Flag Hunting: PGA Betting Picks - FedEx St. Jude Championship

Ian McNeill's free PGA betting picks. Ian provides analysis and an introductory guide to golf live betting on the PGA Tour by making selections both before and during the 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship from TPC Southwind.

After 40+ tournaments across six different countries, the 2023 PGA Tour season has finally reached its climax. Just 70 players remain in the race for the season-long title, and only 50 will finish this week with eligibility to move onto Chicago for the playoff semi-finals.

One of these lucky players will stand on the 18th green at Eastlake with an $18,000,000 check and the title of FedEx Cup Champion, but despite that date being just 18 days away, the path to glory is just getting started. FedEx Cup points will be quadrupled over the next two weeks as players jockey for position in Atlanta, which means it really is anyone's game from here on out.

A win here in Memphis could catapult you into "favorite" status for the season-long title, but an untimely mistake around these treacherous confines could just as easily spell the end of your 2023 campaign. Strap in boys and girls - the PGA Tour's biggest prize is up for grabs and the stars are out in the Home of the Blues. Here's everything you need to know about TPC Southwind and the FedEx St. Jude Championship!

The Golf Course

TPC Southwind - Par 70; 7,243 yards

Looking at the course specs and location, I’m sure many of you expect me to copy and paste the analysis I gave you last week at Sedgefield (Birdie Making, Wedge Play, Bermuda Putting, etc.). However, although TPC Southwind does seem to fit the mold of your traditional Southeastern, Bermudagrass Par 70, I wouldn’t look too deeply into the correlations between the likes of Sedgefield, Sea Island, or Harbour Town. 

It’s been twenty years since any touring professional has been able to reach the (-20) mark here at Southwind, and with just three holes on property that carry birdie rates over 20%, this is far from the O.K. Corral-esque shootout we’ve become accustomed to in recent months on Tour. What makes this week Memphis so much more perilous than its neighboring counterparts?

Well, first and foremost, TPC Southwind will present these guys with far more peril off-the-tee. Eleven holes on property are guarded by ponds and lakes, and at 0.68 shots per round, only Muirfield Village, TPC Sawgrass, PGA West, PGA National, and TPC Twin Cities produced more penalty shots on average than this course did last year

Southwind also features a vastly different yardage profile from hole to hole - particularly on the Par 4’s. Eight of the 12 two-shotters here measure over 440 yards (compared to just two such holes last week), and as such, I’d expect far fewer wedges and short irons on tap for these guys. 

Instead, we’ll be looking primarily at middle iron play, as nearly half of all historical approach shots have come from 150-200 yards, and another 15% have come from 200+. Longer approach shots tend to favor better ball-strikers, and with a past Champions list like Will Zalatoris, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, and Daniel Berger, it’s clear to me that not only is iron play the most correlative stat to success here at Southwind, but this layout does a very good job at allowing the cream to rise to the top.

Top 5 finishers at Southwind have gained an average of 5.1 Shots to the field with their iron play, and since 2016, winners at TPC Southwind have ranked 1st, 3rd, 2nd, 11th, 3rd, 14th, and 3rd in SG: Approach. Unlike last week, this is a golf course that demands elite ball striking. If a player doesn't possess the upside to lead a top-tier field on Approach, I would begin to really worry about his winning upside.

In addition to the water hazards I mentioned earlier, Southwind features the same penal Bermuda rough we saw in Greensboro, as well as some of the narrowest fairways on the PGA Tour (25 yards wide on average). With a missed fairway penalty of 0.43 shots (sixth highest on Tour), as well as some of the smallest green complexes on the schedule (4300 sq. feet), this is a week to hone in on driving accuracy stats. 

Since 2016, over 80% of Top 10 finishers have rated out above average to the field in Good Drives Percentage (any drive that hits the fairway or results in a GIR), and each of the last 7 winners here have gained on the field in Driving Accuracy. 

Moving onto the green complexese themselves, where Southwind begins to loosen its grip ever so slightly. We talked about Champion Bermuda in last week's preview, but the greens here in Memphis lack the same tricky, Donald Ross character that can strike fear into the hearts of the best players on the planet. These are also some of the slower Bermuda Greens we tend to see all season, and the lack of severe undulation means that virtually any putt inside 15 feet is a green-light birdie look.

