|
11-2; +1.25pts Pre-tournament plays: LAY 20pts liability Lee McCoy 210 mc
Robert Garrigus 140 51st
Bobby Wyatt 300 mc
Brian Stuard 320 73rd
Mark Wilson 330 mc McCoy is making his first event as a professional - in his first two starts, he finished mc-69th, but then finished 4th in the Valspar Championship, however that was on a course that he had grown up playing on, so a return to his former performances look more likely on his debut at this course
In his last outing, Garrigus secured his first top-10 finish in over two years; he did lose out in a playoff in 2010, but hasn't finished in the top-40 in any of his other six visits, so a repeat of his Byron Nelson form looks unlikely
Wyatt earned his first top-25 finish on the PGA Tour at Zurich Classic, but missed cuts in both subsequent events are more suggestive of how he will play on his course debut this week
Stuard won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and so may be expected to be available at lower odds, but since that he event he has missed two cuts, then pulled out of teh Dean & Deluca Invitational with a nerve issue in his back and then finished 69th in the Memorial Tournament last week
Easy to oppose Wilson who hasn't managed a top-20 finish this year and managed just one in 2015 (Travelers Championship Pre-rd3 plays: BACK 1pt Tom Hoge 21 34th
Twelve months ago Hoge was 4th after 36 holes and finished a respectable 12th in his rookie season on the PGA Tour; the experience was instructive as he did manage three top-10 finishes in the second half of 2015 and finished in the top-10 in the Texas Open, so there is a lot more reason to expect him to stay in contention this year as he enters the weekend in sole 2nd place. LAY 20pts liability Harris English 60 26th
Ben Crane 180 41st
Ryan Palmer 100 68th
Freddie Jacobson 220 12th
Scott Stallings 270 41st
English may have won here three years ago, but he was either 1st or 2nd after each round whereas he is 24th now and ranked outside the top-100 for greens in regulation over the first two days so clearly deserves bigger odds than these
When Crane won two years he was a wire-to-wire winner so that also shows that it is difficult to catch the leaders on this course; as a player also in 24th place, he can also be easily opposed
And Palmer is even further back in 35th place (along with 11 others), so he will need two career rounds to have a realistic chance of winning; I like the odds against that happening
Opposing another player in 24th place - it has been 5 years since Jacobson won a Tour event and 11 years since he secured a top-10 finish on this course, so I don't see him making a great deal of progress over the weekend
Stallings has recorded just one top-10 finish in the last 16 months (2015 RSM Classic), so he is another player whose history doesn't suggest that he will be making any significant improvement on his 35th position over the weekend. Pre-rd4 plays: BACK 1pt D.A. Points 22 18th
Berger holds a three-shot lead over three veterans - Points, Stricker and Mickelson - but he has never won a Tour event nor has he held the lead at the start of the final round in a Tour events, so there should be value in the chasing pack and more so Points than Stricker and Mickelson who are priced 14.5 and 6.2 respectively. He had a putting lesson with Brad Faxon and it has paid dividends - he shot 62 in his last event, the Byron Nelson Championship, ranks inside the top-10 for all the key putting stats this week, but the rest of his game is also good - only one player hit more greens in regulation yesterday - so the value is certainly with Points at these odds than Stricker or Mickelson. LAY 20pts liability Brooks Koepka 11 2nd
Koepka is four shot further back in 5th, but even though he is certainly the form player in the top-10, he was anything but convincing yesterday and with a record of just 1-for-8 when starting the final round inside the top-5 on the PGA Tour (he failed to convert even when holding a two-shot lead at the start of the final round of his last start, the Byron Nelson Championship), I'd price him at higher odds than this. |
