The FedEx Cup race concludes this week with the Tour Championship which takes place at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. We don’t particularly like the handicap system and use our imagination this week to arrive at our bets.
Handicaps: This is how they will start:
Scottie Scheffler -10
Patrick Cantlay -8
Will Zalatoris -7 (scratched)
Xander Schauffele -6
Sam Burns -5
Cam Smith, Rory McIlroy, Tony Finau, Sepp Straka, Sungjae Im -4
Jon Rahm, Scott Stallings, Justin Thomas, Cameron Young, Matt Fitzpatrick -3
Max Homa, Hideki Matsuyama, Jordan Spieth, Joaquin Niemann, Viktor Hovland -2
Collin Morikawa, Billy Horschel, Tom Hoge, Corey Conners, Brian Harman -1
K.H Lee, J.T Poston, Sahith Theegala, Adam Scott, Aaron Wise Level Par.
Onto the course and East Lake is a par 70 which has played fairly tough in recent years. Accuracy off the tee and finding Greens in Regulation tend to be your biggest weapons against the course.
Punters should note that this week we potentially have two Betting Markets which are not to be confused, I say potentially because at this point I have only seen the one market namely “Outright Winner” with handicap priced up. It may well be that a 72 hole stroke play winner is also priced up so punters need to be alert when placing bets.
Scottie Scheffler is the ruling favourite at 5/2 ahead of Cantlay at 4/1, Schauffele at 8/1 and you can get 12/1 and better the balance
PAST WINNERS (72 hole play less start in brackets)
2021- Patrick Cantlay -21 (-10)
2020 – Dustin Johnson -21 (-10)
2019 – Rory McIlroy -18 (-5)
2018 – Tiger Woods -11
2017 – Xander Schauffele -12
2016 – Rory McIlroy -12*
Playoff *
BETTING – Click here to bet
Scottie Scheffler 22/10
Patrick Cantlay 4/1
Xander Schauffele 7/1
Rory Mcilroy 10/1
Jon Rahm 16/1
Tony Finau 25/1
Cameron Smith 25/1
28/1 and better the balance, prices correct at the time of posting but are subject to change
SELECTIONS
Betting without Scheffler and Cantlay – Xander Schauffele win at 7/2
Schauffele bounced back to top form last week with a 3rd place finish, but it is his course form that really catches the eye and he had 4 Top 3’s including 2 victories in his last 5 starts here and he hasn’t finished worse than 7th.
By removing Scheffler and Cantlay from the equation he starts ahead on the handicap and I think he rates a cracking bet.
Betting without Scheffler, Cantlay and Schauffele – Justin Thomas Top 4 at 16/10
Thomas starts with a handicap of -3 and he has a number of players in front of him, but by taking out the Top 4 in the handicap - Zalatoris is scratched only Sam Burns starts 2 strokes ahead and he is pretty close to everyone.
What caught my eye about Thomas is his course form as well and in 6 starts he hasn’t finished outside the Top 10 with two Top 3’s and a 4th place finish. His form in recent weeks hasn’t been great, but let us not forget this man is a PGA Tour Champion.
Tournament Winning Margin 3 strokes or more at 1/1
We have some of the best players in the world getting starts over other players and there is every chance that this ends up being a comfortable win for one of the top guns.
Click here to bet on The Tour Championship 2022
