Chris Kirk can go one better than when runner-up in Detroit in this week’s John Deere Classic, according to golf expert Ben Coley.
Golf betting tips: John Deere Classic
2pts e.w. Chris Kirk at 35/1 (Paddy Power, Sky Bet, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
2pts e.w. Kevin Yu at 35/1 (Paddy Power, Sky Bet, Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1.5pts e.w. Kevin Roy at 50/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
1pt e.w. Christiaan Bezuidenhout at 66/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Eric Cole at 70/1 (Coral, Ladbrokes 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
0.5pt e.w. Dylan Wu at 275/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
0.5pt e.w. Brandt Snedeker at 450/1 (bet365 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
The John Deere Classic presents a bit of a conundrum for punters: do you follow the formula of last year, when a bang in-form talent stormed to a convincing breakthrough win as one of the market principals, or do you lean into the idea that with low scoring comes volatility and think more about Michael Kim’s similar display back in 2018?
There are arguments both ways but for such a straightforward golf course this has been far less volatile than some similarly low-scoring events. Steve Stricker, Zach Johnson and Jordan Spieth were all short-priced champions, while both Davis Thompson and JT Poston, two of the last three, had been runner-up on their previous start.
Perhaps then Ben Griffin goes and cements his Ryder Cup spot but he’s played a lot of golf lately, almost all of it in the mix, and Michael Thorbjornsen is the form pick who gave me most to think about. Undoubtedly an enormous talent and with course form together with last week’s near-miss, he’s one to fear.
But then I wonder whether Deere Run, a mid-length par 71 where accuracy has trumped power, is as good a fit for him as his two previous efforts suggest. Maybe he just loves the place, but driver is his main weapon and I’m a little wary of siding with someone whose approach play has so far been modest, and whose putting comes and goes.
Likewise, Luke Clanton has course form – both he and Thorbjornsen shared second behind Thompson last year – and after a shocking third round in Detroit, his price for this weaker event is the same. That alone is tempting, but whereas last week’s Rocket Classic was made for these powerful youngsters, I don’t think this is despite the evidence of 2024.
By contrast, CHRIS KIRK could so easily have won last week despite the course favouring big hitters and having taken defeat on the chin, compensation could await.
A class act for this grade who won a shootout for The Sentry last January, Kirk had been held back by his putter until recent improvement saw him finish 12th in the US Open, a tournament he considered withdrawing from, and then runner-up on Sunday.
Solid off the tee and a player who has always been capable of top-notch approach play, he’s the sort of tidy operator to have done well here in the past and while his record isn’t exceptional, he’s always enjoyed Deere Run. That’s reflected in strong tee-to-green stats and, on his last visit, he putted better too.
That was in 2023, his first start in the tournament since 2018, and it’s significant that he’s back. Kirk revealed last week that he skipped the much more lucrative Travelers Championship to be ready for two tournaments which play to his strengths, and he’s also decided not to enter the Scottish Open, again more valuable than this.
Rewind a couple of seasons and Kirk elected to skip Riviera to prepare for the Honda Classic, feeling that it was a better opportunity, and he was proven right as he went on to win a play-off in Florida. It would’ve been quite something to repeat that scheduling feat last week but there’s still time to do so in this weaker, winnable event.
He’s shot 66 seven times here down the years and twice been in the mix entering Sunday’s final round so the course is fine, he has won when in red-hot form before, and given what he’s been through to get back to the level he’s at I doubt very much that losing a play-off will set him back.
“I decided not to play last week so that I could be ready to go here and at the John Deere, two tournaments that I really love,” he confirmed during the RMC, where he putted well on three of the four days, and for an added little boost he’ll be staying in the so-called ‘winners’ house’ from which the last three champions have emerged.
Two of four Kevins
So is Denny McCarthy and this is a great chance for him, but his form isn’t as strong as it has been coming in over the last three seasons. That’s enough of a doubt when we’re talking 25/1 though this really is the best event on the schedule for McCarthy, a deadly putter whose approach play has improved and for whom a win is surely coming.
My preference though is for KEVIN YU, a talented youngster who is starting to show signs of stability with the putter and is already established as one of the best tee-to-green operators on the circuit.
