Muirfield Village is one of the most prestigious stops on the PGA Tour and the field Jack built every year is one of the strongest outside of a major. The Betsperts Golf crew breaks down the full Memorial Tournament field, covering the early favorites, the value names worth targeting, and what Muirfield Village demands from a player's game. We go through course fit, key stats to target, and where the market may be getting it wrong heading into the week. Whether you're playing a tournament winner bet, building a DFS lineup, or just want to know who to watch, this is your first look at everything that matters for the Memorial Tournament.
0:00 - Colonial Recap and JJ Spaun Hopes
0:01:45 - Memorial Tournament Field and Signature Event Format
0:02:00 - Muirfield Village Course Overview and 2020 Renovation
0:04:20 - Why Finding the Fairway Is Paramount Here
0:05:00 - Small Greens, Thick Rough, and Around the Green Importance
0:07:00 - Comp Courses: Augusta, Innisbrook, Bay Hill, Oakmont
0:08:00 - Scoring Conditions: Playing Over Par Is the Norm
0:14:00 - Course History and Why Experience Here Matters
0:20:00 - Recent Leaderboards: Hovland, Cantlay, Scottie's Back-to-Back
0:22:00 - Henley and Sepp Straka as Stylistic Fits
0:35:00 - Rabbit Hole Walkthrough and Difficult Ball Striking Filter
0:42:00 - Spahn, Rory, Cam Young, Xander Rise to the Top
0:44:00 - Scottie's Recent Form Drop and What It Means
2026 Memorial Betting Guide: Sleepers, Fades and Best Bets
Everyone, welcome in. Betsperts Golf here for a little bit of Memorial. Twenty twenty six. Jack's Place. The Scottie Scheffler Open. Andy, what's going on?
Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. It's kind of a good three week stretch. We'll go over what we think matters this week, we'll go over some guys we bet, and we'll take your questions. We'll do whatever you want. This is for you, this is not for me. I've already done my research. Actually, you know what, this is for me too. We do talk things out on this. You've talked me into a bet here or there. Honestly, I think even a winner. I didn't want to bet Fitz that one week. No, it was Cam. I couldn't quite do it, and then you talked me into it, and I believe that was one of his wins. Michael Brennan, too. Michael Brennan in the fall season. Yeah, the fall season. We were both pumped about him, but should we really bet Michael Brennan? And it's like, yeah, whatever. And a seventy-five to one down in Utah.
Morning, Mr. Josh Clement. Morning to anyone else out there. If you haven't yet, please, it's very sweet of you to hit the thumbs up button. And if you're not subscribed, that helps quite a bit too. We've gained a few hundred subscribers over the last few months. It's been nice. Helps the channel out. The channel does well, my bosses are happier. And if they're happier, they're more likely to give me money to keep making good tools on the website and give out more free content. So, appreciate it if you would like and subscribe. And yeah, let's get into Memorial.
It's a good tournament, even though, you know, last week was a nice respite from the garbage. Not, no offense to Craig Ranch and poor Byron Nelson, which is a big name in the history of golf. Boy, they put that together. We still went in under kind of a, I don't know if we're golf snobs now, maybe a little bit. There's like a range of proper results. You know, like when people complain about, you know, I don't want this kind of football game. It's like the people who complain when it snows in Buffalo, right? Like, oh, everything should be in a dome. Like, you know what? There's more than one way to enjoy a football game. They can't all be the same. I don't want homogeny. I don't want every tournament to be the same. You know, I want my U.S. Opens to be ridiculously difficult. I want my Opens to have awesome views of these wide open courses. I want my 3M Opens to be one hundred and five degrees and humid. I have different expectations. Simple man, simple demands.
It's funny how, like, minus ten to twelve is just like this. That's a proper tournament. And maybe it's because it's right around where we end up usually at Augusta, and that's kind of an anchor. But it was a good tournament. A lot of guys in the mix. I didn't particularly like it, Andy. I'll be honest. It held a lot of Russell Henley bags over the years. We talked about it on the show last week. I'm like, I can't quite at this price. Ron took the dive. He put a little swing on Russell Henley and he got it home, which... I mean, this week too, it's not like Russell Henley's not going to model well this week. Oh, he's played well here in the past. Yeah. And having like Spaun in the mix. So like to not only not have your guy there, like Henley went out and won it too, which, you know, it's a pretty bad-ass finish for him to just kind of nobody, nobody. They dropped him from coverage for the better part of a day. Yeah, they dropped him from coverage. He started like eagle, birdie and then the rest of the front nine was pretty rough. And then he just kind of took it in the back nine, which is awesome. Good for Russ.
I think people are going to still be in on Spaun maybe over the next even few weeks here. Yeah. And I don't blame them. It's funny. My takeaway from the tournament was I had to go back home and I was at my father's house for a good portion of the weekend and he watches golf all day long. And it's funny because he's older. He's pushing seventy, and he's got the streaming ESPN on all day where, you know, he gets up crazy early because he's old, he's watching like DP World Tour just because that's what's on what he considers like the Golf Channel when he pulls it up. And he asked me about that, he's like, does it do this to you too where it's like, hey, you got to change channels now? Like, yeah, dad, it does that to everybody. Yep. CBS has it, then he has to switch to Golf Channel from ESPN. It sucks for everyone. It's not just you. So it made me kind of laugh because of how many times we complain about, oh, I got to switch coverage, but it's still nice to be able to have that streaming in the morning.
Um, I don't have a lot else to say. I had Gary, he was in the mix but it was the same kind of thing where it was, you know, two steps forward two steps back a lot where he'd make some headway and then give it back. He was right there but not really right there. I think he finished three or four back. Yeah, he's been playing really, really well. I think he's actually pretty interesting this week if you want to kind of float down the board. We'll get into some of the thoughts on golfers here for the Memorial. Like Andy said, make sure you're smashing the like and subscribe buttons here on the YouTube channel. You can obviously find us in podcast form wherever you listen to podcasts.
