Coming off my incredible outright win last week as Hovland set a course record with 7 birdies on the back nine, this week we head to East Lake for the last week of the PGA Tour season for the Tour Championship with the FedEx Cup on the line.
Course Breakdown
Par 70, 7346 yards, Donald Ross designed course with Reese Jones redesign (1994), both Par 5’s are reachable but if the prevailing winds shift (usually the wind is to the golfer’s back) but the 18th hole will be tougher to hit by shorter hitters, all four Par 3s are difficult with three of them being over 200 yards (the other is 193 yards), five of the Par 4s are over 450 yards and five of them are between 400-450 yards, fairly narrow tree lined fairways, large bunkers in play at the landing zones, rough is thick and penal (less than 50% of approach shots from the rough hit the green), toughest fairways to hit on tour (much harder than tour average, 55% vs. 62%), average driving distance longer than tour average (292 vs. 283), very fast Bermuda greens, firmness all depends on weather conditions, wide variety of large multi-tiered greens with a lot of slope and smaller greens with a lot of back to front slope, need to hit certain spots on gree dns for realistic birdie chances, greenside bunkers in play on most holes with a majority of them guarding the very front of the greens, lot of prevailing winds here
Tournament Notes
- Final event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs and the PGA Tour season
- New format started four years ago with the starting strokes for the tournament based on FedEx Cup standings. Win this tournament, win the FedEx Cup and $18 Million
- Average winning score here is around -10, so that almost completely takes out anyone starting around -2 and E but golfers could catch up or drop pretty quickly
- Every year since the start of this format, a player that started at -2 finished T5, so guess can climb the leaderboard
- Every year since the start of this format, no player starting at -1 or even has finished T5
- The first place player coming into this event has not finished worst than T3 since this format started
- Since 2012, the average finish of golfers that finish T3 here in the prior three playoff events is 26th (before this year when the format of the playoffs was changed from 125/70/30 to 70/50/30), so current form matters, almost 60% of which had 0 T5s in those three playoff events.
- Some not elite players pop here
Key Stats
SG: Approach, GIR Gained, Par 4 Scoring
Corollary Courses
Sedgefield Country Club (Wyndham Championship) – Donald Ross design with some crossover success especially on players that aren’t long off the tee
Field
30 golfers – Top 30 in FedEx Cup standings
Defending Champion: Rory McIlroy (-21)
Runner Up Last Year: Sungjae Im, Scottie Scheffler (-20)
Lowest score relative to Par last year: Rory McIlroy (-17)
Players
Viktor Hovland: 12500: +500 (with starting strokes), +1100 (without starting strokes) – starting in solo 2nd (-8), set a course record last week on Sunday to win the BMW Championship with a seven birdie back nine on Sunday, 15,5,20 finishes here the last three years, 1,13,13,29,19,1,16,2,43,59,7,3,10 finishes in his last 13 events, 11th in Approach, 4th in SG: OTT, 9th in Fairways Gained, 3rd in Par 4 Scoring, 11th in Par 4 Scoring: 400-450 yards, 1st in Par 4 Scoring: 450-500 yards, 23rd in Par 3 Scoring: 200-225 yards, 14th in SG: ARG, 18th in Putting, 7th in Opportunities Gained, 5th in GIRs Gained, 2nd in Birdie+ Gained, 10th in Bogie Avoidance
Lucas Glover: 9700: +5500 (with starting strokes), +5500 (without starting strokes) – starting in solo 5th (-5), last week he sucked putting but was actually good on approach where he gained four strokes, 29,10,8,29 finishes his four times here (going all the way back to 2005), 22,1,MC,5,6,4,MC,20 finishes in his last nine events, 2nd in Approach, 8th in SG: OTT, 2nd in Fairways Gained, 13th in Par 4 Scoring, 5th in Par 4 Scoring: 400-450 yards, 20th in Par 4 Scoring: 450-500 yards, 2nd in Par 3 Scoring: 200-225 yards, 23rd in SG: ARG, 24th in Putting, 2nd in Opportunities Gained, 3rd in GIRs Gained, 13th in Birdie+ Gained, 8th in Bogie Avoidance, his odds being the same both for the outright win as well as the relative to par actually makes sense so I’m doubling up on it and taking both
