We’re back at the Colonial Country Club in Ft. Worth, where the PGA Tour resumed last spring after a 13-week pause during the start of the pandemic. After a little boost in quality of the field last year, presumably due to the timing, it’s back to a more normal, mid-range field this year. The favorite is Jordan Spieth, a native and resident of nearby Dallas, who is back in the conversation after three years of play far below the standard he established in his early 20s.

The field includes eight of the top 20 in the Hawley Ratings, the same count as in 2019 and a drop of three from last year. From the top 10, three are in attendance – Justin Thomas, third; Daniel Berger, seventh; and Patrick Reed, eighth.

Spieth is down at 28th in the ratings, but that’s halfway to the top from the 56th spot he held back at the start of February. “I’m rejuvenated. This is a big positive,” Spieth told si.com after his most recent top-10 finish, in the Nelson two weeks ago. He was a little off the leaderboard, in 30th, in the PGA last week. Overall since February he has played eight times with one win (the Valero Texas, Apr. 4), five top-10s, and a worst finish of 48th at TPC. He has a great record at Colonial in the eight times he’s played the event – six finishes in the top 10, including the 2016 win and runner-up finishes the year before and after.

Also note that Spieth is playing great anywhere in Texas. Besides winning in San Antonio, he was in the top 10 in Austin (Match Play) and Dallas (Nelson) this year.

Patrick Reed, also with results on the upswing, is the second choice. He was 17th in the PGA, coming off back-to-back top-10s in his prior two appearances. He visits Colonial only occasionally but has been in the top 10 twice.

The only course that has been part of the PGA Tour longer than Colonial is Augusta National. Colonial is not especially long at 7010 yards (par 70), but it does have one of those tough three-hole stretches that distinguish a few courses on Tour. Here it’s known as the “horrible horseshoe”, the third through fifth holes. Per golflink.com, the third is a 465-yard, par four with a sharp dogleg left. Next is the 247-yard, par three fourth hole, featuring an elevated green, meaning there is no rolling the tee shot up. The hole has never yielded an ace in 76 years of this event. The fifth is another long par four with a slight dogleg right. The Trinity River runs alongside the entire length of the hole on the right so any errant shot there is gone.

Course analysis by alookatgolf.com indicates a balanced course in terms of what is demanded of the player. The top three stats in terms of their correlation with success in the last eight editions of the event cover the course from tee to green — shots gained putting, shots gained off the tee, and shots gained in approach, in that order. Reed (top 1 percent of U.S./ Euro pros in shots gained putting) and Justin Thomas (top 2 percent in shots gained in approach) are the co-no. 1 players in the field in terms of how their statistical profiles fit with those stats.

Among other logical contenders in the field are these:

• Tony Finau has three missed cuts in his last six appearances, but the others have been pretty good, including top-10s in both of the majors. He’s an excellent fit for the course, and in the top 10 percent in shots gained in approach.
• Abraham Ancer hasn’t missed a cut or finished worse than 26th in his last seven times out. He was runner-up in the Wells Fargo.
• Louis Oosthuizen was prominently featured in the PGA broadcasts and hung on for second. He also was in the top 10 in both events before that, including second in the Valspar. Just behind Reed and Thomas as a fit for the course.
• Justin Rose has been up and down. He has missed two cuts in the last five appearances but also has two top-10s in the majors over the same span of time.
• Berger is another who should enjoy the course; in the top quarter of players in all the three key stats. Was third at the Nelson and has five top-10 finishes this year.
• Corey Conners is in the top 10 percent in shots gained off the tee and shots gained in approach. Had a string of four top-10s in five appearances in March and April.

Phil Mickelson, stunning winner of last week’s PGA Championship at age 50, is certain to be a focus of fans and media. Phil has missed five cuts in 2021 but clearly he remains capable of handling the bright lights.

Others with something to recommend them, in ratings order, include Jason Kokrak, Brandt Snedeker, Keith Mitchell, Camilo Villegas, and Scott Stallings.

Kokrak is in the top 10 percent in shots gained putting and had a string of three straight top-10s in February and March. Snedeker has two top-10s and two top-20s since missing the cut at TPC; he’s not an especially good fit for the course. Mitchell had a little streak of a top-20 followed by top-10s in the Zurich and Wells Fargo. Villegas started the year slowly but has a top-10 and two top-20s in four appearances going back to March. Stallings was third in the Nelson his last time out.

The most definitive thing you can say about the PGA Championship this weekend at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course in South Carolina is that it is wide open. None of the guys at the top of the ratings is playing particularly well, and the guys who are playing well are for the most part up-and-comers looking for that first really big breakthrough.

The one outlier from the above categories is Jordan Spieth, who is playing well and has already had his big breakthrough, the 2015 Masters.

According to alookatgolf.com’s computations, no one should be at lower than 25-1 odds to win, and no fewer than the top 11 picks are all 40-1 or less. That kind of bunching is rare. Of course, you won’t get anywhere near 25-1 at any sports book. Vegasinsider.com, for instance, has Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Spieth, and Bryson DeChambeau all between 11-1 and 15-1.

