The Betsperts Golf crew breaks down the full Travelers Championship field, covering the sleepers worth backing, the names we're fading, and the best bets we're making heading into the week. We go through course fit at TPC River Highlands, historical trends that matter, and where the value is sitting in the market right now. Whether you're playing a tournament winner, building a DFS lineup, or hunting for props, this breakdown covers every angle before the first tee shot.
Full models, picks, and DFS breakdowns live in the Rabbit Hole. Use code BSG26 for 25% off any Betsperts Golf plan: https://bit.ly/40MZdaD
0:00 - Wyndham Clark Wins the US Open Again
0:01:00 - New PGA Tour Structure and Relegation Breakdown
0:04:00 - East Lake Playoff Problems and Tour Scheduling Issues
0:09:00 - Crowd Behavior at Shinnecock and the Wyndham Dynamic
0:14:00 - Travelers Field and TPC River Highlands Overview
0:20:00 - Scotty at Four to One and the Without Market
0:22:00 - Morikawa at 30-1 and Why He Fits River Highlands
0:25:00 - Odds Board: Crowded 20-30 Range and How to Pick
0:29:00 - JJ Spaun at 55-1: Six Straight Top 25s Outside Majors
0:33:00 - Rabbit Hole Walkthrough: Less Than Driver Ball Striking Filter
0:38:00 - Justin Thomas at 33-1: Three Straight Top Tens Here
0:43:00 - Keegan Bradley Defending but Stats Are Down Year Over Year
0:47:00 - Andy's Card: Morikawa, Akshay Bhatia, Harman, Hoge, Glover
2026 Travelers Championship Betting Guide: Best Bets and Sleepers
Everyone, welcome in. Betsperts Golf, busy day of golf, Ryan Noonan and Andy Molitor. Travelers Championship, U.S. Open recap, new PGA Tour moving forward, lots to unpack. Buddy, how are we doing?
Yeah, I haven't read the whole article about all the stuff, but a lot of it was kind of foreshadowed, the relegation, moving up and down. We kind of had that already with the Korn Ferry Tour, but this feels more like, in season, more of a top crew and then your secondary crew, because now there are some of these tournaments where the top crew is still playing in it even though it's like, hey, this is a secondary event, and they're going to play them on the same weekend. So that'll be fun. Looks like there's going to be some gaps. We complain about that too, though. It's like, hey, there's too many events between these two majors. And again, Rory's skipping this week because that's how he does his schedule. So maybe spreading out some of the big events for the big, popular, important names, what have you, maybe that's not a terrible idea.
I love the part about playing a Seminole or a Pine Valley instead of, I don't like East Lake. God bless it, it's a nicer course than I've ever played. I don't go on fun golf trips like you, I just play the local munis. But it sucks. It shouldn't always just be in Atlanta in August. That's the thing too, it's a terrible time of year, it's hot as heck down there. And I just don't like East Lake as an event. It takes some starch out of what should be a big event, and it's already a bad playoff because of the timing with the NFL starting to fire up. No, I'm a fan of Rolapp so far. He's done a lot of good things.
I just watched the presser. The presser ended just before we came on here, so he spoke to some of the specifics, and I think there are still a lot of unknowns in there, but some big takeaways. I like that we're going to continue to have some sort of playoff, but the playoff is, we're going to acknowledge the champion of the season. That was some of the concern, it's like, we want to do a playoff that ends in match play, and we're going to have these really wild scenarios of who's our tour champion. So finding a way to put a bow on the regular season and then, hey, we're going to have an end-of-season event and everyone says they want match play, and we're going to do it this way and we're going to go to cool courses. Some of that's going to be interesting to see, like logistically the ability to host at Pine Valley or Sand Valley, or just go to random courses. The logistics of what goes into playing there is a little bit tricky.
Medinah's going on. We're going to have the Presidents Cup right here very soon. The high school my son just graduated from has a freshman-sophomore campus and a junior-senior campus, and the freshman-sophomore campus is shut down for two weeks after school starts back up because they need the parking lot for media and for all that stuff. So it's funny, there are logistics that go into these things. If you've been on premises for an event, it's like, a lot of stuff that can happen. So yeah, if we can go to cool courses.
What's the last event you went to? Last event I went to was, gosh, Greensboro, it was the Wyndham. I mean, think about where you parked, it's the same. Well, the window I had was different, it was media. So I mean, even when you're media, you're parking off site. There's just not parking lots set up for this many cars. It does take a lot to set these up, and I think that's what's going to be the slow process of moving that around.
The other part is acknowledging the regular-season champ and still having the playoffs. It's kind of like anyone who follows the EPL, they talk about getting a trophy, not the trophy. Obviously there's one that's better than the rest, you want to win the league for the year, but you can still win the FA Cup, you can win the Community Shield. There are different ways to do it. It's kind of like how golf should be. There should be the four majors, and then winning the season-long thing is the next best thing, and then winning, honestly, probably the Players, and then winning the playoffs. Make it a bunch of different ways to have these big names win events and win season-long stuff, and then after that probably the TGL Championship I would say is next in prestige, the LIV team event, the Commissioner's Cup. The NBA is doing this sort of stuff, everybody's going this way. So I'm excited to see.