Tommy Fleetwood: 8800: +6600 (with starting strokes), +2500 (without starting strokes) – starting at T11 (-3), I could see him come back seven strokes and win but I like him way better to hit the best score relative to par (I’ll bet both to scale), 16 and 11 finishes his two times here in 2019 and 2018, 25,3,10,6,MC,5,2,MC,18,5,15,33,3,27 finishes in his last 14 events, 18th in Approach, 7th in SG: OTT, 8th in Fairways Gained, 7th in Par 4 Scoring, 7th in Par 4 Scoring: 400-450 yards, 16th in Par 4 Scoring: 450-500 yards, 21st in Par 3 Scoring: 200-225 yards, 3rd in SG: ARG, 5th in Putting, 23rd in Opportunities Gained, 8th in GIRs Gained, 12th in Birdie+ Gained, 1st in Bogie Avoidance
Russell Henley: 8300: +9000 (with starting strokes), +3500 (without starting strokes) – starting at T11 (-3), has been fantastic this season, 3 and 12 finishes here his two times here in 2017 and 2014, 8,6,2,MC,35,19,14,16,16,MC,19,4,19 finishes in his last 13 events, 3rd in Approach, 21st in SG: OTT, 3rd in Fairways Gained, 8th in Par 4 Scoring, 1st in Par 4 Scoring: 400-450 yards, 18th in Par 4 Scoring: 450-500 yards, 12th in Par 3 Scoring: 200-225 yards, 8th in SG: ARG, 15th in Putting, 7th in Opportunities Gained, 9th in GIRs Gained, 19th in Birdie+ Gained, 14th in Bogie Avoidance
Tyrrell Hatton: 6900: +35000 (with starting strokes), +2800 (without starting strokes) – starting at T26 (E), I see no way that he comes back from ten strokes back to win the FedEx Cup but I could see him posting the lowest score relative to par, has been the best player statistically on Tour this season who hasn’t gotten a win with seven T6 finishes and only six finishes outside T20 in 17 PGA Tour events this year, sucked last week losing approach on every stat category besides putting and still finished in the middle of the field despite losing 5.9 strokes T2G (-4.1 on approach), the week prior at the St. Jude was the first week since April he lost strokes to the field which were entirely around the green and putting, 34,43,20,6,27,3,12,15,5,3,19,34,MC,2,4,40,6 finishes in his last 17 events, finished 7th here in 2020 in his only time here, 25th in Approach, 9th in SG: OTT, 23rd in Fairways Gained, 4th in Par 4 Scoring, 3rd in Par 4 Scoring: 400-450 yards, 10th in Par 4 Scoring: 450-500 yards, 10th in Par 3 Scoring: 200-225 yards, 11th in SG: ARG, 2nd in Putting, 19th in Opportunities Gained, 16th in GIRs Gained, 9th in Birdie+ Gained, 7th in Bogie Avoidance
Model
Approach (20%)
SG: OTT (10%)
Fairways Gained (5%)
Par 4 Scoring (10%)
Par 4 Scoring: 400-450 yards (5%)
Par 4 Scoring: 450-500 yards (5%)
Par 3 Scoring: 200-225 yards (5%)
SG: ARG (5%)
Putting (5%)
Opportunities Gained (10%)
GIRs Gained (10%)
Birdie+ Gained (5%)
Bogie Avoidance (5%)
Stats based on past 36 rounds
DraftKings/Betting Notes
- Starting position matters a lot in DK since the scoring is just standard but the pricing takes that into account
- With only 30 golfers in the field, there will be a ton of duplicate lineups in DFS, so you have to really differentiate your lineups leaving money on the table and doing contrarian stacks
- A lot books will offer regular odds on the tournament winner as well as alternate odds on who has the best score for the four days not taking into account starting strokes, so there’s different ways to look at it since the odds with starting strokes are essentially like live betting the tournament before it even starts
Bets
Outrights (with starting strokes)
1u Viktor Hovland (+500)
.2u Lucas Glover (+5500)
.2u Tommy Fleetwood (+6600)
.2u Russell Henley (+9000)
Outrights (without starting strokes)
1u Viktor Hovland (+1100)
.4u Tommy Fleetwood (+2500)
.4u Tyrrell Hatton (+2800)
.3u Russell Henley (+3500)
.2u Lucas Glover (+5500)
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