The PLAYERS Championship is often referred to as the PGA Tour’s fifth major, but we can retire that moniker for now. The signature events and the top tier at LIV Golf have changed the landscape a bit, but the world’s best make their way to the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Verda Beach, Florida, for a tremendous test of their all-around game. This event purse is a bit bigger than the signature events we’ve seen so far this season, and the Golden Boy trophy is still one that the world’s best want on their mantle when it’s all said and done.
This traditional par 72 layout forces the field to be dialed in up and down the bag in order to have a chance to win come Sunday afternoon. Play your best for four days, and you’ll have a shot. There’s not one particular type of player or skill set that wins at TPC Sawgrass more than others, so for handicapping purposes, we’re taking a highly variant sport and adding another level of unpredictability to it. Fun! Since 2005, no returning winner has posted a top-10 finish the following year.
This Pete Dye-designed layout brings water into play on 17 of the 18 holes and features numerous doglegs that limit a bomber’s advantage off the tee. Avoiding the water and the crooked numbers that come with it are keys to success this week. Driving accuracy is a common denominator when looking at past leaderboards for this event, as it is at other Pete Dye tracks like Harbour Town, TPC River Highlands, and Dye’s Stadium West, but this event moved from May to March (which happened in 2019) throws a wet blanket on that narrative a bit, in my opinion.
Not only are the greens softer at this time of year, but the grabby nature of bermudagrass rough is mitigated a skosh in March due to the overseeding necessary at this time of year. Missing the fairway or green is never ideal, but it’s less penial than it used to be because the unpredictable nature of the lie caused by the bermudagrass has decreased with the overseeding that March brings to a Florida golf course. Knowing when and where to be aggressive for scoring opportunities goes a long way. You also have to be comfortable eating your vegetables on this course, accepting that par is a good score on most holes, and moving along.
For more course details, check out Ron’s course preview. It’s the best in the business, bar none. Here’s an important tidbit about TPC Sawgrass:
Visually, TPC Sawgrass is one of the most perfectly manicured courses in the world. From the lush rough to the elaborately designed white sand bunkers to the 16 holes framed with water to the lightning-fast tiered greens, players will face challenges on every hole. There are few other courses that can match its risk/reward brilliance. Tee shots on the angled fairways are well-designed and encourage golfers to hit toward the trouble for the least obstructed approach shots into the demanding greens. It’s a course where any type of player can win. Pretenders are quickly weeded out. Errors get compounded in a hurry. Players who are strong mentally, who have an all-around game, and who enter with sharp form typically have the best chance of surviving the torture chamber. It sounds cliche, but here at Sawgrass, the best overall player for the week raises the trophy on Sunday.
One of the biggest themes on PLAYERS leaderboards is driving accuracy. Keeping the ball in play and avoiding the bunkers, tree lines, and water hazards is crucial. TPC Sawgrass had the fourth-most penalty strokes on Tour off the tee last year. Wayward misses that find one of these trouble areas cost players more than 0.25 strokes. Dye devilishly positioned many of the hazards in conformity with the angle of the green to encourage players to hit toward the trouble areas. This requires players to have an actual game plan on each hole where they must choose a side of the fairway to either attack or play conservatively. Even with so many golfers clubbing down off the tee, driving accuracy is still below the Tour average at only 60%. We will have to wait and see how much the 3.5-inch rough penalizes players this year compared to the 2.5-inch in years past.
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There are millions of ways to bet on this beautiful game, and my goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting this week. Remember to check out the Rabbit Hole, our customizable stat database that can help you pair down your player pool each week.
Please take advantage of the Discord feature and community. It’s the best way to get up-to-the-minute lines and advice, and if you need help getting started, please reach out. That’s where my full card will be posted, along with any live in-tournament bets. Betting markets are fluid, but I’ll note the best number available at the time of this writing.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074b*Betting lines are accurate at the time of publication.
Noonan’s PLAYERS Championship Betting Targets
Scottie Scheffler
To Scottie or not to Scottie. There are many competing factors that make this handicap extremely difficult. I don’t want to be a prisoner of the moment, but last week at Bay Hill felt different. With everyone else struggling, Scottie Scheffler, who made an equipment change with his putter heading into the event, went out and buried the field with a final round 66.
Now, some folks are instantly out on the previous week’s winner, or the event’s defending champion, and Scottie is both of those. Winning golf tournaments is hard; he went nearly a full calendar year without winning, so why would we assume that he’s a lock to do it again here, of all places? We don’t get repeat winners at TPC Sawgrass, and in fact, it’s been 20 years since the last defending champ at at this event finished in the top 10 the following year.
So we’re asking Scheffler to do something that’s rarely been done. But again, last week at Bay Hill felt different. It’s the first time in the shotlink era that a golfer finished inside the top 12 in every strokes gained metric for the week. Ever. 4-under got you inside the top 8 last week, and Scottie cleared that by 11 strokes. Over the past 12 months, Scottie Scheffler has gained strokes tee-to-green in 93.55% of his 76 rounds played. And on Saturday and Sunday, he went 23 for 23 on putts inside 15 feet. That’s not going to continue, but if this guy is now actually confident when standing over a putt or can go at holes aggressively because he’s not afraid of the 3-footer coming back if he misses, then we might be in for a pretty boring spring and summer because he’s going to win a bunch of tournaments.
Russell Henley
I think it’s a great week to look at the “Without Scheffler” markets if you’re betting into the outright pool this week. The current prices on Russell Henley are baked out a bit from where I jumped in, but I like his current form and fit for TPC Sawgrass. He’s finished in the top 20 in the past two seasons at this event and ranks third in my comp course model this week. He’s going to put himself in position off the tee to get scoring opportunities, and that’s the name of the game this week.
- To Win: 65/1 Caesars
- Top 30: +110 DraftKings
Brian Harman
FanDuel was generous with some of its openers when it first released the odds board for this week’s event. Brian Harman, the defending Open Champion, was inside the top 10 at Bay Hill at the time when FanDuel generously opened his outright odds at 150/1. Harman has a T8 (2019) and T3 (2021), a relevant cutoff for results since this event moved from May to March back in 2019. He ranks fourth in this week’s field in SG: OTT Less Than Driver and fifth in the distance from the edge of the fairway. Like Henley, he’s going to put himself in position off the tee, avoiding the surrounding danger lurking when standing on every tee box at TPC Sawgrass. He loves putting on these fast Poa Trivialis greens and has done well on TPC Sawgrass comp courses throughout his career.
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