Top 5 Odds & Picks for 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship
Mixed emotions are pouring in about this season’s FedEx Cup playoffs format. Through last season, the top-125 golfers in regular season points qualified and would try their hand at surviving the trim down to the BMW Championship, followed by the Tour Championship. Only 70 golfers qualified this year, making for a condensed soup of elite form vying for the prize chest in Atlanta. Glory in these playoffs is monetary in nature. Where there isn’t a green jacket or fancy jug to immortalize a golfer in lore, the ultimate winner at East Lake in two weeks will collect generational wealth in a lump sum. Cash Rules Everything Around Me. Wu Tang forever, especially in 21st-century athletic competitions.
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2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship Bets: Odds, Picks & Predictions
The St. Jude was held at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tenn., until 2018. It was not a part of the FedEx Cup playoffs until last year when it replaced the Northern Trust and returned to Memphis. The par-70 track is of average length at 7,244 yards and poses very little resistance to the sharpest golfers on the planet. Defending champion Will Zalatoris is recovering from back surgery, leaving 70 new potential winners. TPC Southwind is a ball striker’s paradise. Zalatoris edged out Sepp Straka and a slough of the world’s best iron players to take it home in 2022. The same can be said for most of the champions through 2018. Find the fairway, then show off the approach game to score.
As with most par-70 designs, par-4 scoring is very important. My weighted statistical model will shove a bunch of emphasis on varying approach metrics. Driving accuracy and bogey avoidance are also in the formula, along with recent form. Our most successful betting weeks have certainly come when we trust the golfers who pop up at the top of the model rankings. Try not to get Pollard’s BBQ sauce on your blue suede shoes, and let’s tee off.
Rory McIlroy
Rory’s return to peak form is perfectly aligned with betting on him to dominate the playoffs once again. McIlroy is all-world off the tee, but the understated part of his game has been on approach. As long as his putter stays relatively warm, Rory is a lock to contend this week.
Picks: Outright +900 [1u]; Top-5 +200 [1u]
Viktor Hovland
While Scottie Scheffler’s ball-striking has been otherworldly this season, Hovland has actually cashed in on his elite iron play with hot putting this season. The young Norwegian pays out twice as much as Scottie for an outright win this week in Memphis and has a lot more to prove than the world number one. Try as I may, I can’t seem to get it wrong any time I’m high on Hovland.
Picks: Outright +2000 [1u]; Top-10 +190 [1u]
Wyndham Clark
Clark’s tee-to-green stats have tapered down a bit since his inspirational win at the US Open. The former Oregon Duck is riding the best form of his entire career and is now among the best all-around golfers in the world. I’ll continue to bet on Clark to keep his mental game steady and let the immense talent show up on the scorecard.
Picks: Outright +3000 [0.5u]; Top-10 +260 [1u]
Corey Conners
Betting on Conners will put me in the ground one day. I never seem to get him right, but shame on me for giving up on him. The Canadian is outstanding from tee to green and can score with anyone in the world with just an average week on and around the greens. He is sporting some really disrespectful odds at the St. Jude, of which I will try and exploit with full acceptance that he will probably break my heart again.
Picks: Outright +5500 [0.5u]; Top-10 +400 [0.5u]
Chris Kirk
The main comp course for TPC Southwind is PGA National, the site of Kirk’s drought-quenching victory at the Honda Classic this season. Another magnificent iron player, the lanky Tennessean is primed for a strong showing in his home state. He is understandably billed as a longshot in this indubitably strong 70-man field, but the stats point to Kirk playing above those expectations. Kirk is playing to advance to the BMW next week. He gets a slight nod over my fellow NorCal native, Kurt Kitayama.
Picks: Outright +13000 [0.25u]; Top-20 +320 [0.5u]
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