Golf betting tips: Preview and best bets for Charles Schwab Challenge
Ben Coley has selections ranging from 30/1 to 200/1 for the Charles Schwab Challenge, where Joaquin Niemann looks set to go close.
Golf betting tips: Charles Schwab Challenge
2pts e.w. Joaquin Niemann at 30/1 (Betfair 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1pt e.w. Sergio Garcia at 66/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Matt Kuchar at 66/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Harold Varner at 90/1 (William Hill 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Matthew NeSmith at 150/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
1pt e.w. Henrik Stenson at 200/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
It's approaching a year since the PGA Tour resumed at Colonial Country Club, a mainstay of the circuit for almost a century and in some respects the ideal place to begin the long road back to normal. The 2020 renewal of the Charles Schwab Challenge was anything but, of course: no crowds, semi-serious Covid-19 protocols, and a field strong enough to convince some idiot in the UK to write a player-by-player guide to the entire field.
Now, days after thousands of spectators swarmed around Phil Mickelson on his way to a famous and historic major win, all that does feel like history when it comes to golf, and indeed life, in the United States. That means we have fans back on the course, and a field more in keeping with previous renewals, headlined as it always is by Jordan Spieth.
So comfortable is Spieth here at Colonial that he threatened to win as a 45/1 shot last summer, just as he had while struggling for form in 2019. Both these performances relied on the putter — he led the field in both renewals — and it was a dazzling short-game which carried him to this title in 2016. In total, he's played in his home-state event eight times, completing 32 rounds, and he's been inside the top 10 after 21 of them. It's a phenomenal record.
At 10/1, he's the man to beat and he's the right sort of price. It's easy to envisage him finding improvements on and around the greens, here more so than anywhere else, and on his third start back since contracting Covid-19, all that rust should now be shaken off. It is sorely tempting to side with the most likely winner, a player who looks as close to a surefire contender as this sport is ever likely to afford you.
Spieth's two key technical attributes — approach play and putting — cover what's required here. Five winners since 2010 led the field in strokes-gained approach, all of them producing very good numbers, and putting has correlated more with finishing position at a course whose bentgrass greens run pure. Daniel Berger, the defending champion, therefore makes sense, and he beat one of the three or four best iron players in the sport in a play-off.
That man is Collin Morikawa, who had a spring in his step after completing a solid defence of his PGA title on Sunday night. He almost defied his youth and inexperience to win this title last summer, at a course where older heads have dominated, only to miss a short putt and hand the title to Berger. Redemption is perfectly possible if he holds his ground on the greens and along with Justin Thomas, he helps form a strong front-end of the market.
Then there's Will Zalatoris. On the face of it, this 7,000-yards-and-change, twisting, tree-lined course might not suit such a bold youngster, who is long and occasionally wild off the tee. Yet rewind to last summer and the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Bubba Watson, Gary Woodland and Jason Kokrak demonstrated that you can simply go over the top of the trees, rather than around them, if you want to.
Zalatoris, first and second in approaches in his last two starts, may see this as an ideal place for his breakthrough, and inexperience isn't a big concern. After all, Morikawa should probably have won on his debut here, and Zalatoris finished second at Augusta National last month.
Who is the best bet for the Charles Schwab Challenge?
He is the last name off the shortlist, but JOAQUIN NIEMANN's experience of Colonial tips the scales in his favour and the Chilean is preferred.
Niemann made his debut here in 2018, on just his fourth start as a professional, and finished eighth. It was an impressive first look at a course where his friend and mentor Sergio Garcia is the last debut winner, and where the average age of champions is almost twice what he was on arrival.
Since then he's finished 31st and 32nd, enough to confirm that he relishes the layout, and so he should as a player who loves to work the ball and play the sport in what you might call an old-fashioned way.
It's something he touched upon at Kiawah Island last week, and while this was in response to how well he deals with a breeze, the same ball-shaping skills are a good fit for this tight, traditional course which does require draws and fades unless you are one of those who can play the long ball and go over the top.