I like that Rolapp came in and just said, he didn't say, oh, let's leave it status quo and get a feel for this. He's like, no, we're tearing it up, this is the way we should have it. A lot of it hasn't felt like lip service or fan service, but everything has been like, well, this is how people who enjoy watching the PGA Tour and follow the PGA Tour, this is how we want it. So it's like he reads golf Twitter, man. Well, that is a good idea. I think we both agree that really smart people, really good listeners, take the advice of people that have been there before, and also interject your own past-life experience and how you think you can scale the business. Coming from the NFL, he obviously doesn't want to run into having big important events go up against the NFL calendar, or even when we've just shifted mentally to the NFL. So there are some big questions still to answer in terms of fall-season stuff. Are we just off? What do the TV windows look like when you have these both-event situations? Are we going to have that, like, this is on CBS and this is on Golf Channel? I mean, there are so many people that are just straight streaming now.
And it's funny, for the World Cup, I don't know what channel the World Cup is on, but it's not something I have. I think I would need a TV subscription, so every single World Cup match I've watched to this point has been in Spanish, because I'm not going to take anything away from the announcers anyway, like, oh yeah, that is a good triangle formation. And honestly, the best part is when you're scrolling your phone and watching a soccer match in Spanish, you know when to look up because of their voices. They get crazy when something's about to happen. I'm going to have to try this because I'm pretty out on soccer. Yeah, it's on Peacock, every single one. And that's what I think a lot of these secondary events, most of it will be streaming. Hey, do you want to watch these secondary events? Peacock's like fifteen bucks a month, buddy, get it.
Best idea I heard, which did not come from Rolapp or any of the releases, but just start the Alt Challenger Series events on Sunday. So those go Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, so we would have golf all the time. That would be crazy. That would throw a weird wrench on our content schedule, we'd have to do a preview show on Friday for the other events. But yeah, that'd be kind of fun, it'd be interesting. We'll see what happens.
It's just a lot of unknowns, and there are the wrinkles of, next year Pebble Beach is hosting the U.S. Open, it's really hard to get into a concrete schedule, and then the following year Riviera is hosting the Olympics. So it's really hard, it's like 2029 until we really know what this can look like, and I'm sure they'll process whenever they need to and have probably learned some lessons. No moving in and out, just kind of a straight relegation. You can move up if you win twice in a year, which I think is good, you can play yourself in. I think that's what some of the fall season will be about, is placement, kind of like it already is. It's going to be interesting.
So, U.S. Open, any thoughts briefly before we jump into the Travelers, on a very bizarre weekend at Shinnecock with the crowd vibes? I mean, it's the same conversation, I'm not going to have it again. Same conversation we had after the Ryder Cup. It's like, geez, guys, chill a little bit. This is an American, that was the messed-up part. Again, I was coming in cheering against Wyndham because I didn't want the runaway, I wanted one of my guys in the mix. I'd made a live bet on Xander on Friday, I had Rory not too far at that point, and by the time I watched a bunch of the event on Saturday and especially Sunday, I'd flipped. I'm like, well, you guys are being dicks, and now I'm on the other side. I actually hope he wins now, because this is kind of unacceptable, to be screaming get in the bunker, get in the water after every shot. Come on, guys. Yeah, they're just not cheering. And he played good golf. It was one thing, like, hey, this is the villain from the Ryder Cup team that's winning the event, and we need to cheer for American Sam Burns to overtake him. That wasn't the case. This guy is going to be on the Ryder Cup team. Yeah, in a dire manner. Ours.
Another good tweet I saw too is, let's just put Patrick Reed and Wyndham Clark together. Oh, I love that pairing. I think still, skill-stacking wise, they fit really nicely too. That'd be fun. Anyway, I did probably too long on Wyndham Clark yesterday on the Monday preview show, so if you want some more extended thoughts that seem to be in line with where Andy is, check out our Monday show. Subscribe here, hit the thumbs up, hit the like. We know that most of you aren't doing that. That's okay, we appreciate you watching, but it's free content, so do that, it helps support us. You should be subscribing to the site anyway, because it's great content, and we're going to have more. We're going to continue to turn the screws and adapt to whatever professional golf gives us, both on hopefully the DP World Tour and PGA Tour, sooner than later. I'm hoping on the website this fall we'll have some DP World Tour preview stuff and maybe some videos too. I'm starting to familiarize myself a little more, I watch it here and there, but some of the timing is a little tricky, and I only have so much time in the fall.