Again, we still have this Novig deal, so... If you are not subscribed to the YouTube channel and you're hanging out with us, you're probably not subscribed to Betsperts Golf as well. Another thing that you can go ahead and fix here today by taking this Novig deal. Again, BetspertsGolf.com. You'll find the article on the site. It's available in, I don't know, thirty five, forty states listed there. Another sportsbook opportunity for you, and pretty good deal. Use the promo code BSG. Click the links, opt in, all those things. Deposit five bucks. They're going to give you an additional fifty for free and you get Betsperts Golf for a full calendar year for no additional charge. So literally five bucks out of your pocket. Fifty five on Novig to bet, two hundred fifty dollars free, Betsperts Golf for a year. Doesn't get better than that. Let us know if you have any questions. Pretty simple to follow through here on the site, though. But definitely check that out, guys. I mean, we've been talking about it for like two months. We did not think Novig would allow us to run this into June. We're still here with it. So great deal. Check it out again. There's no small print there. Just five bucks out of your pocket can get you a lot for the rest of the golf season and into the next golf season. Yeah, that's three sixty five, baby. That takes you through next year's whatever the hell we were at last week.
You know what tournament's name I could not remember? It was the CJ Cup thing, like, when they have long, silly names. Sometimes it makes me... And then we've had CJ Cup used to be something else. That's what I'm saying, it used to be something else. Do you remember? This used to have the one year we played here two weeks in a row. Yeah. Remember that Workday? Was that a Morikawa thing? It was a Morikawa thing. Morikawa on the Workday, and then it played, I don't know, ten shots harder the next week. Yeah, it was fun because they played it, and they set it up pretty easy, and I think they overdid it, and they're like, all right, we're going to have to crank things up a bit. COVID golf was a trip. Weird stuff.
And again, we run into the same kind of problems. We run into a lot of these signature fields. This has a cut, though. It does. It's a small field that does have a cut. It is your final one of those, as we had that at the Genesis and the API. This is your third hosted event, as this is Jack's Place, and we will have the thirty six hole cut, ten within the lead, I think, still applies. But otherwise, it's hard to miss the cut. But some guys are still going to do it unless scoring is really that tight. And I think, yeah, DFS, betting, whatever, even a little bit of one and done since it is a bigger purse. You start at the top and you got to do some soul searching on Scottie because of the... Well, he's got all the form in the world. He's done, or excuse me, you know, here, course history has been great. Obviously, you're a two-time defending champ. Best tee to green player, best course fit. It's going to be hard to model anything at a high level, you know, and by high level, I mean just like your basic strokes gained data without getting too in the weeds, and not have him super high. Even when he didn't win, I think the year before that, and maybe even the year before that, he was top five, top three, twice. Yeah. So yeah. First, first, third, third. So it's like, ah, his price was short.
And I will argue that he's in a drought, and everything is contextualized by standards. It's not a drought for like, oh, I'm Max Homa in a drought, I might lose my tour card. Like, oh, shoot, this guy forgot how to go. A Scottie Scheffler drought is just only winning once this year. Once since January. It's been a long time. It's been a minute. He's had some great results, but I would argue that his price is incorrect, that it is just a little too short for where he's at. You've got to respect him. He should be the favorite, but it just, I disagree with how much of a favorite it is, considering there are just little holes in his game that bring him back kind of to the pack. And, you know, with golf being a contest between you and at a minimum, you know, seventy, eighty other golfers, those little things keep you from separating. Because when he did win tournaments, we talked about this with... and gosh, CJ Cup a couple of years ago, like you saw that scoreboard where he can separate. You've seen that in some of his wins where it's just like, all right, he's doing that thing where he's just going to hit everything. You know, every tee shot, every approach shot are just going to be damn near perfect. If he can putt half decent, at that point when he was winning a lot, his putting was getting better every week, he's just going to win this tournament. And it's just not quite there. He's got little holes in the game, the approach. I mean, the whole tee to green is good. It's just not that gap we used to have, where we used to say, hey, I know, I know, I know.
And I think a big reason it's coming back is he's playing a bunch of courses and a bunch of tournaments where he's had success in the past, where he does have a, you know, every course, every tournament is a fit for him because it's Scottie Scheffler, but he's kind of in this chunk of the schedule where he's won a bunch of these, he's played well at these courses and they really fit him. So I'm terrified of him just figuring it out and having that tournament. We all know he's going to have it. He puts it back together, but at the same time, I don't know that the pricing's caught up right. He should be closer to Rory, which I don't want to jump ahead, but Rory's got a whole weird bugaboo with this place if you really want to get into it. And because it's funny, we're talking about Scottie, like he's getting into the part of the schedule where he's won tournaments, and he has great course history, and he should be closer to Rory. And I don't know if Rory's price is actually accurate, and how much course history I would have put into my thought process and into trying to project a fair price for him, because Rory has never really done all that well here.
What's the stat? Of all the places he's played at least ten times, this is the only place he's without a win. If he's played a tournament ten times, he's won it at least once. I remember... I don't remember, this is the one place that breaks that rule. He's been critical of this course redesign. The history just isn't there. That said, it's a guy who's won back-to-back Masters, and he's certainly playing a little better than where we were three, four years ago, if you guys remember when Bryson was drinking all his shakes and turning into a gigantic person. A lot of other people, he was the big story, but a lot of other people were chasing speed and distance as well, and Rory was one of them, and he developed a little bit of a double miss off the tee and it was dragging him down when he was trying to make some of those gains. And obviously he straightened things out and it is, clearly, you know, one A right now or one B. I love this Rory journey for you. This has been fun. Yeah.