The Kiawah Island Golf Resort is about 25 miles southwest of Charleston with the course located along nearly three miles of ocean on the southeast-facing side of the island. Golf Digest rates it one of the top 25 courses in the country. It “might well be Pete Dye’s most diabolical creation,” the magazine said. “Every hole is edged by sawgrass, every green has tricky slopes, every bunker merges into bordering sand dunes.”

The Ocean Course will be the longest course ever played in a major, 135 yards longer than Erin Hills, site of the 2017 U.S. Open. The Ryder Cup was played here in 1991 and the PGA in 2012 (won by Rory McIlroy by eight strokes). In the 2012 PGA, scrambling and accuracy off the tee were the two stats where player proficiency correlated most closely with success on the course.

Let’s break the field into two groups, the highly-rated guys and the guys playing well. At the top of the Hawley Ratings, the top eight are Rahm, McIlroy, Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Webb Simpson, DeChambeau, Daniel Berger, and Dustin Johnson. (That group includes the top seven on the Official World Golf Rating.)

• Jon Rahm – Had a respectable little streak of three straight top-10s, capped with his fifth-place finish at the Masters. Since then he has been 13th at the Zurich, missed the cut at Wells Fargo, and was 34th last week at the Nelson. He’s been in the top 10 in the PGA twice.
• Rory McIlroy – In the last two months, he has the memorable win at the Wells Fargo plus two missed cuts and a 31st-place finish in the Match Play. Statistically he is unremarkable in both scrambling and driving accuracy. On the other hand, he did win here in 2012, and he won the PGA in 2014 at Valhalla.
• Justin Thomas – Won TPC in March and hasn’t been in the top 20 in three appearances since then. Just average in scrambling and accuracy. Won this event in 2017 at Quail Hollow.
• Xander Schauffele – A third at the Masters is his only top-10 finish in seven events in the last three months. Nothing special in the two stats noted above, but he did finish 10th in last year’s PGA.
• Webb Simpson – has only played once (ninth at the Heritage) since finishing 12th in the Masters. Very much up-and-down earlier in the year.
• Bryson DeChambeau – Also very much up-and-down. Finished outside the top 40 in three of his last four appearances and was ninth in the other, the Wells Fargo. Early in the year he won the Palmer but also had a missed cut. Nothing to brag about in the stats. Fourth in the 2020 PGA but missed cut in this event the two times before that.
• Daniel Berger – Probably the best of this bunch in 2021 with one win (Pebble) and four other top-10s in nine appearances. Has one missed cut (Masters), two finishes in the top 20, and a 35th at the WGC-Mexico. Has four missed cuts in the PGA over the last six years.
• Dustin Johnson – Won the 2020 Masters, then won a Euro Tour event in Saudi Arabia in early February. Since then it hasn’t been a lot of fun as he has one top-10, one top-20, three finishes outside the top 40, and a missed cut in seven events since returning from the Middle East.

Spieth is the only guy in that lower-rated/ playing well/ established category. He started the year in 52nd place (Hawley Ratings) and has elevated to 27th. He began the 2021 season with a missed cut at the Farmers, and since then has reeled off five top-10s, including the Texas win, in seven appearances. He arrives in South Carolina with the win and two of the top-10s in his last three showings. He is in the bottom half of all U.S./ Euro pros in accuracy and scrambling. The resume includes three top-10s in this event.

And then, the up-and-comers who are playing well and awaiting that big win.

• Abraham Ancer – Since missing the cut at the Genesis, he’s been runner-up at the Wells Fargo, had two top-20s, and three other finishes no worse than 26th. Top 1 percent in accuracy off the tee and top quarter in scrambling.
• Sam Burns – He is burning hot, pardon the pun. The last three results were a second in the Nelson, the Valspar win, and a top-10 in the Zurich. Somewhat perplexingly, the 24-year-old native of Shreveport LA also missed the cut three events in a row in March-April.
• Corey Conners – Has been in the top 10 in four of his last six appearances, with a best of third at the Palmer. He’s in the top 2 percent in driving accuracy and top half in scrambling.
• Cameron Smith – Another guy coming in with three straight top-10s, the last being the win (with Marc Leishman) in the Zurich. Has never done well in this event in five tries.

Veteran players who are doing well recently include Keegan Bradley, Brian Harman, and Leishman. The flip side of that coin includes Patrick Cantlay and Tony Finau.

Some relatively fresh faces whose careers are on the upswing include Viktor Hovland, Joaquin Niemann, and Matt Wallace.

And this may sound strange but here is a guy who came a long way to play in this event and who may have a chance: Garrick Higgo is a South African who just turned 22 this week. He basically came out of nowhere (Hawley Ratings no. 308) to win two Euro Tour events in Spain and finish in the top 10 in two others (Spain/ Austria) within a four-week span that just ended on May 9. He’s up 78 spots in the rankings. Those fields were much softer than what he will face this week, but maybe he rises to the occasion.