But on to Cromwell. Should we get into Cromwell, Connecticut? Let's do it. The Travelers is weird. We have this a few times a year where it's like a weird dichotomy from one course to the other. One guy had one really nice round and managed to keep his score near there, but for the most part it was an incredibly hard course with incredibly high scores, and that's what the U.S. Open is. And now we flip it, and it's going to be, what's the average winning score here, like fifteen, sixteen under. So scoring birdies. It did play harder last year than it did the previous year, one and a half strokes harder last year. They did make some competitive enhancements heading into the 2024 season. It didn't do much, but it did kind of bounce back to normal, in line with where it's been the last handful of years. Again, it is now elevated in status, which we talked about. That's the thing that makes it harder to compare previous years.
Basically the top fifty here, outside of Rory, it's a lot of really big names that are going to play this every year now if it's going to stick to being a signature event. And like you said, it's a birdie fest and a short course. It's obviously a different kind of setup for what's required of you. You can't overpower it with bombing, you have to be really good with your wedges, you have to be really accurate with your wedges to mid-irons, you have to make a bunch of putts. And I think that leads to a little more variance, even though we have seen course history be a little sticky. We've seen guys who've played well here continue to play well here. Keegan is a two-time winner. We've seen some top names win here. Xander, years ago, Scottie too. So it's not like, hey, it's a high-variance birdie fest, just take a bunch of long shots down the board. I'm not going to discourage that, because I'm definitely looking at some names that I think can get in the mix, but it's probably a case where those are really good bets to make if you also make a top ten or a top twenty, or you have an each-way option for some of those guys, because it's hard to beat everybody when you're playing against the best of the best. Even though it's a birdie fest, those guys are better.
I wouldn't call it a birdie fest necessarily. It's not to the point of, we classify it as average. I know what you're saying though, what do we want to call it? I mean, relative to last week. It's certainly not Detroit. Oh, for sure. But relative to last week, it is very much a birdie fest. Yeah, you're right, it is probably middle of the pack for scoring, because there's a decent missed-fairway penalty, which I think is helpful. They've kind of kept the rough gnarly, which you have to, it's sixty-eight hundred yards for these guys, that's just not a lot. It's not far off of what we're playing from. And pretty small greens, which I guess is a similarity to last week. But again, you're scrambling, if you don't want to win, you probably don't. You're going to need to just score. Precision, as you mentioned, gnarly rough, big penalty for not finding the fairway here, so you need that accuracy off the tee. A lot of clubbing down just because of the length and the accuracy. Like, hey, I can still have a nice wedge or maybe an eight iron in here, why would I risk going off into some of the stuff that's going to get me in trouble? So tiny Poa greens, distance kind of neutralized.
So you kind of have your archetype here, or maybe not an archetype, but a bunch of key stats you can start to lean on pretty quickly. And then you can look at some comps that are similar. I'd say Harbour Town, good comp. Yeah, I think it's a good comp-course week, because of what they're asking you to do there. Riviera, maybe even. And some other Dye tracks. Harbour Town, Sawgrass, some of the Dye tracks. You'll see, some golf architects have a little bit of variety in their stuff, they have a couple of things they like to do, but there's a lot of commonality in terms of what Pete Dye liked to do visually off the tee. Off the tee, it looks like, hey, there's water here, but if you take on the risk, you set yourself up with a significantly better angle for the second shot. It was just a lot of risk-reward visual stuff. You get that at Harbour Town, you get that at Sawgrass. We also have Pebble, again short, small greens. Copperhead and Colonial, where we just were a couple weeks ago. Waialae is a positional, or was, rest in peace, positional less-than-driver course. Sedgefield, you know, Donald Ross, but still similar where it's tough to really bomb and gouge. Sedgefield, TPC Deere Run, the other couple, Potomac. We don't go to Hamilton, that's in the mix for the Canadian rotation and stuff. So yeah, I think it's a good corollary-course week for sure.
And then, you mentioned the scoring differences with last week. It was windy last year, I had to go check, a little windier. It's looking lighter on the winds, and there's some rain in the forecast, so the scoring could be a little lower. I think it was fifteen under last year for Keegan. Maybe a little lower than that. Outlier, right? These are kind of in line with the last handful of years, like sixty-nine and change. Again, maybe go look at the weather in 2024, you have a little bit of rain, it's softer, we play lift, clean, and place, and suddenly the scoring drops by a stroke just because there's no penalty for finding some less-than-desirable lies when you pick it up and clean it off, and obviously the receptive greens at that point. So I'm expecting it to be a little softer. Yeah, I do think there's a decent amount of rain in the forecast. I haven't looked, but I saw that mentioned in Discord in the chat, that you can get some rain in Connecticut. So we'll see.
You can see how guys got it done last year, pretty much most of the board was gaining throughout. Tommy was in the mix, Henley very much in the mix there last year, and then obviously we saw Tommy had a nice three-shot lead heading into the final round and could not get it done, which was painful to watch even for someone who did not have a Tommy ticket there. It was tough. Been known to happen. Right, Harris English. He had one here before, he won that Kramer Hickok eight-hole playoff, he had won, yeah, 2021. But then he actually showed up here last year too. Rory was here last year, opted out again, Scottie. He has some decent course history, the Glove, I know you're a big Glove guy. We'll see, he keeps popping up in my stuff. I haven't even looked at his price, it's got to be massive, right? It's got to be massive.