I think both of these stories we're telling about these guys, it goes to speak about like you don't... it's not some linear progression, I just keep getting better at golf. Even for the best guys in the world, there's hills and valleys. I don't know what you said about last week, but somebody wasn't putting well and then you watch the rest of their game fall apart. You talk about how golf's played between the ears, and some of these guys, part of their game goes and sometimes the rest just follows because you're sitting there the whole time thinking about your approach. If your putting stinks and it's gotten markedly worse, you're sitting over your second shot and you're thinking about your putter already, like, if I don't make this shot perfect, I'm missing this ten footer, I'm missing this fifteen footer because I just can't figure that out right now, and it affects everything. And you know, the ebbs and flows of some of these guys, I think, you know, short-term form is still tough because you have to beat so many people, but, you know, like maybe, I think I'm not betting either, but I still wonder, I still think for both cases, I'm saying like Rory and Scottie should be closer in price. Yeah. I think that's fair.
I mean, the Scottie price thing is, you know, it's tough. It breaks... I think it breaks your brain. If, you know, betting on him kind of, I think breaks, at least for me, breaks my process in terms of how I stake and structure bets, because your style is a little different, and your style I would probably say is unique in terms of how you stake outrights. For what I do with outrights, Scottie just would theoretically never be on the table because I could never get him to the... Yeah, I'm betting five units on Scottie Scheffler. Correct. Yeah.
So let's go through a little bit of recent data to kind of back it up. We'll jump into this here because guys play different schedules. You know, Rory in particular is, you know, OK, sitting out a bunch of signature events. So trying to compare time frame is tough. You really have to compare rounds played. If you look at Scottie over the last twenty rounds, right, has not won, he is so far above and beyond everyone else in this field. Last twenty rounds. Think about how good Cam Young's played. Fitz has got multiple wins. Rory, won the Masters, has been playing really well. And Scottie is lapping the field in strokes gained total, strokes gained tee to green, strokes gained ball striking. Lapping. I mean, you know, average at two point eight three. In this range, Cam's the only other one above two. And this, again, is in his cold streak. So back out to, say, thirty six rounds. Again, not as crisp, not separating quite as much. You can see that a little bit tee to green. You know, Rory's right there, has not caught up to these rounds played. We're only getting twenty six rounds from Rory because, you know, he just doesn't play as much. He's happy to sit down. But Scottie's still so much better than everyone else.
Ludvig, another guy that people would love to blame Ludvig because he can't get over the finish line either. We've got to continue to try to bet on guys that keep themselves in the mix and get themselves shots. If you think that Ludvig is a mental midget on Sundays, I don't necessarily think that, but I think he'll figure it out eventually. But a lot of the data still points to Scottie being head and shoulders above everyone else. Now you get to a place where he has immaculate course history and a place that has fairly sticky course history. It's tough, man. The Rory quotes about this place stick in my head. He doesn't like that the fairways pinch in a lot of his landing zones. He's almost too long for this place, even though we're talking about a seventy five, almost seventy six hundred yard track from the tips. He doesn't like where it pinches. So he has to club down a bunch. Whereas a lot of guys are not having those issues because they're just not as long as Rory. That's part of it. I probably wouldn't club down there. Yeah. So he doesn't like that setup. So I get your point of like Rory being, you know, ten and Scottie being three. Probably tough to stomach, but I kind of get it.
So I upset the apple cart this week, Andy. There's this new thing, you're probably not aware of it. I was not aware of it until recently. There's a lot of gatekeeping. There's a lot of NFL betting gatekeeping. There's a lot of outright bet gatekeeping that's starting to come to the surface. Ninety percent of it is just Kirshner trying to make money off Twitter. Oh, that's fine, the Kirshner stuff. Yeah, he's just goofing. Yeah, he's goofing. He's just trying to get impressions. Yeah, no, there's other... But there are people who are doing that in earnest. Yes, yes. Which, you know, is its own thing, to be honest, kind of fascinating to me. Like, I can't imagine... I mean, first of all it's the internet so it's funny, but I can't imagine being an adult and my brand is going to be, I'm caring about what other adults bet. But there's, you know, a faction out there that is very much not okay with people betting Scottie outrights or doing some other things. I definitely... my two-man card has shaken the apple cart this week, which I think is a riot. So, yeah, I'll tell myself, I've been on Scottie. Yeah, I looked at this from two different ways yesterday. I was either going to have a one-man card, and it was just going to be, you know, straight up Alex Fitzpatrick, and that's it. I mean, it was good. And he's in here. He's got to be in here. No, honestly, his price is so big, I'm very close. Sixteen rounds or something, get some positive. Yeah. But he's been playing golf.
So it was either going to be that, where I said, I'm going to lump everything I was going to spend on one guy and assume that the stats make sense. Golf is a funny game, and even when you're playing the best in the world, you don't win every time. It's like the sample size thing where, you know, if Scottie had played Craig Ranch what, five hundred times, if they run that tournament five hundred times, yeah, he wins it probably pretty commensurate with what his odds were, he wins it a lot of the times, and that just happens. Same thing can happen at the 3M. He might not win the 3M Open, and that'll be kind of a funny thing when he loses to like, you know, Johnny Vegas repeats, Scheffler second. But you run that tournament five hundred times, he wins it like two hundred twenty five times.
That's just, you know, it's hard to maybe think about things in terms of probability sometimes because, you know, like, oh, my God, he's even money to win a tournament. Like that means he loses the tournament half the time, half the time somebody else wins the tournament. I mean, it's still crazy odds for a golf tournament, but for sure, you remember like that's what he's dealing with every week when he's four or five to one. There's still very short odds, but when you're four to one, you're still only winning it twenty times out of a hundred, eighty times out of a hundred. You know, that five to one shot is there, four to one shot isn't winning.
