The PLAYERS Championship is often referred to as the PGA Tour’s fifth major, and rightfully so. The designated events 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 designated events we’ve seen 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!
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 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 that 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.
My goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting this week. There are millions of ways to bet on this beautiful game, so I’ll share my opinion on the best way to bet on each golfer in my player pool at this week’s event. When pricing out finishing position bets (T5, T10, T20s, etc.), I’ll often lean towards BetMGM even if there’s a better number elsewhere because of MGM’s advantageous dead-heat rules. So know the rules of the books that you’re betting on!
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 from myself or other contributors. Betting markets are fluid, but I’ll note the best number available at the time of this writing.
This new world of designated events, where the top players are pitted against each other more frequently than in years past, calls for a new betting strategy. So, without increasing my weekly bankroll allocation, I’m shifting toward the top of the board in terms of outright betting. I typically live in the 30-60 range on the betting board, but overcoming the loaded sub-20 field in an event like this is really difficult. It’s one thing to fade the top of the board when there are just a few top-20 players in the field and skip down to the next tier, but when all of the Tour’s top players are teeing it up, the case gets thinner for bombs.
This week is also a bit unique because I fired into it early, taking advantage of what I thought were bad future prices, so my card is bigger than normal because I couldn’t help myself on Monday morning when the board reshuffled. I’m paying very little attention to previous results here for a few reasons. First, I believe the May-to-March switch back in 2019 is substantial enough to toss out anything that happened before it. We’ve also seen carnage here in terms of weather the past few seasons, so there’s a ton of noise in a small sample of weather-affected rounds over the past few seasons.
*Betting lines are accurate when posted in Discord.
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Noonan’s PLAYERS Betting Targets
Tony Finau
When modeling out key stats for this week, I’m keeping it pretty simple. I’m heavy on approach, a good/accurate driver of the golf ball, strong Par 5 scorers, and those that have the ability to scramble when things don’t go as planned. Over the past 36 and 50 rounds, Tony Finau ranks first in my model for the week. He’s won three of his past 14 starts, making the cut in 13 of them and finishing no worse than T28 over that time frame. He consistently puts himself in the mix, and I think he’ll do so again this week.
Collin Morikawa
With three top-six finishes in five starts this season, Collin Morikawa continues to play exceptional golf despite not closing the deal yet on Sunday afternoon. Winning golf tournaments is difficult, but if someone keeps showing the ability to contend, I think we need to take them seriously every time they tee off. Morikawa has won two Majors on two very different layouts, proof that his game can fit anywhere, but the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass feels like a spot where he’ll have lots of success over the course of his career. Target golf, finding fairways, and hitting darts with your irons; no one does it better than Morikawa. He’s played six uninspiring rounds here to date, but that sample is so small and noisy due to weather issues I find it difficult to give it any credence at all, though he did shoot a final round 66 here back in 2021, gaining over six strokes on the field.
Over the past 50 rounds, Morikawa leads this loaded field in Good Drive%, a combination of driving accuracy and greens in regulation. He’s third on Tour in driving accuracy this season, and he’s made massive strides on and around the greens over the past few months. I think he’s winning multiple times this season, and I want to be there for it, especially when we’re this close to 30.
Keegan Bradley
The market has moved on Keegan Bradley since I first bet him on Monday morning, and he sits around 40/1 at most spots, which feels more appropriate. He’s simply better than the early market prices that he’s posted at. He’s made nine starts so far this season, winning at the ZOZO Championship and finishing inside the top 21 in five of the other eight starts, including a Sunday charge last week at Bay Hill to help him finish inside the top 10 again.
He’s played terrific golf in Florida throughout his career, posting a T5 or better at every spot in the current rotation in the Sunshine State. He’s made six straight cuts at TPC Sawgrass, with four straight T29 or better finishes, including a T5 here last season. His ball-striking numbers are excellent, and he’s built on last year’s improvements on the greens, where he’s trending to gain strokes putting for consecutive seasons for the first time since 2013 and 2014. He’s one of the best on Tour in total driving every season and leads the Tour in scrambling from the fringe this season, something that’ll show up this season at the Stadium Course.
Keith Mitchell
Keith Mitchell usually waits until he gets to the southeast to start playing his best golf, but the 31-year-old former Georgia Bulldog started early this season. He played exceptionally well in the early season west coast swing, including T5 finishes at both Pebble Beach and The Genesis.
He leads the Tour in Total Driving this season and is the only golfer to rank inside the top 20 in both driving distance (13th) and accuracy (11th). That bodes well for success at TPC Sawgrass. If he can continue to put himself in position to score, he’ll be in the mix this week.
FanDuel Finishing Position Parlay
Jason Day and Tom Kim – T40 (+193)
This is a relatively new entry to the space, thanks to our friends at FanDuel. I played a number of these last season with a 9.85% ROI, so I’ll continue it this season. If it’s not for you, feel free to skip it.
Unlike most other books I’m familiar with, FanDuel allows you to parlay finishing position bets. Now, the very premise of the bet is flawed because the expected value is negative since players are competing for the same finishing positions. If the bet is two T40s like this one, when one leg of your parlay finishes above the threshold, there’s now one less spot available in that range for the other leg(s) to also come in. I know the math is terrible. Spare me. But let’s be honest. Some bets are just fun, and these are fun for me.
I’m keeping these parlays light this week due to the volatility of this event and the frequency in which top-caliber talent falls short of the cutline. Proceed with caution.
I bet three outrights here back in January (Max Homa 46/1, Will Zalatoris 36/1, and Tom Kim 36/1) because I thought the numbers would move in my favor. Tom Kim is posted around the same number now, due in part to his recent below-average performances, but I believe that this course is far better suited for his game than the previous distance-centric course like Torrey Pines, TPC Scottsdale, and Riviera.
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