Like, I'm definitely betting a Lucas Glover top-twenty. That's just making the card. It's going to be a sizable number for him to win, and he just keeps popping up in my stuff, and it's not small samples. So yeah, Lucas Glover is coming home. Five hundred and one to win for Lucas Glover here. Shop around, it's maybe a better number. That's a DraftKings number as of yesterday. I might not even bet it, it might just be top-twenty. I'm going to feel bad if he does happen for fifty. I'm going to have to go find a little bit better than that, it's moving. He's like fourth from the bottom. It is funny, in these signature events, every time we have a signature event, if you scroll to the bottom of the odds you will find one. Brian Campbell, Brian Campbell, still here. Still, because he is qualified for all of these.
And speaking of that, you do have the elephant in the odds board, of four-to-one Scottie. We're down on Scottie, though. It's still, the kid can't put four rounds together. I mean, if this was last year when he started to make his run on the weekend, but this is, I gotta get a live bet on him, it's over, he's going to chase him down, he's going to do what he always does, he's going to hit four amazing chips in a row, he's going to go birdie, birdie, par, birdie, and suddenly we're looking at, is this a playoff? Or does Clark even stay in the playoff? And he's just a little off, and it was a tough course. But at four-to-one, even here, I don't think I can even think about doing something with him. And I would definitely consider the without-Scottie market, more than you typically, and maybe it's just offerings available to me, but I didn't even really consider it as a thing this week. He can obviously just go out and steam and boat-race and do it again here, but I didn't really take on or consider the Scottie market on a Monday morning. I'm just looking for the best prices on the guys I'd already looked at.
Do you remember what you said about him last week? He said, honestly, he can just win by six or whatever. And somebody in the comments chided you, nobody's winning the U.S. Open. And granted, he was right, nobody did win the U.S. Open by six. But Wyndham had a pretty sizable lead for a couple rounds. That would have been pretty funny if he'd managed to hold on to that lead, we would have definitely brought that guy up. I mean, we did already.
Yeah, top of the board is tough because, like you said, Fleetwood, maybe I could get there, he's played good, but tough to ask him to finish the tournament. Xander, loved him last week, like I said, I got in him live, he's won here. Again, it's not a huge number, I've considered that. And then you have a bunch of really good golfers in that twenty-five to thirty range, and you can't bet them all. Ludvig, Fitzpatrick, Sam Burns, Cam Young, Justin Thomas, Si Woo Kim, Collin Morikawa, Cantlay, Henley, Clark, all twenty to thirty. So pick your favorite guys, I guess. Start to make some sub-models and look at who does this better. I did start looking at opportunities inside fifteen feet from the fairway, opportunities inside ten feet from the fairway, from different distances. I broke it down a little to help me pick out, but a guy I zeroed in on, a course like this where you play darts you can win, and Morikawa being towards the end of that pack was something for me. And I know JT's been bet down, his number was quite a bit bigger earlier in the week, I liked him less, so maybe at twenty-five. But yeah, Morikawa at thirty or better piqued my interest this week.
Yeah, he was my only runner that I really had on the weekend. Looked good, moved around well. He didn't chip well Thursday, he didn't chip well Sunday, but he gained strokes putting, or was really close to gaining strokes putting all four rounds. The approach ball-striking stuff was back. What are we looking at, it was still thirty-three, thirty... Caesars has a thirty-five on Morikawa, which, they almost never, they take pride in never having the best-in-market number on somebody, where he's bet down to CRIS and change, and Pinnacle. So there's some offshore stuff. I will plus-one you on Collin Morikawa, I also made that bet, and it looks like I could have got a better number on Caesars, who just has not moved. He's still thirty-three on FanDuel, thirty-five on Caesars on domestics, with the best prices on him currently. So I'm with you.
You wouldn't know that he was in the mix on the weekend, because we didn't get a lot of Collin Morikawa on the television. No, I'm not sure I saw him on the broadcast. He's in the mix, T-5, he's on the board, he's on the screen, can we show a shot? He's one shot behind Tom Kim, I'm watching every Tom Kim shot, can I get an occasional Collin Morikawa shot? Anytime it was Collin Morikawa on the weekend, it was a missed putt. I barely saw any full-swing Morikawa, but he appeared to be moving. I watched a lot early in the week and he was fine. Yeah, his off-the-tee numbers haven't been great as a whole, but clubbing down and relying on the irons instead, his putting overall has been good. At thirty-to-one I like him quite a bit, so he is the crux of my card this week.