So I was close. It either went that way or I said, I'm going to pick my golfer against him, basically, because this is one of those places where you can't fake a result. I think somebody else used that. I wish I could give him credit because I think that's a good phrase to use around this tournament, this event. That said, there are some long shots I kind of love here because the prices are beat to hell. So I went back to the well with a guy, basically one of my best fits who's not Scottie here, who had a longer price but was still amongst the elite. And I bet, I joked about Alex, but I did bet Matt Fitzpatrick. I thought so. Okay. And basically, that's my card. Like, Matt Fitzpatrick is my card. And then at that point, you know, I said, I'm going to bet some other guys. And, you know, it might be longer shots, but I'm fine putting a few bucks in some long shots and we'll get to those later because those are small bets, just kind of a, hey, I think this price is wrong and I'm happy to take some money off here.
Let's go back to the course a little bit. It's a tough test. It plays difficult. We've, you know, since the renovation, it basically plays on average like one point three strokes over par. Like Andy said, it's, you know, small field signature event, seventy two. But there is the cut line. In the last couple of years, we've had the cut at like plus five, plus six. You know, and you see those guys that barely make the cut and survive the weekend, and, you know, they're double digits over par because this place can definitely jump up and bite you. Pretty much everything is hard. It's a difficult ball striking test. The rough is really penal. Jack is deliberate in his basically having to execute every shot in the bag. It gets harder as you get closer to the green. He's got generous fairways, but if you miss, you're in trouble. You know, really significant miss fairway penalty, rough penalty. So you got to really keep the ball in play off the tee. That's why you've seen some of the Sepp Strakas and Russell Henleys and like the J.J. Spauns of the world. Those guys can be in play this week because we know that they're fairly accurate off the tee and that's half the battle. You really need to be playing from the fairway. Mixed club selection off the tee, too, even though we have a long golf course, because there are some of the pinched fairways and some doglegs and some stuff. You do see driver usage kind of dip down a little bit here, but you know, pretty much everything is hard. The only thing you get in here a little bit, three putt avoidance, some of that goes into just being small greens.
So, but you know, you look at the comp courses, it's a good week, I think, to look at specific Muirfield Village course history, but then your comp courses are some of the long big tracks in the rotation and major championship golf venues. So that's pretty much all we have here, a lot of red. The hole breakdowns in terms of how it scores, your greens are your par fives, so those are not locked birdie holes. You can see the eleventh is, you know, barely playing under par, but those are really your attack holes and your chances to go get those. So, um, I can break down the course metrics here where you could see the driver usage is, you know, kind of trending down. Guys are even with the, this is year three of it being in the signature event, small field model. You're seeing even more club downs from, you know, the elite fields, which I think is telling as well. Guys know the importance of really playing from the fairway here. So.
Approach buckets, nothing that really jumps out. It matters a ton, right? No, it's just all of it. Hey, which approach bucket? All of them. Because again, small, fast, firm, bentgrass greens. You got to score on the fives. So you got to have some strong approaches where you can there. You have to not lose strokes on the tougher fours, a couple of long threes. Your approach game really has to be on point. And you mentioned the rough. It's about a half-stroke penalty, which is heavy. I mean, obviously we're going to get to some places where the rough is knee-high, across the pond, and there's even bigger of a penalty, but that's fairly big for rough of this length, and as hard as it is to hit some of these fairways at times. Even though, like you said, some spots are generous if you're clubbing down. You just do have to be a little smarter here about not putting a bunch of those bad numbers on the card and staying with the pack.
It is kind of a great spot as far as where they put it on the calendar, prepping for the U.S. Open in a couple weeks, especially for those guys who are possibly going to skip Canada, which I love the Canadian Open too. That'll be interesting, just kind of jumping ahead. First time in a long time that the Canadian Open isn't some, hey, we got to figure out a course we haven't seen in a while. Just going back to back at Osprey Valley, huh? Yeah, I just noticed that, I'd kind of forgotten all about that, but yeah, we've been mixing fun courses in Canada, but yeah, it's nice to have something. Yeah, usually my notes from the previous year are like, oh, we're not here anymore, but I do have some Osprey notes. So, um, yeah, one of the hardest non-major tests on tour. Can't fake it. It's usually going to be a lot of the big names or the people in contention. It's going to be the big names. Plus, like you said, some of the guys who can properly manage a course like this with their accuracy, their tee to green and their ball striking. And they just kind of have to keep it together to be up there with, you know, with the Scotties of the world.
And Scottie, I mean, look, wins by margin last year, wins by four shots. Did not gain strokes putting. That's how good he was, you know, tee to green and ball striking. And, like, it's just, I think he had three rounds at seventy and a sixty-eight on Saturday. And it's enough to win going away. The twenty twenty four win was a little bit more contested with Morikawa there at the end. But, again, like you see here, two under, it's getting you in the top five. That's crazy. It's a difficult, difficult test. This is not a spot where you're going to see birdies in bunches and anyone going super wild. I think you could see they've had a decent amount of rain. But again, SubAir system here with the renovation. So Jack will have the greens, you know, thirteen and change on the weekend again. So I think you can see another scenario where we saw Colonial, where you saw some probably pretty decent round one scores and then just hold on from there. So you'd like to see someone get out and put up something a little bit there, one of your longer shots, post a number on Thursday and see if they can hold on a little bit because I think we'll have that again.
It's funny how often that happens. And I think it was maybe Potomac a few years ago when we had something like that where the first round leader was like seven under and then the tournament winner was like ten under. You do end up, especially here where we have a history of, let's crank the U.S. Open knob up a little here. Don't feel too comfortable if your guy has a nice Thursday because some of those guys are going to miss the cut. Yeah. So again, this is the stuff that leads to, you know, being fairly bullish on Scottie.
