Shane Lowry, David Skinns and Austin Eckroat lead the pack into the final round on Sunday with their 13-under-par scores. The trio has pulled away from the rest of the field as no one else sits closer than within three shots of the lead.
Usually, I'd say PGA National's historical teeth make no lead safe, but some course understanding and ease seems to have developed at the Cognizant Classic.
We'll see if that changes on Sunday with pressure on the line, but let's pivot away from the outright market and talk about one of my favorite head-to-head matchups on the board for round four.
If you haven't already, you can find me on Twitter (@TeeOffSports). There, I provide a link to my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user input 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.
2024 Cognizant Classic Final Round Predictions
K.H. Lee -110 over Nico Echavarria (DraftKings)
I was very surprised to see K.H. Lee open at -110 versus Nico Echavarria since my model had this closer to -145.
Echavarria landed outside the top 100 for me pre-event as I dove into his statistical profile and current form. That stemmed from his past 26 results since his victory last season at the Puerto Rico Open. In those 26 results, he's missed 17 cuts and has nothing better than a share of 24th place.
Now, I will admit that his more recent form has been trending up as he's made seven of his past nine cuts. However, a glaring weakness exists in his profile because of the 6.10-shot overachievement through three rounds that he has demonstrated when combining actual ball striking and short-game expected returns.
Sometimes, these write-ups need to be a little more in-depth to get the point across, but this comes down to nothing more than a bottom-seven profile in my model getting matched against a boom-or-bust golfer inside the top third of my sheet.
I'll take the nearly 7% implied probability advantage and bet against one of only four golfers who has overachieved his projected ball striking on the leaderboard by a minimum of 20 spots during all three rounds.
My math is expecting regression to occur on Sunday for the Colombian.
