

Hence, why we’re now here, thinking that he could do well at the Phoenix Open.

Because, after making the cut in all three of the events he’s played thus far on the PGA Tour – two of which have seen him bag a T-8 at the American Express and a T-11 at the Farmers Insurance Open – Haotong appears to be playing with the freedom and confidence of a guy who is enjoying where he is and what he’s doing. 13th in SG: Total. 13th in SG: Off the tee. 13th in SG: Approach the green. Assuming that he isn’t superstitious, those are great numbers to be putting up this early in the season, stats that can only reiterate for him that whatever he’s doing right now? It’s got him on the right path.

Therefore, to see Haotong heading to the Waste Management this week, doing so for the very first time in his career, whilst you could just as easily look to the likes of Pierceson Coody, Jake Knapp, or Sahith Theegala to be in contention come Sunday, if it was the love of the game that saw Haotong Li step back from the brink of retirement and wind up where he is right now, then it’s my love of a good story that hopes he can go to Arizona this week and shock everyone.

SI WOO KIM

With Justin Rose very much playing in his own tournament at Torrey Pines, Si Woo Kim was in the group of players vying for second place this past weekend to keep his impressive start to the season going – and ‘impressive’ it most certainly has been.

Because, yes, we can point to the fact that he’s notched up a T11, T6, and T2 in the past three weeks since the season kicked off in Hawaii. But the actual standard of Kim’s play has been phenomenal. In the twelve rounds that he’s played since getting his 2026 underway, eleven of those rounds have been in the 60s, with the remaining round being an ill-timed level par–72 that came on the final day of the American Express.

Obviously, that points to an enviable level of consistency in Kim’s game, one that we’re seeing backed up from a statistics perspective – 10th in SG: Total; 3rd in SG: Tee-to-Green; 4th in SG: Approach the Green; 6th in Driving Accuracy. But it’s the fact that the charismatic South Korean is pairing that consistency tee-to-green with such low scoring that makes him a threat going into his week’s Phoenix Open.

As I said above, doing well at the Waste Management is all about going low. And when you look at someone like Si Woo Kim, someone who’s leading the Tour in the number of birdies made (67) and who’s been posting consistently low rounds off the back of not even putting particularly well (129th in SG: Putting), if he can bring the same quality that he’s been showing with the longer clubs in the bag to Arizona – a game that has seen him peppering flagsticks for three weeks straight – and pair it with an even slightly improved performance with the shortest one, he most definitely has the skills and the personality to walk out of TPC Scottsdale with his fifth Tour win slung over his shoulder.

MICHAEL THORBJORNSEN

Someone who made my shortlist to be included in the ‘Oracles’ Fourball’ for the Farmers Insurance Open last week, Michael Thorbjornsen is one of those golfers who, admittedly, only came to my attention through his involvement in the TGL as part of Rory McIlroy’s Boston Common. Yet, whilst it might have been the clips that were circulating online of his clutch putting from their first two matches of the season that shone the spotlight on him, when you actually dig a little further into Michael’s game, you can see why he’s so highly thought of as a player who, in the grand scheme of things, is still relatively inexperienced as a touring professional.

Securing his card in 2024 off the back of topping the PGA Tour University Rankings with Stanford, Michael is your prototypical modern golfer. He’s big. He’s athletic. Hits the ball a mile with the driver (6th in Driving Distance in 2025), yet still maintains decent accuracy despite that length off the tee (48th in Driving Accuracy). And, on top of that, he’s incredibly solid with the irons in hand (1st in GIR% last season). So, from a technical perspective, there’s no denying that Michael certainly has a solid foundation upon which to grow and develop into one of the Tour’s best young players. And kicking onto that next level? Where the podium finishes he’s amassed thus far turn into wins? That’s not all that far away.

Because, yes, from a statistics perspective, his work on the greens appears to be stifling Thorbjornsen’s progress at this stage – when you’re ranking outside the top-100 across the board in the putting charts, as he was last season, there’s clearly room for improvement with the flatstick. But when you factor in that Michael, with the amount of greens he was hitting last year, wasn’t exactly peppering the flagstick (51st in Proximity to the Hole), he didn’t really give himself a lot of chances to get nice looks with the putter.

So, whilst he still hasn’t dialled in that week-to-week consistency that should come with experience, when I see Michael heading to TPC Scottsdale this week, a course that favours long-hitters like himself, it just seems set up perfectly for him to do well. Because if he can bring the nerveless putting stroke that has seen him shine so brightly under the lights of the SoFi Center to Arizona and the scrutiny of the infamous 16th hole and beyond, then this week could well be the moment when Michael Thorbjornsen really announces himself to the world.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER

Sometimes, the most obvious decision is the best one. And when it comes to picking who could do well in a specific tournament that Scottie Scheffler just so happens to be playing in? The obvious decision is to pick him.

Because there can be no arguing with the fact that Scheffler has been the best player on the planet for the last few years – that’s undeniable. World number one since 2023. Four major championships. An Olympic gold medal. And, after his triumph at the American Express a fortnight ago, he now sits on twenty Tour wins. All of that, and 2026 is only going to be his SIXTH year as a PGA Tour player. It’s phenomenal. But that’s what we’ve come to expect from Scottie. That is the level he now holds, and the expectations that come with it – ‘expectations’ that we haven’t really come close to having since Tiger Woods.

Therefore, whilst I could sit here and rattle off a string of stats that would back up the hypothesis as to why Scheffler could do well this week in Arizona, I’m not going to waste your time. Because we all know how good he is. He’s proven that over and over again. Therefore, after seeing the way he rolled into the American Express and won without so much as breaking a sweat, to see Scottie returning to the rowdy surroundings of TPC Scottsdale, an event where he won back-to-back in ‘22 and ‘23, one can’t help but feel that if he’s in the mood to win? It’ll take something special to stop him.

Because he’s the undisputed world number one for a reason.

He is our Thanos. And he is inevitable.