We are, indeed, talking playoffs this week with the 2024 FedEx St. Jude Championship.
Only 70 players remain in the chase for the 2024 FedEx Cup. The field has been 125 in the past, but it’ll go from 70 to 50 at next week’s BMW Championship. From there, the top 30 will make it to East Lake for the Tour Championship.
For now, the best of the PGA Tour is in Memphis, Tenn. (unless they were held up by Matt Kuchar at the Wyndham).
Scottie Scheffler is unsurprisingly the betting favorite, and he is unsurprisingly followed by Xander Schauffele. Our betting analysts are looking a little further down the board for the outright bets they’re locking in on Monday morning.
2024 FedEx St. Jude Championship Picks
Spencer Aguiar: Ludvig Aberg +2200 (ESPN BET)
I gave this answer at the Olympics when I talked about Jon Rahm being the enhanced outlier on the odds board when diving into the solo option that should have been closer to the top two names of Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele.
My betting strategy is always going to be about finding long-term edges that I can exploit, which leads me to this answer: Ludvig Aberg is this week's odds-sweetened option who should be marginally closer on the board to the two Goliaths.
My model placed Aberg third in this field for Expected Tee-To-Green, second for par-70 Scoring, and first for Opportunities Created + Make Percentage. That last category is just a fancy way of predicting who's going to make the most birdies when you merge in iron play and historical Bermuda putting.
Collin Morikawa was arguably the safest player in this field because of his recent onslaught of iron play and short-game outputs. However, I will bet on the heightened price of Aberg since it allows me to pair him alongside other ball-striking stalwarts like Hideki Matsuyama and Viktor Hovland.
Matt Gannon: Collin Morikawa +1400 (DraftKings)
It shouldn't take you long to answer the question “Which winless player is having the best season?” You would respond with Morikawa in a heartbeat.
More than him simply “being due,” Morikawa makes a ton of sense heading into this week's FedEx St. Jude Championship. I mentioned that Morikawa is having an exceptional season, but he may not be just reaching his peak now.
Morikawa coming into this week off of his two best ball striking performances of 2024. He's known as a ball striker to begin with, so that should tell you just how well he's playing right now.
Also, every time Morikawa has teed it up in this event, he has absolutely striped the golf ball, gaining significant strokes to the field in the ball striking category every time. We will see more of the same this week, and Collin will grab a hefty check come Sunday afternoon.
Tony Sartori: Tony Finau +3500 (FanDuel)
Finau has proven that he can win at this stage of the PGA Tour season, considering that he won the 2021 Northern Trust, which was a playoff event that year. Obviously, we are heading to TPC Southwind this week, but I believe we will still see another playoff victory from Finau.
Finau finished T5 at TPC Southwind in 2022, and he also enters this week in fantastic form, having made the weekend in 10 of his past 11 tournaments with four top-eight finishes in the process. He continues to flirt with winning, and this could finally be the week he does so.
Finau he ranks fifth on Tour this season in greens in regulation percentage (GIR%) from 150-175 yards out. I mention this because the largest distribution of approach shots (by a wide margin) at TPC Southwind comes from that 25-yard range.
Finally, three of the top-five finishers here last year ranked in the top-nine among the field in GIR%, the only statistic or metric in which such a trend occurred.
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