Last year, TPC Southwind ranked as the sixth easiest course on Tour to gain strokes on the greens, so while there is a clear and obvious correlation between putting well and scoring well (as there is every week), I don’t view these greens as a huge separator in ability. 

Not only have we seen “bad” putters like Paul Casey, Will Zalatoris, and Collin Morikawa climb to the top of the SG Leaderboard, but players like Justin Thomas (Winner, 2020), Brooks Koepka (runner-up, 2020), and Hideki Matsuyama (runner-up, 2021), have proved that you can still contend at this tournament on the back of your tee-to-green play. The three of these players lost 1.9, 2.7, and 1.0 shots respectively on the greens over the course of the week.

This is a ball-strikers week above all else, and my statistical formula is as cut and dry as you’ll ever see: 1) Can you keep the ball in play on one of the more treacherous driving courses we’ve seen all season? And 2) Do you possess the upside to lap a top-tier field with your iron play? If history is anything to go on, those two keystones will determine the champion in Memphis this week.

Key Stats Roundup: 

• Total Driving; special emphasis on accuracy-based stats like Good Drive % or Fairways Gained
• Strokes Gained: Approach - paying special attention to mid-iron Proximity ranges (150-200 yards)
• Birdie Chances Created
• Overall Tee-to-Green play
• Recent Performances in Difficult Scoring Conditions
• Comp. Course History (Eastlake and Innisbrook being the main two, smaller consideration to TPC Sawgrass and Quail Hollow)

Scouting the Routing

For those looking to dabble in the live market this week, it will be imperative to contextualize a player’s position on the leaderboard alongside where he is on the golf course and which holes he still has left to play.

As I mentioned in the Course Breakdown, TPC Southwind doesn’t present nearly the same volume of birdie chances we saw at Sedgefield or Twin Cities, as only six holes here have historically played under par, and only three of those six have featured birdie or better rates >20%. 

As you’d expect, the two par fives here at Southwind present the clearest opportunities players will have to score. The 16th hole carries a scoring average of 4.5 (Birdie or Better rate of 51%), and the 3rd hole has a scoring average of 4.74 (BoB rate of 35%). 

But similarly to the 18th hole at Twin Cities two weeks ago, I’d be very careful when projecting a free birdie to any player that stands on the third tee. Despite its place as the second easiest hole on the course, the par-five 3rd also carries with it a substantial risk of bogey or worse, as players going for the green on the Par 5 will face a penalty area both short and right of the pin.

In fact, eleven holes here at TPC Southwind feature either a Bogey rate of 20% or a Double Bogey/Worse Rate of at least 2%. Much of the battle this week will be to avoid the big number - which isn’t something that live bettors will be able to accurately predict when scouting leaderboards.

Long-term samples in stats like Bogey Avoidance and Good Drive % do a great job of filtering out players that tend to put themselves in bad positions on penal golf courses like this one, which brings me to my main point regarding live betting strategy around TPC Southwind:

With no large discrepancy in scoring average between the two nines, peril around every corner, and no pronounced stretches of many easy/difficult holes right in a row, my traditional advice in this section isn’t worth a whole lot this week. This isn’t to say that live betting isn’t a viable strategy, but I’d be paying more attention to values that emerge in comparison to your pre-tournament modeling versus where a player happens to be on the course.

With four guaranteed rounds on tap this week, as well as Southwind’s historic propensity for flushing out fraudulent ball-strikers, this is not an event to go chasing a surprise long shot that has found his way up the leaderboard with an outlier round. Instead, keep your shortlist tight and monitor the prices on guys that truly fit the winning formula. Variance can be made to work for us, particularly when chasing inflated numbers in the live market. Just keep in mind that I don’t expect this week’s champion to look too dissimilar to the recent winners we’ve seen here in Memphis. 

