Sports betting pro @realfrankbrank uses his model to identify top plays in each price range for your PGA GPP lineups!!
The Course: Torrey Pines North and South
The official course preview by @friedeggpaulie can be found here.
$10,000+ Range
Xander Schauffele $10,400 (+$460)
Last Ownership: 19.3%
SG Ranking: 39th OTT | 30th APP | 14th ATG | 5th PTT
We’re getting a bit of a reduced price on Xander Schauffele this week since he’s missed four of five cuts around Torrey Pines. There’s no logical reason to suspect Xander would struggle at Torrey long term, so let’s take the reduced price and run with it.
Schauffele has finished T25 or better in 24 of his last 26 tournaments, and I don’t expect rust to be an issue since he’s played at the Tournament of Champions, where he finished fifth. He hasn’t lost strokes to the field in any given tournament since late June.
Xander ranks as the second-best overall golfer in this field, according to my model, and that doesn’t account for Rahm’s potential back injury coming into this event.
$9,000 Range
Harris English $9,800 (+$518)
Last Ownership: 9.2%
SG Ranking: 50th OTT | 38th APP | 17th ATG | 1st PTT
Harris English isn’t going to bomb it around Torrey in the way that you’d prefer, but he is going to do everything else well enough to compete yet again this week. Over the last few tournaments, we’ve seen English’s ball striking regress a bit, but the putting and short game, in general, has more than made up for it.
My model rates English as the best putter in the field as we’ve seen his excellence on the greens for some time now. He’s exceeded four strokes gained on the greens in six of his last thirteen tournaments while only losing strokes three times since the last Farmers a calendar year ago.
Although his price seems to be catching up to his skill set, there’s no reason to think English is going to slow down any time soon, as he had a disappointing T32 finish at Sony fresh off his win at the Tournament of Champions.
$8,000 Range
Si Woo Kim $8,900 (+$828)
Last Ownership: 12.2%
SG Ranking: 61st OTT | 7th APP | 7th ATG | 65th PTT
Si Woo Kim’s price is also on the rise in a slightly tougher field this week due to his victory just last week. This was not your typical fluky Si Woo pop and win, though. We’ve been riding Kim dating back to the end of last season because of his newfound consistency.
Si Woo missed the first two cuts off last year’s restart to the PGA Tour and has since made 15 of 17 while finishing inside the top-20 six times. Perhaps he’ll go back to his long term form, but there’s no indication of slowing down coming off a win where he flagged nearly every iron shot.
Kim’s distance off the tee isn’t going to blow you away, but his 7th ranked approach game and 7th ranked short game should keep him inside the cut line. At this price point and his ball striking, you shouldn’t need much more than a cut to get your money’s worth.
Adam Scott $8,300 (+$126)
Last Ownership: 13.1%
SG Ranking: 23rd OTT | 17th APP | 77th ATG | 45th PTT
As we move down the board, we finally found someone who could blow you away with the driver at Torrey. As one of the most premier ball strikers on Tour over his career, Adam Scott has found a little bit of game but hasn’t quite put it all together.
Scott’s appearance on Tour was quite sparse coming off his win at the Genesis that led the Aussie into the lockdown of last season. Scott did play in the two Hawaii events, but he’s also fared well after long layoffs. He won the Genesis off a three-month hiatus from the PGA Tour and finished T22 at the PGA Championship at his first event back from the restart.
He’s made all eight of his cuts since that restart, but the T22 has been his highest finish in those events as he’s struggled to put an entire week together. Overall, Scott has been an above-average player in every aspect of his game since his return but has yet to gain strokes in the four major categories in a single tournament. When the ball striking has been there, the putter hasn’t, and vice versa.
Look for Scott to put it all together this week as Torrey nicely fits his game of letting it go off the tee and knocking it onto greens with mid or long irons.
$7,000 Range
Corey Conners $7,700 (+$961)
Last Ownership: 12.8%
SG Ranking: 6th OTT | 12th APP | 67th ATG | 94th PTT
Much like Si Woo Kim’s recent jump in consistency, we’re seeing a lot of the same attributes in Corey Conners’ golf game. Conners has finished T24 or better in six of his last seven tournaments and has gained at least 5.5 total strokes on the field in each of those six events.
Those events also include T8 at the Zozo and T10 at the Masters against an elite level field. Conners has always been an elite ball striker that couldn’t come close to putting it together on or around the greens to gain any sort of consistency.
He’s still quite low in this field in short game as you can see above, ranking 67th in chipping and 94th in putting. However, I’m here to tell you those are notable improvements to where he was just a few months ago.
Conners has actually only lost strokes twice on the greens in those seven events mentioned above and has only lost strokes off the tee and on approach once since the beginning of August. If Corey Conners can continue his small gains in short game and keep up the ball striking he’s been displaying for years, he’ll have plenty of chances to win in the near future.
Sam Burns $7,700 (+$320)
Last Ownership: 20.9%
SG Ranking: 4th OTT | 47th APP | 126th ATG | 22nd PTT
Sam Burns, well, burned over 20% of lineups last week with his miserable first round. Nonetheless, his second round was nearly as brilliant as the first one was miserable. It wasn’t too surprising to see someone like Burns struggle in his first round back off a 10-week layoff. His second round, though, reinforced why we don’t mind rostering him again this week.
For starters, that 20% of lineups may hesitate to use Burns again this week with so many similar golfers in this price range. Not to mention Burns tends to spray it a bit off the tee. Torrey is a good place to go a little sideways, though, as so few fairways are actually hit around here.
Burns doesn’t have to hold back and is very much incentivized to take advantage of his length. My model still expects him to gain strokes on approach, but the money will be made or lost on the putter.
Burns can be streaky on the greens but still sits at 22nd in this field in that category. Burns’ style of bomb, gouge, and hope for great putter luck makes him a high-variance player that can be useful for GPP lineups.
$6,000 Range
As usual, there’s a ton of golfers throughout this range to take some shots at in GPPs. However, I’ll list out my best-perceived options below.
Peter Malnati $6,800 (+$603) | Henrik Norlander $6,900 (+$432)| Charl Schwartzel $6,700 (+$330)
