One of the smallest purses of the season, a holiday weekend, and only a half dozen weeks or so to go. It feels very much like last week: If you’re leading, keep it on the level with Griffin (or whoever you think is safe and chalky), and if you’re trailing, there is literally about 40 guys that you could call upon this week.
So, let’s head to Iowa/Illinois to see how to grab as much as possible from this $8.4M purse ($1.5M to the winner).
Cutmakers
Not a ton of names with a win on the list, but it’s not that kind of week (in fact we often have a first time winner here). So this is going to be the last 12 months (all golf, no filters), sorted by made cut %. This isn’t a huge sample, but it goes to show that even some of the lower priced options can be considered “safe” if you’re short on names and need to tread water with a deeper cut.
Scorers
Birdiefest requires birdies; it’s pretty simple. So, looking at BoB rates for the past 12 months (taking out any rounds played under difficult conditions). Again, a bunch of names in the $7000 DFS range, all of them with decent enough samples to take seriously. A few guys spiking a bit in the Eagles department, but with one fewer par 5 this week, I’m not as focused on that.
Comp Course Guys
Finally, I looked at comp courses (Detroit, 3M, Sedgefield, River Highlands) over the past three years to see who’s shone in similar conditions. I thought about including Deere Run, but opted to just leave it to comp courses and not include course history. I did filter this by golfers that played at least eight rounds over the 36 month time frame.
John Deere Classic One and Done Suggestions
Literaly anyone in the top 50 on the odds board. You can make a case for almost any of them. There are probably some guys worth crossing off based on form (especially putting) . Plenty of guys can play themselves into form, but if you’re losing strokes on the putting green consistently, it’s not going to be easy (chart shows the worst in the field over the past two months, min 12 rounds).
Safe-ish
Ben Griffin
Davis Thompson
J.T. Poston
Chaser Shots
Emiliano Grillo
Kevin Yu
Andrew Putnam