Expect a fiery finish down the stretch at the AT&T Byron Nelson as there are 25 players within five shots of the lead.
Zecheng Dou, Austin Eckroat and Ryan Palmer are tied for the lead at 16-under par. Dou and Eckroat are going for their inaugural titles on the PGA Tour, while Palmer is a four-time winner who hasn't won a solo event since 2010. But I wouldn't let the inexperience, or lack of recent wins, fool you when it comes to Eckroat or Palmer.
When I ran my numbers pre-tournament, my model believed each was a top-40 win equity option, although it is not as if they don't have the big dogs biting at their heels. Jason Day and Scottie Scheffler are just two shots back.
If you haven't already, you can find me on Twitter @TeeOffSports. There, I will provide a link to my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user inputs to create custom golf rankings. That sheet is released every Monday, so be sure to check it out and construct your own numbers from my database of information.
Round 4 Buy
Kyoung-Hoon Lee
If we give K.H. Lee his baseline metrics from his short game over what he has generated this week, we might be in line for a three-peat at TPC Craig Ranch.
The South Korean leads the field in recalculated scoring inside my model when we remove the negative-6.6 shots he has lost around-the-green and putting, a return that has masked an otherwise phenomenal ball-striking display over three days.
My sheet hasn't graded him worse than ninth in any round when adding together his off-the-tee and approach data. He's also one of only six players in this field, who ranked inside the top 50 of my model pre-event, and hasn't overachieved his ball-striking by more than 10 spots on the leaderboard in any round. The other five can be found in the image below.
Lee will likely pop at some point because of his high-end output in the steadier areas, and I wouldn't be shocked if he catapults himself up the leaderboard Sunday for DFS purposes. We know he loves this course after he won here in back-to-back years and my numbers still believe he is one of the best values on the board.
Round 4 Sell
Si Woo Kim
This is pretty much the opposite of answer I just gave for Lee. The image below shows the most significant overachievers through three days when running some of my baseline data.
Most of the details there are to be expected since 11 of those 15 names graded outside the top 75 of my model pre-event and needed these aberrational results with their short games to make the weekend. Still, a few surprises were on that list, including from Adam Scott and Si Woo Kim.
It feels as if Scott has been flirting with this level of danger for the past handful of starts. His ability to call on the flat stick continues to salvage an otherwise disappointing ball-striking run for him in 2023.
Kim, on the other hand, doesn't have the same baseline to fall back on when we look into his 107th-place grade for weighted putting. I don't want to overstate that portion of the answer since the chart above is taking baseline results into account and weighing the differences in expectation. However, it doesn't help that my model believed Kim was outside the top 100 in this field.
I always say it is more challenging to make putts when near the top of the leaderboard, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Kim struggle compared to what we have seen from him over the opening three rounds.
For DFS, he is a full-fade for me. I also think there are some interesting ways to bet the "over" for his Round 4 score at various shops.