Rory did not come here last year. We were still in the post-Masters haze of, you know, of self-discovery. Uh, what is the meaning of life? He was here in twenty twenty four. Uh, finished a little bit off the pack. But again, you know, he's going to fall too far back. Here was a bad Sunday. Um, he finished in a tie for fifteenth. So, yeah, it's been a spot where course history matters. I think it's a good comp course week as well. But yeah, it's tricky. It's a tricky, you know, again, I know some people hate the without-Scottie markets. I know people, again, how did I get it? I thought about it with Fitz. Yeah, it introduces dead heats and things like that, I understand that. It's not super clean and the price itself is depressed, I understand. It's the same premise again, going back to like, you know, the gatekeepers. Like, I'm trying to win some money, so yeah, I'm not going to win what I would typically win if I bet Scottie this week and allocate a single unit to it, but you know what, it's better than losing on a bunch of long shots when I think Scottie Scheffler is going to win the tournament.
Jumped in there and, you know what, having done this a couple times, single bullet Scottie this year always gives me a sweat on Sunday. Even when he started bad on Thursdays, he still has something to watch on Sunday and he still has a shot. You know, I'm thinking about that too, if he starts bad just based on the course history, I'm like, for sure, gosh, I might have one more name on the card at the end of Thursday afternoon. Yeah, that's the problem with him, though. He starts at three, you know, two plus, two ninety or whatever. Never gets that long. You know, he's getting seven to one. Yeah. On Friday afternoon. Good. Eight strokes back. Yeah. Probably play that, to be honest. I don't hate it. Yeah, that's playable.
Yeah, I mentioned Fitzy. I think he's probably popular amongst other people who like his game. It's just been, you know, hey, what if he had elite irons? And short game is working, he's playing well out of long rough when we had to. So, like, everything just fits. And I think it was a twenty seven, maybe even a little bigger. I'll have to find my best price on him. Right around twenty five. I think you can find pretty widely available, but I think it was twenty seven on him. And Jesus, like he's played just as well as anybody. Yeah, he's played just as well as any of these guys up there. And he knows how to finish tournaments. Yeah. Touche. I think he's had some decent finishes here, too. Yes. Good history. Yeah. I mean, nothing, no holes to poke in the game. He's been fantastic. You know, again, plays well on major championship tracks as well. And the form is elite. And what are you going to win for this year? I mean, that would be crazy. But I mean, he is that caliber of golfer. So I don't mean like a, you know, he can't do it kind of way. I just mean like it's just nuts. Yeah.
So a couple of... he's kind of lost in the wilderness here at this time in his game, um, you know, there was some weird stuff going on and he kind of gets it right here heading into the U.S. Open that year, and then last couple years post-reno, T-nine, T-five, T-thirty-one. I think it was probably like his worst finish in that stretch last year, kind of right around the PGA Championship when he really flipped the switch. Locked into the caddie, got the weights out of his clubs. Yeah, but I think this is encouraging enough for sure.
I don't really know what to say about the rest of the guys in that stretch just because, like, I'm kind of in the same boat with you, like I really have to love someone to play him against Scheffler at this track. Yeah, and you know, the Rory thing with his struggling, struggling is kind of a bit of a harsh term, but not playing up to his potential at this particular course for sure. You know who else, Aberg? I know some people like him. Just closing, winning a tournament right now at his price is just a little tough for me. I think his price is probably fine. Then if you want to get to some of the prices near the top but not the top, Cantlay is such a good fit here, and he's played well here, but are you going to bet on Patrick Cantlay to win a golf tournament in the big two six with the rest of the names here? It's hard to do with where his price usually sits. Honestly, if I was going to bet anybody, I'd want somebody who's ascending and who showed me some stuff, and there's also one here. I'd bet Hideki. If you made me add one more guy in the not-Scottie but not-crazy-long-shot stretch, it'd probably be Hideki Matsuyama, who's kind of trending up and has obviously played well here in the past. He's hard to pick out, too. When he wins a tournament, it's not like in a week where everybody was like, oh, this was a Hideki week. He just wins tournaments sporadically. He's very hard to get a pin on. And I don't know what to do with him. So I'm obviously not doing that.
Ben Griffin is a name that people should be excited about as well, as he's played, especially lately. And he's played well here in the past. He's maybe in the best form of his life. But again, the price is not where I'd want it to be at. And then Si Woo is still going to pop up based on what he's done over the course of the year. But man, another one where the price is... Yeah, I'm not betting Si Woo at this price. I really want to bet Si Woo. If I could have, and again, I don't know what I was thinking, but I went on Sunday night and looked, you know, I can't bet the DraftKings numbers, but I'd like to see what the DraftKings numbers are. It's like, damn, it is twenty two. And I'm like, I just want to, like, can we get to thirty on Si Woo? That would be something that you could sell me on. He's been so damn good and he's a great stylistic fit in terms of, like, we're talking about controlling the golf ball off the tee. The ball striking has been immaculate. Nineteen, twenty, twenty two. It's just, it's rich. It's rich. He deserves to be there, he really does. So, um, just to pull the trigger is a different thing.