It would be easy to characterise this tournament as a putting contest but Brian Harman won it while losing strokes on the greens and by no means are the last two winners reliable in that department. There have been any number of quality ball-strikers win it, including Lucas Glover and John Senden, and Yu could be the latest.
He was sixth on debut here in 2023, leading the field in putting, and returned to be 20th last year when hitting his irons better and still putting to a good standard. Notably, that was his best finish of the season two years ago, at a time when returning from injury, and last summer he’d only been ticking over but still demonstrated a liking for Deere Run.
Eight rounds show an average of 66.88, each of them under-par, and Yu now returns having won for the first time late last year and then found form again more recently, with top-five finishes in Myrtle Beach and Canada. During this spell of five events he’s produced four strong putting displays and another would make him a huge runner.
There is a small worry that he’s a strong driver and that this isn’t necessarily key to Deere Run, but Yu’s iron play is a real strength too and it’s come back around recently. More improvement is on the cards and the world number 66 has a good chance to double his tally and climb inside that all-important top 50.
Mark Hubbard is playing well, likes it here and won a shootout on the Korn Ferry Tour, but that was four years ago and he remains a longstanding maiden at this level. Instead then I’ll plump for KEVIN ROY, not much younger but far less exposed and also playing very nicely.
Roy is a rock-solid ball-striker, ranking inside the top 50 in strokes-gained off-the-tee and approach, and he’s 31st in fairways which is helpful. Thompson actually brought to an end the longest active streak of tournament winners ranking inside the top 25 in fairways, but at 28th he was still very much in control off the tee.
Roy is an old-fashioned ball-striker for whom success depends on the putter but that club looks good right now, gaining strokes in four of his last five starts, and his approach play is better still: 20th, 13th and third across his last three tournaments, latterly on a course that played into the hands of longer hitters in Detroit.
A winner in 21-under on the KFT and second when the champion shot -26, Roy can cope with a shootout and I thought his debut here was plenty encouraging. Despite missing 10 of 14 cuts so far that year and having produced not a single notable result, he hit it well and shot a second-round 63 to be right in the mix throughout Saturday and into Sunday, where that lack of confidence was exposed in a disappointing 73.
After opening with a course-record 62 on his way to his best pound-for-pound finish of the year last week I feel sure he’ll be itching to have another crack at Deere Run and for further proof of the course’s suitability, I like the fact that he went on to be 12th in the Valspar. That course is tougher, yes, but the correlation between the two is strong and has been for more than a decade.
“I feel like I’ve been playing pretty well the last few weeks,” he said last Thursday. “I think if I keep playing the way I’ve been playing, everything will take care of itself.” Hopefully he’s proven right come Sunday evening.
Past champion Michael Kim sounds hopeful on his ever-honest twitter account and he’s a big player on his early-season form, but at a bigger price I absolutely love CHRISTIAAN BEZUIDENHOUT for this.
Bezuidenhout was an excellent 12th in the US Open last month and perhaps that excuses a slow start to the Travelers, but he closed with a final-round 66 there and was back hitting the ball well at the kind of short, technical course we know is best for his game.
Second here in 2022, Deere Run definitely counts as another of those and with his deadly putting very much back, and his approach play spiking regularly enough, a solid week off the tee at a course which doesn’t demand much in that department would make him a big danger.
Bezuidenhout actually hit the ball well again here in 2023 but missed the cut due to his short-game at a time when he was badly out of form, and I’m glad he’s coming back after a year off as it’s a great fit for him. I believe that’s why he decided to withdraw from the Rocket Classic, with the Scottish Open coming up next week too.
Certainly, he was working hard in Florida over the weekend so I’ve no fitness concerns and this is the weakest event he’s taken part in for ages, the last somewhat comparable example being the Charles Schwab which still featured a certain Scottie Scheffler plus a handful more who would challenge for favouritism.
Bezuidenhout was 16th there, echoing his performance prior to going close in this three summers ago, and this is one PGA Tour shootout he’s absolutely made for. Should he bring that ball-striking of the final round in Connecticut with him to Illinois, I’m convinced he’d go close.