Plenty's been good of late. The around-the-green stuff was just a couple of rounds specifically. If you dig into what he did at the U.S. Open, the around-the-green losses came fourth round and first round. But look at this, these are some Morikawa numbers especially in the second round, gaining. He gained at least point seven five strokes putting in three of the four, barely lost on round three, just kind of flat to the field. Same thing, bad fourth round in Canada, but he showed a pulse in Canada as well, trending a little bit. So I'm with you, I like the number, I think it's fine, in a good spot. His course history here is way worse than I would have expected. But whatever, I'm not going to get tied up in that.
And it's funny that you mentioned Tom Kim, who everyone, I was excited about him, like, yes, this guy, he's a fun personality and he's back, and then he's not even here. I know, but he's not even playing. Oh, I had him here that year Scottie chased him down, that was a painful one. Cantlay, Tom Kim, or Cantlay, or Harman, Tom Kim. It is funny too, that's a name I looked at, was Brian Harman. He can drain a bunch of putts here too, but I talked myself off that one. You talked yourself off of it? Did you go to the player page by chance and look at Brian Harman's Travelers course history? I did not.
Let me bring it up for you here. Brian Harman is a huge, huge, huge fan of Cromwell, Connecticut. He's five-foot-four, he hits the ball one hundred and fifty yards, so just rely on your irons, make a bunch of putts because he can putt well. And yeah, it's seven of eight years, top ten. It took a lot. He's a bet, top ten. Maybe I'm going to write that down, Harman top ten. It should be free, it should be minus five hundred. No, let's not go that far. I'm probably going to bet him in a placement. I did avoid him full-on for the win. I bet him to win, he was ninety-two. Oh, you did bet him? I bet him. Yeah, I miss. I mean, he's like fifty now, that's the other thing. I didn't get a very good number, ninety-two. He's going to end up on the most-hyped chart simply off of an egregious ninety-two at the Open. But I would not be betting Brian Harman to win at fifty-five. Again, he's never won here, but he seems to really like the place, and he's playing pretty well.
Just look at recent form, otherwise, he's been playing better too. This is not great, but it's been better after a really slow start to the season where he was missing a bunch of cuts. Trending well. The U.S. Open venue is not really fit for him, same thing, the Memorial miscut, like, okay, of course. But I think he was T-11 heading into the final round and then kind of ejected. Feeling good, looking ahead to those Connecticut lobster rolls and just kind of meddling. Gosh, lobster roll sounds good.
Thoughts on Henley? I think obviously a super popular pick. Numbers steamed way down, there was like forties on Sunday early. I feel like anybody who grabbed him early probably was a good idea. He's just such a prototypical fit here, he's really high up on just hitting the fairway, great wedge profile. He obviously has good course history here, last year he was right there, I had him at thirty-five. And the U.S. Open, Shinnecock, so he should be fine. Is the value gone at this point? What do you think of him at the price? Matt is a good question too, although I'll come back to that, because technically Henley made the cut, it felt like he missed the cut because he fully ejected. But Saturday was rough, it was ten over Saturday. He was also like, the Saturday wave advantage was pretty significant. They were intentionally trying to make the course harder in the afternoon, but those early guys on Saturday got right into the winds and played pretty poorly, no shot. I'm passing on Russell Henley at forty here. I auto-clicked at four... yeah. So where are we now, where were we then, we got steams, jeez, he's twenty at CRIS. So I'm saying twenty, twenty-five, it's hard to make the bet now. Thirty at Pinnacle. You can find domestically thirty-four on DraftKings. That's, I think, still of interest. If you have not got down, that's a pretty good signal of how much the market and CRIS have moved. So yeah, if you have somebody lagging, if you have a local that's still hanging like a thirty-five on Henley, probably worth a click, probably pretty good at this point.
Guys who missed the cut, though, I've got one. This guy, surprisingly, is over three in majors missed, he's not made a cut in the majors, sure, which is not great. But if you look at the events outside of majors, his last six starts, this gentleman has a win, a T-25, T-14, T-5, T-6, T-12. So six starts, worst finish is T-25, a win mixed in there. It is J.J. Spaun. Oh, I thought it was, I have a guy that's kind of similar. So it is a guy I bet. He did make, I forgot he made the cut. Okay, change, J.J. Spaun. I'll let you expound on that before I get to my guy. That's it. I mean, we're talking about positional golf off the tee, good wedge play. I have him seventh in the model, he was second in approach on short courses, and he was second in strokes-gained comp courses for me. So I think it's kind of noisy that he's over three and made cuts. He was on the wrong side of it a little bit last week, he just didn't play particularly well in that Scottie group. We saw a lot of him on TV on Thursday and Friday, he just wasn't sharp, but he's been playing really good golf, and this is a great fit for him. He was in the mix here a little bit last year, I think he finished ninth, coming off of the win at Oakmont. So Spaun was the guy that got a little extra rest, didn't have to mess with Shinnecock on the weekend, and hopefully heads to Connecticut refreshed. So, fifty-five to one was the number I pulled on Spaun, and that seems to still kind of be there, fifty on CRIS, but domestics are a little bit shorter now, so it seems like a good price.
