LIV Golf will hold its third event this week in New Jersey.
There are a few notable changes with Paul Casey, Henrik Stenson, Jason Kokrak and Charles Howell set to make their debuts taking the place of some of the lesser known Asian and Australasian Tour players. This event will also run Friday through Sunday as opposed to the Thursday through Saturday schedule we saw the first two times.
The Course
Trump National Golf Club Bedminster will host this week with 36 holes of Tom Fazio-designed courses on the property.
Both measure over 7,500 yards for par 72s, and we're still waiting on the confirmation on how the set up will be. In Portland, LIV Golf used a composite of two courses at Pumpkin Ridge.
The course held the 2017 U.S. Women's Open and was set to host the PGA Championship this year, before the PGA of America moved the event in January 2021.
Fazio designs are sprinkled throughout the PGA TOUR schedule, so we have some familiarity there. The most notable is the Quail Hollow redesign. He also designed Shadow Creek, where Kokrak won in 2020, and Caves Valley where Bryson DeChambeau lost to Patrick Cantlay in a playoff.
Early on, the LIV setups have been on the more challenging side so far, and with a long test expected this week, power off the tee will be critical.
The Favorites
We'll keep seeing the same names at the top here until we get some bigger additions down the road. But for the third event in a row, Dustin Johnson opens as the favorite at around +500. DJ has finished third and eighth in the first two events and is coming off a solid Open Championship where he placed fifth.
Below him are Talor Gooch and Louis Oosthuizen at +1000. Both have been inside the top 10 in the first two LIV events as well. Oosthuizen missed the cut at St. Andrews, a spot that has been kind to him in the past, while Gooch was 34th.
In that next tier between +1200 and +1800 reside Abraham Ancer, Brooks Kopeka, Patrick Reed, Kevin Na and Bryson DeChambeau. Of this group, I'll bet DeChambeau at +1400 and Reed at +1800 on DraftKings.
DeChambeau has battled injury all year but finally showed a glimpse of the game getting back to normal with an eighth place finish at The Open. If this course is stretched out to 7,500 yards, then his length will give him a clear edge over most of the field.
I also like Reed for these events at his current price as well. He seems to have bought in to the LIV Golf events more than anyone. He finished third in his debut in Portland and made the cut at The Open. He's done a lot of his damage on long courses, winning at Torrey Pines and Doral, along with the Northeast, picking up wins at Liberty National and Bethpage Black. Overall, with Reed seemingly more dialed in than most, I think he's a good fit this week.
The Longshots
With two favorites, there isn't much room for anything else, but I'm going back to Jinichiro Kozuma and hoping the third time is the charm at 150/1 on BetRivers. Kozuma has finished sixth and 15th in the first two events, so he's shown he's competitive. With an each way option to five places, a +3000 top-five bet seems like good value considering it's only +1100 on DraftKings.
The LIV Card
- Bryson DeChambeau +1400
- Patrick Reed +1800
- Jinichiro Kozuma +15000
