2023 Fortinet Championship: Top 10 power rankings at Silverado

The 2023-24 PGA Tour season begins with the Fortinet Championship

It’s quite something when two weeks off is considered a long offseason for the PGA Tour.

Oftentimes, it’s just one week, so the 16 days that elapsed between the final putt at East Lake for the Tour Championship to when the first shot is struck at Silverado for the Fortinet Championship feels like an eternity.

The Fortinet this year falls at an interesting time a couple weeks before the Ryder Cup. Two-time defending champ Max Homa is here before he reps the red, white, and blue. So is Justin Thomas, who is desperate to regain the elite form he’s shown over the past decade.

There are some other notable names in the 156-player field, but it mostly consists of players striving to make their way into this new season’s signature events (previously known as designated events).

That will be the norm throughout the fall schedule. Especially this week with the Fortinet coinciding with the DP World Tour’s flagship event, the BMW Championship.

This is just fine for the golf sickos who will be glued in to the coverage from Napa to see who can jockey their way into better standing on the PGA Tour.

Silverado Resort and Spa is the venue. It’s hosted this event since 2014 for a tournament originating in 2007.

The North course is the one the pros will play. It’s a 7,166-yard par-72 designed by Robert Trent Jones in 1966 and redesigned by Johnny Miller in 2011.

This course is one of the easier ones on the schedule, though it can sometimes show some teeth when it plays firm and fast.

When scouting out who will play well this week, look to the straight, but not necessarily long, hitters.

Attacking the relatively large, soft greens isn’t a tall task playing from the fairway on this tree-lined layout. Greens are a mix of bentgrass and poa annua. West Coast golfers are accustomed to poa.

Note: World rankings for players featured in this article are from Sept. 3.

Let’s dive into this week’s power rankings:

Andrew Putnam comes to the Fortinet Championship in good form. He’s made seven straight cuts dating back to May with some high finishes against elite fields in that span.

Putnam took T-5th this summer at the Memorial Tournament and added T-10th in his last start at the BMW Championship in the FedEx Cup Playoffs. He fell just five positions shy of qualifying for the Tour Championship.

The Washington state native is plenty familiar playing on the West Coast and had a strong collegiate career at Pepperdine.

This will be Putnam’s sixth appearance at Silverado. He’s made his last four cuts at the Fortinet Championship and took T-43rd last year with four rounds of par or better (72-70-72-69).

It’s fitting given his surname that putting is a strength. Putnam ranked sixth on the PGA Tour last season in strokes gained per round putting (.628).

His flat stick helped him eliminate squares on his scorecard, as evidenced by finishing fourth in bogey avoidance (13.05%).

The 34-year-old quietly ranked 31st in total SG (.792) and 24th in SG approach (.461). He was also 21st in scoring average (70.015) and fourth in bogey avoidance (13.05%).

Putnam has kept his PGA Tour card for more than a decade, which is no small feat.

Putnam tends to struggle at long, girthy courses. Silverado is more his speed. I expect him to notch his first top-10 on property this week and contend about six hours north of where he spent his college days with the Waves.