By J.T. CHADWELL
RECAP
We continued our strong finish to the end of the regular season with another winner! And what do you know? It is I-81 PGA Tip Sheet favorite Wyndham Clark once again putting money in our pocket. Clark cashes at 27/1 in the without Scottie market at the BMW Championship, giving us a profit of 5.4 units for the week and giving us a total of 3.96 units of profit for the season. After a really rough stretch through the teeth of the middle of the PGA schedule, we are now up 10.5 units over the last 10 events.
Clark was otherworldly for the first 52 holes, going bogey free (one double bogey) and reaching 18 under. But a short miss for birdie at 17 and a clumsy bogey on the 18th hole Saturday cut Clark’s lead to five and crushed the confidence of his ticket holders, especially seeing Rory McIlroy sitting in second place and paired with Clark in the final group on Sunday. McIlroy would eventually tie Clark after making a birdie putt of about 15 feet on the 11th hole after Clark made bogey on three of his first 10 holes with no birdies. Clark then did what he does best, by making the putts when it mattered. Clark birdied the final three holes of the round and eventually won by four, giving him his third title of the season. The FedEx Cup playoffs now finish up in Atlanta, GA, and I would expect to see Clark competing for the year-end title with some of the others he held off this past week.
Past Tour Championship Winners, Odds, And Trends
We won’t look into the past history at this event, as this is the first year of a change to the playoff system. In past seasons, the top 10 in FedEx Cup points started with stroke advantages, so the data is skewed. This year, everyone will start from scratch like a normal PGA event.
Tour Championship
We finish the PGA regular season in Atlanta at East Lake Golf Course. This is a limited field event, and only the top 30 in the FedEx Cup yearly standings are eligible to play. With the change to the point allocation this year, there will be some players here that are not in the best of form and accumulated most of their points early in the season.
Scottie Scheffler tops the odds board this week, and I am a little surprised at the odds of +350. In a field of only 30 players, where a handful of them are not playing well enough to win a Korn Ferry Tour event, I think you could do worse this week. Behind him is last week’s runner-up McIlroy, coming in at +950. Between the two of them, Scheffler and McIlroy have 18 starts at East Lake and four trophies. In those 18 starts, each player has only finished outside the top 20 once with a much higher majority of finishes coming inside the top 10 (14 out of 18). The dominance of these two at this golf course, along with the prize money at stake and this week’s card is pretty simple…
The Betting Card
- EITHER SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER OR RORY MCILROY TO WIN THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP (+215), Bet 1 unit to win 2.1 units – This price is courtesy of FanDuel allotting 0.7 units to Scottie Scheffler and 0.3 units to Rory McIlroy. I think this is more than a fair price to get one of the best two golfers in the world to win the biggest prize the PGA Tour has to offer. Scheffler was not great at the BMW Championship, but he was also dealing with blisters and rashes all week and those should be clear by Thursday. McIlroy couldn’t get the job done last week, but this will be his third tournament back after some time off, so I look for him to be more polished. Wyndham Clark is without a doubt the top threat to these two, and he has good history at East Lake as well. The +215 price still gives you a little wiggle room to hedge on one more player and still have greater than +100 odds for the week if you feel necessary. In the end, I just don’t trust a lot of the other guys to get it done this week. Sam Burns, Ludvig Aberg, Collin Morikawa, Cameron Young, and Patrick Cantlay are in the next group of contenders, but I have my doubts on all of them and none of their prices look appealing.