I'm kind of, I don't know, I can't think of the times on the show where you and I have bet Patrick Cantlay. Um, I'm basically a never-Cantlay guy. It's been a while. Yeah, I mean, I think you probably would have done it before I have, and I don't really, I can't think of you betting Patrick Cantlay off the top of my head. It's trending better. I cannot argue with that. He's a fine golfer. Fine, fine golfer. He's back to being more of a fine golfer. The history is really nice. Again, I will continue to point out that the twenty twenty one victory is some of the most egregious stolen valor that we've had on the PGA Tour. This is Jon Rahm boat racing the field on Saturday afternoon, up by like eight shots, and then walks off the green and gets told he's tested positive for COVID and he's out of the tournament. I brought up the weird Workday thing. That was the second weirdest Muirfield thing that happened during the COVID. That was such a strange... I thought it was like NBA Centaur. I thought I was getting punked. It's crazy that it happened to somebody at the tournament. Like it didn't happen that often, maybe a couple times ever, where, and it was usually pre-tournament, like, hey, this guy tested positive, he had to pull out. I don't know. Maybe somebody correct me if I'm wrong. I don't remember maybe anybody else that was like mid-tournament tested positive. You got to leave for it to be... Anyone is a story for it to be, the leader is a big story, for him to be up by so much, like an insurmountable lead, yeah, and him getting thrown out for that. That was crazy.
Yeah. And this is true. Like, Cantlay top ten. He is a good fit here. No matter what happened, you know, he was going to finish probably second or third that year. He played well. You take the Jon Rahm and set it aside, it's not like Cantlay didn't play well. No, I think he beat Morikawa in the playoff. Yeah. Yeah. He played well, he had earned his top ten. Yeah, because we don't even have, I mean, the Rahm data gets tossed completely out of the picture. Yeah, he beat Morikawa in a playoff. It's Scottie right there. Again, they were all comfortably trailing Rahm, who was crushing everybody. So, yeah, I'm way more comfortable with the Cantlay top ten than an outright punt. But, again, that's just, I think, just not a guy I like to click. And sometimes when you're, like, on Sunday, I want to be cheering for the guy in contention. And I just don't find myself wanting to root for Patrick Cantlay very often. I like to see he's playing better because I think he's a better golfer than where he's shown for much of the last year plus. I guess there's another guy that doesn't want a golf tournament since twenty twenty two. I think it was Caves Valley in twenty twenty two. So don't love making that click.
Ron's asking about Nick Taylor as we come up on the Canadian Open. Nick Taylor popped here last year with no lead-in form and really no course history. It's kind of tricky. But this is Nick Taylor, though. He does this. And he can go on to win the golf tournament. So when Nick Taylor's in contention, he'll take down the golf tournament with big guys in the field. His Waste Management was like toe-to-toe with Scottie. We obviously remember the Canadian Open against Tommy. Big was in that field. It's like Nick Taylor goes out and snatches, you know, Big wins. The same thing in Hawaii with the Waialae win, like decent fields there. So I think that's probably a lot from last year's, yeah. And if you want to bet him top five, top ten, I think have at it because I think he is a good fit here. It's hard to see him getting a W against these guys. It's hard to see him doing that, when he did the one year, but, again, he's, you know, top quarter of the field in approach over a pretty big sample.
He's a good, accurate driver of the ball, definitely above average, and a very above average putter. Um, and then I threw bogey avoidance in, obviously this week in my model, just because where we're at. And over this last six months, he ranked tenth in that. So he actually modeled pretty well for me. I had him thirty first in my model. Um, with some of the names who are ahead of him, that's pretty impressive for a guy who's sixty eight hundred in DFS. And that's where I was going to kind of go with him. He is on my list of, hey, here's a nice DFS play, because I think for his price, he's very useful. And I don't know what ownership will be.
Yeah, this is Amy's model up on the screen. Scottie one, Si Woo two, Fitz three, right? I mean, the margin between Si Woo and Fitz... Cam, right behind Henley there too. Rory, Ludvig, they're kind of in that tier. Kurt Kitayama is interesting. Um, you know, did you, yeah, that's my shortest long shot, eighty to one. I think that price is too long for a guy who obviously fits so well, of everything I looked at here with the accuracy off the tee. Like, just ball striking tee to green, whatever you want to say. It's electric, and his putting is not horrible. Like, it's good enough here. It's going to be tough. Obviously, look at bogey avoidance, I threw in there. He rates out high in that as well. But basically, I'm just betting good ball strikers at long prices, because you can see Gerard as well. Gerard was also a bet where it's like, hey, guess what, I'm, you know, if you're gonna, it's like a hundred and ten to one, again, small bets on four guys that kind of modeled out well because of some of their course fit, some of the things they've done over the last three to six months. So Kitayama, I'm in, Gerard made the card, along with, uh, oh, God, one of them is a real, real pet scratcher that I just would love to see happen because I like the guy. But I did bet Aaron Rai as well. Okay. Again, he's like a hundred and ten to one. What did I get? A hundred and a bookmaker, I think, had him at a hundred and seven point eight or whatever. A hundred and seven point eight to one. That's a really big number for a guy who obviously can go out and just win a golf tournament on a tough course. Yeah.
I think this is a tough, still big number, of CRIS. I mean, it's way off the CRIS numbers, way off. Yeah. That was kind of the thing where I looked at him and, you know, I think Bovada was the first place I peeked just because there's, this easily, you know, the easiest to just copy and paste into numbers when I start looking at stuff, but it's like seventy five, eighty. Yeah, I'll put him on the list. And then you go to CRIS, and again, it's one oh seven. It's the same as last week where everybody had Gary forty, forty five, and CRIS had him sixty five. I was more than happy to grab that. You know, he didn't quite get there, but boy, that had been sweet to get a big off-price number to go. Aaron Rai, it's obviously a tough ask, but he's won a golf tournament before. He's a winner. He's got as many wins as Scottie this year, so if that was a metric we were using.