I wonder whether Bezuidenhout’s withdrawal pre-tournament last week has inflated his price and that dynamic could also be in play where ERIC COLE is concerned.
He was actually just outside the top 10 prior to the final round of the Travelers when pulling out but that was due to illness, so a fortnight on we can surely take on trust that he’s over whatever was bothering him.
If that’s the case, here we have another dynamite putter whose weakness is found off the tee, but whose iron play can more than cover the gap around a venue like this.
Cole was inside the top 10 all week last year after an opening 62, adding a round of 64 on Saturday and producing a solid performance through the bag. In 2023 his approach play had been excellent but he was just a bit too ragged and didn’t hole much, so there’s plenty of evidence from both these visits that Deere Run is a good fit.
More can be found in his top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour, of which he’s managed an impressive 13 in just two-and-a-half seasons. They include the low-scoring Nelson, the short Sony, the tree-lined ZOZO, and a Wyndham Championship which fits all those descriptions. There’s the short, technical Honda, traditional Canada, and even contending performances on bigger courses in Detroit, Mexico and California.
Cole’s bad golf is frustratingly bad but in this grade his ceiling is high and, had he finished off well in the Travelers for something like 10th place, he’d have turned up here as a popular 40/1 shot I suspect. At bigger odds, knowing he was ill rather than injured, we’re getting significant value about a player who can certainly win this.
You Make Me Feel Brandt Wu
That Valspar guide points to Chander Phillips and Jacob Bridgeman but I’m not convinced by either, although the latter can match McCarthy’s putting and could ride that club into contention. Beyond these I didn’t have many on my list, so we’ll roll the dice on a couple of outsiders.
First is DYLAN WU.
He went to college here in Illinois and lost a play-off on the Korn Ferry Tour nearby, before going on to win a shootout in neighbouring Missouri, so we’re in the right part of the world for starters.
And while he’s yet to go close in an event which has seen several locals or adopted locals do so, he in fact led the field in strokes-gained approach on debut, hit it well again when missing the cut by one next time, and then was among the leading iron players only to again miss the cut narrowly last summer.
In other words he’s been a big eye-catcher whose form here is much more encouraging than it looks, having never shot over par, and whose game is a good fit. Wu has always been a solid, old-school ball-striker despite still being in his 20s, and if there is a weakness then, like Cole, it’s his driver.
As for recent form, he was 12th in the Corales Puntacana when his brother returned to caddie following serious illness, then landed a bit of place money for us at a massive price in New Orleans, when partnering fellow Northwestern alumni David Lipsky.
More recently he’s made all four cuts since the putter cost him in the Nelson and during his last three measured starts, he’s produced top-10 performances in approach play and strokes-gained around-the-greens, before showing welcome putting improvement to rank 17th in Canada, while he also came close to qualifying for the US Open.
It requires some optimism to believe he’ll piece it all together here but he’s a huge price and his best form has all come in the middle of summer in weak tournaments. With this one being so familiar, so suitable on paper, let’s take a chance.
Finally, I have to include BRANDT SNEDEKER I’m afraid.
Yes he’s probably long past winning but a closing 65 for seventh in the Memorial three starts ago is strong form and while largely thanks to his putter, he did also rank 10th in strokes-gained approach.
Missed cuts in both subsequent appearances may reveal that this was a freak result but he’s continued to hit good approach shots, particularly in Canada when missing the cut on the number, and again in Detroit last week where he also failed to make the weekend by a single stroke.
Cruelly given what he’s been doing well, Snedeker was inside the cut line playing the 18th hole on Friday and had 140 yards from the fairway. From there he missed the green and then a short putt, running up a double-bogey six when bogey would’ve seen him safely through.
Hopefully that only adds to his determination to follow up that Memorial effort and around here he can. Snedeker didn’t play here during his peak years but was runner-up in 2009, has winning form at correlating courses and has been fourth in the Valspar.
If he continues to hit his irons as he has for the last few weeks, and putts well, that’s him safely through to the weekend I think. From there we’ll take our chances at monster prices.
Posted at 1300 BST on 01/07/25
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