You got a guy similar, that similar boat? I mean, he made the cut, he actually played pretty decent golf last week, but I like him based on what I did for my model. My Rabbit Hole model this week was ball striking, taking out the driver fest, I went mixed and less-than-driver courses only over the last year or a couple years, and I said, show me ball strikers when they're more often than not leaving it in the bag. And then I looked at fairway one twenty-five to one seventy-five, just your approach, I looked at scrambling especially on smaller greens, I looked at a little bit of Poa putting, I just like to throw that in there to penalize somebody who absolutely can't sink anything. And Akshay Bhatia was super high in almost everything. His scrambling was middle of the pack, but ball striking, he was eighteenth, the fairway one twenty-five to one fifty number, and that was a decent sample size, I think the last twelve months, he was second. Really good wedges. And he's a guy who can obviously win at a place where you've got to score a decent bit to win. So he is ninety-five to one at BookMaker. Again, sixty-five, seventy-five most of the places in the market. That was the thing, like, man, if he's seventy-five, I'll probably bet him, it's going to be a big fat number. Ninety-five was a little silly.
Yeah, I want to say I saw, I looked at him a little bit, I think I remember him being first-round leader or heading into the weekend with the lead, and he did play pretty well here two years ago. But I think the best I saw was sixty, sixty-five, which is, I think, fine. I considered it. It really stings. I'm looking at, I have the ESPN leaderboard up, because I was trying to look for something as a miscut to answer that question, and it shows Akshay Bhatia made two hundred and eighty thousand dollars last week, which is good money, it's more than I made last week. And you're looking at the ties and all the guys that had to split. And then you get down to twenty-third place and you just see two dashes, a couple of amateurs. They both finished T-23. Everybody else who finished T-23 had a hundred and eighty-one thousand dollars, it would have been less if they'd had to split with them. But a hundred and fifty K in the bank would have felt pretty good, so I think those guys will be all right eventually. I mean, what will the winner win, like 1.2 next week for winning the John Deere? Miles Russell was in the spot where they were winning a hundred thousand apiece. There are a lot of amateurs, yeah. Oh yeah, obviously you're not going to get into the field otherwise. Can you switch right before, hey, guess what, I'm pro, just kidding, lol, still here, psych?
Akshay, I felt like he was going to be middle of the pack, so it's really, for me, a lot of eggs in the Collin Morikawa basket, because Akshay is a bit of a long shot. And then, like I said, I did look at Harman, I'm probably going to bet some positional stuff. Lucas Glover, same thing, I'm going to bet some positional stuff. And then real long shots, again, probably top-twenty bets. Although now that I'm going to say his name, I'm going to have to bet him, because I did this and he won Myrtle Beach without my money on him: Brandt Snedeker is another one that just keeps popping up for me. God bless him winning Myrtle Beach, that's a whole different kind of field, but the stats that you need to win here, he wasn't that far down. A two-time winner this year, he has to put himself on the team. Can you imagine? He'd be like tenth in the Ryder Cup standings if he wins this event, this is the captain. This is seven hundred points to win this event, so he'd be way up the standings, because he does have a smaller win this year.
But him, Tom Hoge is another one I looked at, obviously the putter. Hoge is like five hundred. Yeah, it's not somebody I could really get on board to win this event. His scrambling, his short game in general is hot trash. But if it's just league average, he's so good with his irons, he's an elite ball striker, he can definitely make it into the mix. And again, he's like five hundred to one, his top-twenty numbers are going to be pretty enticing. And a little higher up the board, I am almost talked into betting Bridgeman, because we had the spring of Bridgeman and then the Bridgeman fall-off. Is this the Bridgeman revival? Is that where we're at? He was another one that modeled pretty decent, with his irons, and he has a really strong short game. So another guy, if the ball striking, if the off-the-tee stuff shows up, he's definitely in the mix. He was T-11 up in Canada, he made the cut last week, he putted really well, which obviously is expected of him. Would he win the Genesis? Yeah. Jesus Christ. You have to bet him. All right, Bridgeman's on the card. Honestly, he's a lot. Eighty or ninety, what's the number? He's eighty at Bovada, I'm shopping now. He is eighty-three at BookMaker, he is eighty-five at BetOnline, you are the winner, Dave Mason. Ninety-seven at Pinnacle if you happen to have access. So this is the race to two wins, Snedeker, Bridgeman, Scheffler, who gets there first? We will find out this week.