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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod

2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 Units

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Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

Rory McIlroy (10-1)

Despite this tournament's reputation as one of the more fiercely contested events on the PGA Tour, it’s hard to argue against the fact that 2023’s iteration is lacking a bit when it comes to the number of ironclad cases to win. It’s rare that we ever get an event where the last six defending champions have failed to qualify, but through injuries, underperformance, and a certain startup league, the last champion eligible to tee it up this week is 2013 winner Harris English. Couple this with the fact that we haven’t seen any of these top names since the Tour came back from the British Isles, and we’re riding a bit blind when projecting who’s truly ready to make the first statement of intent in these FedEx Cup Playoffs.

If there was one name, however, who could not be questioned in terms of recent form, it would be World No. 2, Rory McIlroy. Rory is truly in the midst of one of the best tee-to-green seasons of his career, and his run of seven consecutive Top 10s since the PGA Championship has done a lot to close the statistical gap between him and Scottie Scheffler at the top of the World Rankings. In fact, Rory has outperformed Scheffler in three of the last four events they’ve played in together, and from a Strokes Gained standpoint, Rory has just edged him on a per-round basis over the last three months (2.9 vs 2.8 SG/Rd). 

We’ve seen Rory stack wins in quick succession when he gets on one of these vintage runs, and while I wouldn’t necessarily call TPC Southwind one of Rory’s happiest hunting grounds, he does have a 4th and a 12th here over his last 4 starts and happened to lead this field in Total Ball-Striking two years ago (+5.9 OTT; +6.5 APP). Rory is inarguably one of the best ball-strikers in the world when he’s in full flight, and the putting woes that plagued him earlier in the season have quickly fallen by the wayside (positive putting splits in seven straight starts). There aren’t a ton of holes to poke in McIlroy’s profile these days, and if books are willing to give us a 50% markdown on the Northern Irishman compared to his sparring partner at the top of the World Rankings, that’s a position I’m comfortable taking almost independent of the venue in question. 

Viktor Hovland (20-1)

When you combine elite total driving and overall ball-striking upside, there aren’t many names that should be listed ahead of Viktor Hovland. Hovland is one of just 6 players on Tour to rank inside the Top 50 in Both Driving Distance and Accuracy, and when you talk about mid/long-iron Proximity Metrics, Hovland reaches heights that even Scottie Scheffler has to admire. Hovland ranks 3rd, 3rd, and 5th in my three key ranges this week (150-175, 175-200, 200+), and among the elite ball-strikers in this field (Scottie, Rahm, Collin, Hideki, Cantlay, etc.), only Hovland and Rory can also claim themselves as Top 20 putters over the last three months. 

Vik has already put together a winning performance around an exceedingly difficult golf course that required maximum proficiency with your driver and long-iron play, and nobody outside of the top 3 names on this odds board has found themselves in more final groups on the weekends of golf’s biggest events. He’s got a very strong case as the 4th best player on the planet at the moment, and at 20-1, I’m more than willing to stick by the Norwegian on his breakout campaign. 

Hideki Matsuyama (50-1)

One of the few top names in this field that has made an effort to find some lead-in form, Hideki comes into this iteration of the St. Jude on the back of some stellar ball-striking in his prior three weeks on Tour. Deki has gained a stroke per round on Approach since the Open Championship and rates right alongside some of the top dogs in this field in many of my key ball striking metrics:

• 4th in SG: Approach
• 1st in Birdie Chances Created
• 6th in Good Drive %
• 4th in GIR’s Gained
• 5th in Total Ball-Striking

The Japanese Ace was forced to skip last year’s iteration of the St. Jude Championship due to nagging neck problems, but the last time he teed it up in Memphis, he came within centimeters of holing a 15-foot putt to beat Abraham Ancer in a playoff. Matsuyama was 2nd in the field on Approach that week (+8.9), and in 2023, he finally seems to be back to his peak ball-striking ways. 

Over his last 50 rounds, Hideki ranks 2nd to Viktor Hovland in Proximity from 150-200 yards and has finished above field average in driving accuracy in six of his last eight starts. He’s still got the ability to lap a field from tee to green, and at 50-1, I believe he represents the last names on the odds board with the mettle to stare down a top dog on Sunday afternoon. 

Best of luck guys, and Happy Hunting!

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