Our staff has analyzed the 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship odds board and found their 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship Best Bets and other expert picks for this week's PGA Tour event at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee.
This is the first event of the 2023 FedExCup Playoffs as the top 70 players from the regular season are featured in this week's no-cut event.
Check out our Action Network golf betting expert picks and previews for the FedEx St. Jude Championship, including picks for Tony Finau, Sam Burns, Rickie Fowler & more as we go through our 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship Best Bets.
2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship Best Bets
Jason Sobel: Sam Burns +4000 (FanDuel)
Burns' first-round tee time: 12:15 p.m. ET
In at least one book on Monday morning, 25 players in this limited 70-man field had opened with a price of 50/1 or shorter, a 35.7 percent clip. By comparison, last week’s Wyndham Championship had just 20 players at 50/1 or shorter, but with 86 more in the field, leaving just 12.8 percent in that top tier.
We get it: There were more players in that tournament who had less of a chance of winning than there are in this one, but the numbers alone suggest it’ll be more difficult to find a winner with a bigger number here.
All of which leads to Sam Burns, whose 40/1 price sounds right for a few reasons. He contended here two years ago, losing in a playoff. He obviously performs better on Bermuda greens, and he’s motivated to make the Ryder Cup team.
And he’s fresh off a T14 result in Greensboro where he gained strokes tee to green, on approach shots, around the greens and on the greens. Since his WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play victory, he has just one top-10 finish in 11 starts, which is keeping his odds from being lower, but with five top-20 finishes, that number is a bit deceiving.
He certainly owns the skillset to win this one.
Chris Murphy: Rickie Fowler +3000 (FanDuel)
Fowler's first-round tee time: 12:39 p.m. ET
We saw Rickie Fowler's resurgence this season reach the peak when he broke through for his win back at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. It wasn't a huge event or one with a top-tier field, but the win gives Rickie and his backers the boost he needs going forward.
I have always been in the camp that winning breeds winning, and I think we will see Fowler come through with more wins sooner than later. This event at TPC Southwind is a great place for him to start building some more impressive victories as he has had success at this track in his career, and we are getting a reasonable number on him at +3300 on BetRivers.
Fowler has two top-15 finishes in four tries at this course while gaining strokes putting all four times. He hasn't had a post-win letdown either, with some solid play continuing during the links stretch of the Scottish Open and Open Championship.
I expect Fowler to contend this week on a course that really suits his game, and now I have a little more confidence in his ability to close if he can put himself in contention on Sunday again.
Spencer Aguiar: Tony Finau +105 Over Jordan Spieth (FanDuel)
Finau's first-round tee time: 12:39 p.m. ET | Spieth's first-round tee time: 11:51 a.m. ET
There are a few minor differences that my model has noticed historically in what happens during a matchup where there is a cut and when there isn't one.
We still want to find fade-worthy options above anything else because even though we don't have a 36-hole cut to win this matchup early, we are going to want golfers we dislike for the week. That answer doesn't change.
However, I have found better success fading those names when considering high-end talents who can get hot for a round or two.
A lot of these matchups have the propensity to get lost during the weekend from someone charging up the board, and Tony Finau fits that mold perfectly since he joined Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm as one of only three names to grade in the top five for weighted tee-to-green and recalculated scoring.
Finau’s floor is a little lower than I would have targeted if this had a cut, but I would be surprised if he didn't generate a few days of high-end returns, which makes this a nice matchup to take on Jordan Spieth and his erratic nature.
2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship Expert Picks, Fades
Favorites We’re Backing
- Jason Sobel: Collin Morikawa
- Chris Murphy: Rory McIlroy
- Spencer Aguiar: Jon Rahm
Best Long Shot
- Sobel: Adam Schenk
- Murphy: Cam Davis
- Aguiar: Tom Kim
Biggest Bust
- Sobel: Jason Day
- Murphy: Jordan Spieth
- Aguiar: Jordan Spieth
Contrarian Player To Target
- Sobel: Tommy Fleetwood
- Murphy: Hideki Matsuyama
- Aguiar: Tony Finau
Trend That Guides Your 2023 FedEx St. Jude Championship Betting Strategy
Sobel: Prognosticating this week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship should not be confused with the FedEx St. Jude Classic (played from 1958-2018) or the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational (played from 2019-2021).
Even with decades of data at TPC Southwind, this isn’t an easy one to research, if only because a search of the current form of this event will offer results from the erstwhile Northern Trust prior to last year.
My advice is to turn up the dial on Strokes Gained: Motivation this week. While those near the top of the FedExCup Points List understand these next few weeks are more marathon than sprint, this feels like a nice spot to target those who have played well throughout the year but haven’t quite peaked.
Murphy: This is a week where I will lean on course history as this is a stop that has produced many of the same players near the top year over year.
Much of this field has been around this course a time or two over the past few years, and there’s a pretty clear separation for those that really like it as a fit to their game. I’ll let that be my guide as I seek players with a combination of form and history to build my card.
Aguiar: Nine of the last 11 winners at TPC Southwind have led the field in strokes gained tee-to-green during their victory. There are many different ways to take that answer when trying to construct a model or blueprint for your wagers.
However, the biggest takeaway to that explanation is that the top names have consistently made their way into the winner's circle since this course got elevated from a lower-tiered tournament to a WGC/FedExCup event.
The reason for that stems from the inability of inferior players to reach that high-end mark that the world's elite talents can produce weekly. Finding which of those big names will be the one to lead the field is the hard part since 25 of them have the upside to do it, but I would be careful in drifting too far down the board when trying to find an outright victor.