I considered Bridgeman and another guy. Literally, if you combine these two guys, they'd probably be the best golfer in the world. I don't think it's allowed, it's frowned upon in a lot of countries. Hoge and Bridgeman, if I could mash them together. Ryan Gerard and Bridgeman. I definitely looked at him. Yeah, Gerard, same thing, ball striking is great, the around-the-green play is awful sometimes, and the putting is rough. He actually had a weird week, I think, at Shinnecock, where he lost strokes on approach, gained on and around the green, but distance approach is great, just as he gets closer to the hole it gets worse. I passed on those guys because I kind of stayed a little bit higher on the odds board, but Bridgeman and Gerard I think are both pretty interesting, because they're playing good golf, and the legit win for Bridgeman should keep our attention. Almost won the Memorial, almost won in Hawaii, missed the cut last week, tough place. He modeled thirteenth for me in my course-fit thing. The short game is more predicated around the green, really struggling at times, putted really well obviously at the Memorial. He's a guy that I think fits here, so maybe a DFS play, somebody who fits nicely in DFS or fantasy.
I skipped one of my top-of-the-board looks. I bet Justin Thomas, and he's been playing really good golf. Again, what number did you get? Because I mentioned him as, hey, you've got to love him coming in with his form, but he's been beat down more than anybody this week, almost more than Henley. I bet thirty-three. So where are we, it's twenty-nine on, CRIS is like thirty and change, twenty-nine on DraftKings. He's been playing really well, we've got our string of six straight T-23-or-better finishes. And then when we go to the Travelers, we see three straight T-10s for JT here, T-9, T-5, T-9, pretty much gaining throughout the bag in all of them. So he's just trending well, plays well again, talking about clubbing down off the tee. I would say his driving accuracy is spiking with this new Titleist, like, this should be a Titleist commercial for the new driver right here. He's finding way more fairways than he typically has, and that's kind of been the bugaboo for him. So tossing darts with the wedges, keep him in play off the tee, he's going to club down more. I like thirty, or I guess twenty-nine or so now that you can get on DraftKings, on JT.
So JT, Morikawa, Henley, Spaun, down into the next section at fifty-five, and then Harman is the bomb-ish play at ninety-two. So that's my five-man TPC River Highlands card. It'll be Morikawa, Akshay, Bridgeman, and then some longer-shot positional stuff on Harman, Hoge, Snedeker, Glover. Glover, yeah, I'm going to get Glover on the card, gotta get Lucas Glover. You can't text me Monday morning first thing, Lucas Glover week, and not have some Lucas Glover bet somewhere. He was T-I last year here. That's what I'm saying, he's a really good fit here, he's one of the last spots that he could really win. My concern, and I joked with you, is I'm not sure it's going to be hot enough for him. Yeah, it's not sweaty. Maybe it won't be heat, but it'll be humidity that gets his sweat glands moving. Maybe he'll wear gray shirts where you can really see it. He feels the pressure from the mules who are mad at him because he sold them out.
All right, if anybody has any other guys you want us to discuss, hit us up in the comments here in the next couple minutes. I have a couple I want to go over real quick before we call it a day. We have not mentioned Keegan, your defending champion. He's not having a good year, he doesn't have a top ten yet. He has been better of late, but overall, especially when you compare it to how he was playing last year, it's been a down year. So he's like forty-five, fifty to one. He's so good here, though. Is it just, this is where he gets his top ten? And if you do like Keegan and you like his form coming in, maybe you should take some positional bets on him as well. Yeah, this is the year-over-year stuff, you can see here he's tee to green down almost a full stroke. Off the tee is down, approach is down, he's pretty much flat to the field putting, so I guess that's spiked, but everything else is down year-over-year. It's not been great, again, a little bit better as of late, but it was a really rocky start to the year. I feel like it's still a little bit inflated because he's won twice. It's a little tricky, it's not like it's immaculate course history. He won, but he's got a T-39, missed a couple of cuts here, mixed in with his first sniff of almost winning. So it's not Brian Harman course history, to be honest. I mean, yeah, he's sealed the deal here, but hasn't got over the line consistently. So, again, form more than anything this week, because to your point at the top of the show, Xander Schauffele won here, Scottie Scheffler won here, elite golfers in good form. So I think you want, more than anything, carrying form, and I'm okay with that.
Ryder Cup players, Ryder Cup captains. It's true, it's been a while. Honestly, Harris English has been on some Ryder Cups, five years of it, future captain for sure. He'd make a good captain, I like him, he's tall, leaders should be tall. JT Poston, yeah, he's playing awesome. You might have the same thing I have. I think he had a runner-up like four or five years ago, he did have one really good event here, and obviously over the years he's had some good stops here. You saw him on the broadcast last week, so it's like, hey, is this guy playing himself into form? A lot of it, if you get rid of the Travelers and look at what he did, a lot of it came in the short game and putting, which is tougher to carry forward. But if he did it on those greens, you should be able to do it here. You probably had to say, I did too, this isn't fair, we've talked about this over the years on the show, it's like, is JT Poston winning twice in three starts, is he winning meaningful events? I know it's hard to say, if you want to make the case for putting regression there are some big red numbers on there too. And one of them was at the RBC Heritage, which is not the same kind of greens, pretty easy putting, small and flat, and he didn't play very well there. So I'm humming and hawing on him. I think he's definitely someone you throw into some GPPs, and his price is fair enough. From a betting standpoint, the outright standpoint, I don't know if I can make that click. No, it's just so hard. Winning two out of three events for a JT Poston feels very tough, Memorial, U.S. Open, Travelers, one for one. My mind can't allow that to go there. The price is not awful, though.