And then a real deep shot, a hundred and seventy-five to one at BetOnline, one Daniel Berger. Okay. Again, the sample's a little funny considering he's been doing better. And he's another one where it's like, if he puts it together, prime Daniel Berger time. That ship has sailed. He's only thirty three years old, but we've not seen prime Daniel Berger in quite a while. But I mean, I get, API is great. It's just a huge price. Yeah, Bay Hill. Right. Bay Hill is a great comp course. And he kind of, I don't know that he kind of choked that away, he just played really tight and didn't go out and win it. Played well. Has not played particularly good since, but I would understand. Again, to your point, stylistically, fairway, fine, they're going to keep the ball in play off the tee. Yeah, don't, and again, we're talking about someone that you bet at almost two hundred to one. Yeah. I think he's another one where he's like sixty seven hundred in DFS. I think that's a decent, again, another decent DFS play. I'm fine with taking a couple of these, again, small bets to go with Fitzpatrick, but I'm happy with having some of those long shots on the card.
I did have some other DFS notes, some of those. There's a bunch of guys that we like that are like seven and below because everybody's here, basically. So you have to give the big prices to the big names, but... I mean, look what Hoagie's price is again, you know. Yeah, I'm a Hoagie guy. Yeah, he gave us a little bit of a, I don't say a sweat, but like he got in the mix. It's funny too, I was at a wedding this weekend and I saw a friend I haven't seen in quite a while who married a PGA pro's daughter, like a teaching pro from Fargo. And years ago, he was telling me about this guy, I went and played with this guy. And he plays on like the mini tour or wherever he was playing at the time. He's like, he's a stick, you know, compared to us. But it's like he's still trying to make his chops and get on like the big boy tour. And it was Hoagie before. And again, he told me the name. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know who that guy is. And then like, you know, three years later, I'm kind of remembering it, and I had to like text him, like, was it Tom Hoge? Yeah, yeah, that's the guy. Yeah, so obviously we're a fan of him in this household. What's he, sixty three hundred? Again, cheap, cheap guy you can pin with some of your big names. Strong bogey avoidance makes room on a Scheffler card. If you want to put some Scheffler lineups, you're gonna need some Matt McCartys, you're gonna need some Taylor Pendriths. They're grading well.
I remember Snedeker last year went like bonkers on Sunday here. Like, what happened? Brandt Snedeker went off at seven a.m. and like shot seven under. Are there low scores out here today? And Snedeker's been playing pretty good golf. Yeah. God, remember? Yeah, I've been a Snedeker guy this year. And then, you know, in the mid-range, again, some guys that are like, hey, this guy finished twenty-fourth and never was in it, but he made me money in DFS. Like Ryo Hisatsune and Corey Conners. And just like repeatable ball striking and, you know, finding these fairways. Elite ball striking, honestly, from Corey Conners at that price. If you want to say like seventy one hundred. Like these are the guys that you're going to need if you want to win some money, because honestly, it feels like the harder part is figuring out which of the big names to use. I think Sepp will garner a lot of ownership here at seven, seven hundred. Uh, so finding some pivots in and around it makes sense. I think Woodland's another great play. We've touched on Woodland a couple of times. Uh, Sam Stevens. Yeah. Everybody loves him. I love Sam Stevens always. And he's six to eight hundred. I almost think he's a pivot because he seems to have higher ownership than I think he's going to every time. I wonder if some of that Nick Taylor, uh, last year's results drives a little bit of ownership of that range too. So wouldn't mind fading chalky Nick Taylor personally.
This range is interesting too. People love Jason Day. Jason Day is from the area. This is like his U.S. home. He lives down the street. I don't think he's ever really done anything here. He's never played particularly well. Akshay too, if we're going to go back to API, Bay Hill stuff, played pretty well at times last week. He just can't piece together four rounds. There's always a bad Akshay round in there. It's like JT a little bit. Um, it's a little bit tricky for me. I like Kitayama. I like Spieth a little bit, Bhatia, and Min Woo were guys that I liked in that range, pretty consistently. Well, like I feel like he's really made some gains and strides this year, year over year. Like, you know, you can look at the year over year stuff, but he's still not elite. Yeah. Yeah, he's trying to catch up. I mean, look, across the board, he's up a full shot per round, basically, tee to green and total. Again, gaining significantly more consistently off the tee. His approach isn't elite, but again, year-over-year gains, about a half a shot per round, which has been pretty great. I mean, everything's up. He's been really good and has had some really strong results. I mean, just look at, really outside of the Heritage, which we wouldn't think would be a great Min Woo event, Masters surprised people, burned, I know I had him as a long shot that week. He's just kind of been around. I mean, these are three straight T-twenties on big golf courses against strong fields. We've got some others here this year with like, you know, Pebble, Genesis, API. He's just been really good. He, again, hasn't really knocked on the top except at Houston.
But like, yeah, he came up, I think two weeks ago, maybe. Yeah. Bud Cauley, his cut streak continues. Like, guy just makes the cut, finishes respectably, obviously a little tougher test here. I'm not, uh, he hasn't missed the cut here since, uh, I'm looking at the right, I'm making sure I'm looking at Bud Cauley, yeah, twenty five, twenty four. All right, well, he didn't play twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, but he made the cut the last two seasons, uh, or excuse me, yeah, the last two times he played here. T-thirty nine last year. So it's been a minute, but he has made the cut a bunch here. So Bud Cauley, cheap, cheap pivot. Yeah, look, he likes tougher tests, likes, you know, stronger fields. And we're not winning many golf tournaments. I don't think he is going to win. Yeah, I don't think so. I'd take the no price. Take the no price.
