Our BetSperts Golf staff has combed through the projections and available lines to identify our favorite bets for THE PLAYERS Championship. These are our Best Bets for the weekend.
Corey Conners +7000 (DraftKings)
Andy Molitor: Corey Conners’s ball striking has been a little less stellar this season, but I still think this price is egregious, not just due to my implied win percentage for him being much higher, but it’s also a bit of an outlier in the market that has him around 40- or 50-to-1 at most places.
I’m not a big course history guy, which is fine since Conners has only played here twice, and the course is a bit different with the move to March but he did perform well here last season with a very steady four days capped off by a closing round 66 to vault him into the top 10. Even less pertinent, but still worth mentioning, is that he started strong last year as well, opening with a 68 before the tournament was called off after the 1st round.
With his ball striking ceiling and the conditions of the greens now that we’re playing in March, I think he’s a great fit for TPC Sawgrass. I won’t let some variance so far this year scare me off a guy who absolutely crushed this part of the calendar last year, especially at a price like this.
Brooks Koepka +4500 (PointsBet)
Ron Klos: With the strongest field of the year and 3.6 million reasons to keep him motivated this week, I think we will see the best of Brooks Koepka here at TPC Sawgrass. His current form isn’t as poor as many think with two top-16 finishes in the last month. He looks healthy, his ball-striking has been on the rebound, and he ranks as one of the top putters in the field on this Poa Trivialis surface.
Russell Knox Top 20 +600 (DraftKings)
John Daigle: Although I don’t mind firing on an experienced outright who has navigated impossible courses with aplomb in the past, the pending dire weather conditions lead me to take the safest route and wager on a position I’m much more comfortable and confident in. For all the reasons listed in our DFS Value Plays, which requires similar research when scoping out the bottom rung of golfers, Knox is exactly the type of player who can survive into the weekend and eke out a respectable finish since he has surgically placed his Approach shots at the closest proximity to the hole among this field over the last 12 rounds—a statistic we should weigh heavily since TPC Sawgrass offers the third-toughest course on Tour to gain on Approach.
Hideki Matsuyama Top 5 +700 (BetRivers)
Ryan Noonan: A case can be made that Hideki Matsuyama is the one player who benefits most by having this event played in March instead of May. A week at TPC Sawgrass in May plays like a traditional Florida course with Bermudagrass greens and Matsuyama’s track record when that’s the setup is far from elite. As I mentioned above, overseeding is necessary here in March, and that changes the dynamic quite drastically. The greens will run smooth and fast this week, similar to Augusta National and Scottsdale, two places where Matsuyama has thrived of late. He’s a terrific ball-striker and astute around the greens, ranking ninth in this field in total strokes gained over his last 24 rounds. He’s also available at +600 on DraftKings to finish inside the top five and is worth a look as an outright north of 3-to-1.
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