Si Woo Kim, thoughts? Sure, he's been awesome this year, just keeps playing real good, not quite good enough. Correct. Positional golf, going to keep it in play off the tee. The putter can be a disaster, there was a lot of it here, but look at the trending play. It was really good earlier in the year and we kind of slowed down a little bit, but he's ticked back up, right? Harbour Town, Cadillac, CJ Cup, T-10, and Memorial. Again, I like form, and this is a great example of this. I'm okay if it confirms my priors on your form, I'll throw out this miscut at the U.S. Open at a place like Shinnecock if your lead-in form otherwise is fairly good. So that's like the Ryan Gerard case to be had too, because I think Gerard's right there with a couple of top tens and then a bad U.S. Open. I guess I would probably just go to Gerard instead of Si Woo because the price difference is so drastic. But that's my issue with him, it's just the price. It's like, are we making a guy who just can't get over the hump, but played pretty decent golf, missed the cut last week, are we making him twenty, twenty-five to one? That's tough for me. This is one, at Sawgrass he was really good, at Harbour Town he seems to like some Pete Dye tracks, Waialae, he likes these positional comp-course tracks. So with the prices just a little prohibitive, yeah, not for me.
Any final thoughts? It is, look, in focus to me, dude. Really, I'm sorry. Get a sub and they look nice and pretty on your mobile or your desktop, and BSG. I can see them just fine. Subscribe, betspertsgolf.com slash price-plans. Price, not plans, price dash plans, there is no S internal, it is singular, price-plans. Let's go to betspertsgolf.com, people, come on, get us up. But yeah, these are all the good guys that I was swimming around to that didn't necessarily make the clicks, but I can see finishing-position bets stylistically. They're checking the boxes at the top of, you know, keeping the ball in play off the tee and then being able to throw some darts in with the wedges, take advantage of what could be some softer conditions.
Anyone else on your list? No, I just thought we'd mention the Novig sub deal is still, if you do want to check out these charts in full high def on your own computer and you don't have a Novig account, you can go sign up on betspertsgolf.com. There's an article that walks you through it, holds your hand. Sign up using promo code BSG, deposit at least five bucks and you will get a full year. A full year, if you pay it out of pocket, is two hundred and forty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents American. We're going to give it to you just for signing up for Novig, as they will kick us a little on the back end, that's how these deals work. They want people to try out their stuff, and we want to get you a better deal on our subscription. So definitely check that out. I haven't even priced golf there yet, because once in a while they do have a lot better prices if you start to look at the Novigs, the Polymarkets, the Kalshis, so we'll see if I get anything there before we go.
Morikawa's, and change, Keegan, no, I'm all right with that. What was my next one? My next one was Gerard's fifty-four, Bridgeman fifty-four, a little shorter. The smart money's coming in on all the ones I like, I'm going to have to look at some of the longer shots there, definitely check them out. They have golf every week as well for outright betting. Know the rules, though. Some of the prediction-market bets do not treat a withdrawal the same way as a sportsbook. If you're worried about someone being injured, it may not be worth a few extra points of odds to bet them at a prediction market rather than a sportsbook. Almost any sportsbook in the world is certainly going to refund your money if you make a bet the week of an event and they withdraw before the event. And I know for the most part prediction markets are just, did they win or did they not, it's a yes-or-no question, that's how a prediction market works, that's how the law surrounding these works. So know the rules on that. And yeah, they don't have dead heat, we verified that with them. I'm not sure, Joshua points out they don't apply dead heat either, so some things to your advantage, some things to your disadvantage. Always know the rules. Yeah, it does make first-round leader a little more fun, especially in a week where there have been some big chops and people had nice big numbers that get chopped up, so that's interesting, I hadn't really thought about that for FRL.
All right, guys, we've got to run, we'll catch you next week for the, is it the JDC already? The JDC. I'll be gone Fourth of July weekend. I'm going to say this, shout out to the people that hand out credentials. When I apply for the 3M, they write me back, hey, yep, here's your credentials. When I apply for a major, they're like, no, yep, you are denied, you can't come to the U.S. Open, you're not important enough. The John Deere Classic just never writes back, I've applied like twice over the years, I've just never got a response, it just stays pending, and then I'm like, all right, I guess he didn't want me to come to the Quad Cities. So I'm going to go online right now and apply for a credential, and if I get one, I will go down there and eat some free food in the media tent, and maybe they'll let me swing the giant bucket loader, the backhoe with a golf club on it. Maybe they'll let me swing that. I highly doubt it. I hope so. We'll see you next week, we'll figure out what we're doing for shows with Ryan off, I've been at the beach, people. Down by the beach.