We did want to, somebody asked about one and done, I want to get to that before I run. It's a big purse. And we have, you know, depending what you're, one and done, a lot of you I know do the events or the Mayo Cup. So I understand what you have left. I know other people are in ones that their buddies make in a spreadsheet, or they're playing on Splash or something else, maybe the story is different. But if you are playing on Mayo Cup, you have, what, two majors? Yeah. You have the Travelers and the playoffs. So if you have like Scottie, Rory, Fitz, Xander, any of these, Cam, Aberg, any of the big names left, you've got to start thinking about, you can't take these with you. And, you know, when you talk about those two majors as well, are you using Jon Rahm? Are you using Bryson? Cam Smith back in the conversation, possibly. Patrick Reed, are you using some of these other LIV guys on those two majors? And if you are, then basically, if you have those names left, you have two signature events plus the two playoff events. The Mayo Cup doesn't go into the TOUR Championship because the money's so silly there that would just skew results, be way too heavily weighted. So yeah, Jocko using Jocko, but I mean, you do got to kind of start to map out your end of the year here. And if you have Scottie left, there are a lot worse places to use him. This is a twenty million dollar purse, he's won here twice in a row.
You know, I did kind of go back and forth in my head about, what if you just use him at three out, like it's half the purse, but it's like three times the odds that it just happens and you get all the money, and probably not getting used a lot there. I just don't know. I can't get there. I don't think the math works out for doing that. Yeah, because he probably still makes as much finishing T-three here. No, that's where the math didn't work out, because I looked at it for Craig Ranch where it's like, man, if you really want to just use him here, if that's your plan, I'm going to take the free one on the small purse, save him for Blaine because that one's maybe more free and it's basically the same price. I think that's my main takeaway for one and done. It's hard to give you, like, here's the guy for one and done this week, because everybody, we're in June, everybody's used different people. Everybody's in a different spot on the leaderboard. You know, if you want to get riskier, I don't think you go down and use like Kitayama or Bud Cauley or something. No, no, no, no. Risky here is getting just past, you know, the twenties into the thirties, you know, on the odds board, honestly. You can't go too crazy.
I guess I don't really know. If you did have Fitz left, obviously, I think that's a nice one. If you have Russell Henley left, he's another one that's probably just, he has a high floor. I think that's kind of what you're looking for here, is high floor. If you're not going with a big, big name that you are, honestly, I think he just gets it done this week. So Henley, Fitz, Cantlay, Si Woo, honestly, Justin Thomas. I'm considering him because, you know, I've used some bigger names and I think some of the things he's doing, he's doing it right. He's getting back into form. Obviously, the Players figured things out. Hideki, I mentioned, I know a lot of people probably have him available as well because he's, like I said, it's hard to figure out when he's going to win. It's very hard to figure out when to use him in one and done. So. Impossible, in my opinion. Yeah. I wouldn't use Hideki in one and done this week. I think if you want to leverage the uncertainty, just take the outright price or DFS. But I'm with you. I think. I mean, but if you're chasing and you've got to use a longer price, I don't know how far you can go down. I think that's kind of where you're at. Like, I think the floor of using guys is probably Hideki, Min Woo, Spieth, Straka. Like, that's the floor. Yeah. That's as far as you go down and still feel good about it because, yeah, you could go throw Jason Day out there, but you could also just not put a guy. He lives in the area, Andy. He does live in the area. I think to your point, you got to map it out at this point. Look what you have left, look where you are in the leaderboard. Do you have to chase? Can you take some swings? Where can you find leverage with your big names that you have remaining, and make sure those things are all properly accounted for? There are.
You know, we're running out, it feels like the season sneaks up on you. We're in June in terms of big events, big cards, big places. And the other thing is, too, understanding that not everybody gets to play those last two events. And having, you know, it's not like, oh, there's eighty guys here and I've used all their names, like, that's just not a thing. You don't use that many names. But understanding, you know, that you have to have some names there that you feel good about, you've kind of bookmarked. I always start with the playoffs when I work backwards from this one. So, yeah, think about it. Like I said, pull the trigger on a big name if you feel great about them and you've saved them. Or, you know, find someone in that forty to fifty range if you need to chase. Yeah. I mean, you're still going to have Jackson Koivun to use for like the Rocket or the Wyndham, or, you know, it's going to see Michael Brennan at the 3M. I'm like, okay. Yeah. Yeah, give me, give me that money.
Last one, for Josh. If you were told you're not allowed to bet Scottie this week, what would your card be then? Well, we didn't get to it, my other bet. Oh yeah. I bet Cam Young without Scottie. Yeah. There was a book that had, there were multiple books that had Cam shorter than that in the with-Scottie market. So I put a little less than I would normally on Scottie. I typically would go Scottie all in, one unit to Scottie, a little bit more on Cam, almost a full unit there. I typically stay like one and a half to two. So I'm right in that range this week. I got Cam without Scottie at thirteen. Again, that's also a little bit less take home than I normally would, but I want to have some runners on Sunday. I'm going to have Cam without Scottie and Scottie by himself, and put that in your pipe and smoke it. I'm sorry that that broke your little rules, everybody. People, you know, very brave on the internet, calling me a donkey, for what, if they finish one two, dude? They finished one two. I can't wait to finish one two. Oh, my God, the victory. I'll be insufferable. You're a nice guy, and I would never describe you as insufferable. You would be insufferable because you'd have to be. You would deserve it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I would tag... Honestly, it's like when Morikawa won his one major, I know he won more, but whatever, the alt event, Barbasol, I had the double winner that week, right? You know how long ago that was? I still bring it up. That was like five years ago. This is a great feeling. It's the best. I, oh my God, I, yeah, I'm just like, it's happening, this is happening, I'm getting them both, I'm getting them both. Oh, God. Double winner is like one of the best things we can do. I know a lot of people get that because they bet DP or they bet LPGA a lot. I just don't do it often enough. So the fact that I've actually gotten one of those, that was amazing. Oh, yeah. I got to run. Southern Hills. I had both Zalatoris and JT in the playoff. And I knew I had a winner and watched them play three-hole aggregate and didn't give a rip who won. I already got the winner, I don't care what you guys do. That's the second best, it's a playoff amongst two of your outrights. Yeah, that was a good time.
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