"I love hitting shots and I think in this course with these conditions, you got to hit the shots," he said. "It's going to be a lot of fun. You can play with the wind and you can play with the trajectory of the shots. That's what I like about playing golf.
"Since I was young, me and my coach, we always like to go on the range and play around the trees, hit it low, hit it high, like just mess around. Doing a lot of that, it gives me a lot of creativity on the course and allow me to hit all the shots I want to.
"Yeah, I think there's nothing more fun than just be creative on the golf course and have fun."
Niemann's sole PGA Tour victory so far came at another classical course, Old White TPC, where bentgrass greens are similar to those found here in Texas and where he succeeded subsequent Colonial champion Kevin Na. The Greenbrier is a tournament which has also been won by Xander Schauffele, who looked set to collect here last summer before a late wobble allowed Berger and Morikawa through.
Not that putting on any surface is a problem for Niemann, as he's improved leaps and bounds to rank 21st on Tour. Combine that with 34th in approaches and he's an ideal fit, and as well as boasting the longest cuts-made streak on the circuit, I like the fact he tasted contention in a major for the first time last week.
That's an important step up the ladder for the 22-year-old and next should be his second PGA Tour title, which he can secure if continuing in the form he's shown right back to the start of the season in Hawaii.
Charley Hoffman and Emiliano Grillo bring solid approach play, improved putting, current and course form to the table, and both stood out at first glance. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) the market has cottoned onto them and whereas Niemann has the scope to become world-class in the coming years, Hoffman is into his forties now and Grillo has been a source of great frustration since a bright start in the USA.
Both will have chances to win again if they continue to putt to a slightly-above-average level, but I wouldn't want to be taking anything less than their current prices, so they can't in good faith be advised.
Instead, I'll take a chance on SERGIO GARCIA, who is a far more frequent winner and is in fact aiming to keep alive a streak of annual titles every year for a decade.
It may well be that he has to return home to Valderrama to win again but ninth at The PLAYERS, a quarter-final run in the WGC-Match Play and some promising golf in both the WGC-Workday and the Middle East tell us he's been close to winning at a much higher level than that already this year.
Having been 66/1 for this in 2020, a far stronger renewal which featured every one of the world's best players bar Patrick Cantlay and Tiger Woods, Garcia looks overpriced on the same mark if we're able to excuse his run of four missed cuts in a row — and there are grounds for doing so.
First and foremost, two of them came in majors. I cannot explain it, but Garcia has become hopeless in them ever since winning The Masters in 2017. Before then he'd missed seven cuts in a decade. Since, he's missed 11, failing to register a single top-20 finish, and he hasn't made the weekend in a major championship since finishing 67th at Portrush two summers back.
If this reflected a general downturn in his overall performance levels, it would be worth something to us. But it doesn't. Garcia went from missing the cut at Winged Foot last September to winning the Sanderson Farms, and he'd also missed the cut in the PGA just before that, none of which had a bearing on his outstanding tee-to-green performance down in Mississippi.
This event is stronger, but he won at Colonial in 2001 and while far from a regular visitor since, he'd finished 16th, 13th and 12th on his three goes prior to a missed cut last June, which is easy forgive for the obvious reasons plus the fact he hit the ball plenty well enough. That, to me, confirms how much he enjoys the fundamental challenge of this golf course.
As a shot-maker who loves to work the ball in all directions, and who now resides in Texas where he won the Byron Nelson in 2017, Garcia has plenty in his favour. And it's not as if his other two starts since the Match Play have offered nothing: he as seventh after an opening 65 in the Byron Nelson, and 17th after round one of the Heritage.
Following the Heritage, the Spaniard travelled home to Europe so that his second child could be introduced to the family, and he sounded really quite pleased with things when returning to action a few weeks later. Surely unperturbed by what's now his expected major missed cut, he is no back-number here, and could even draw inspiration from Mickelson's win which catapulted him into the Ryder Cup picture.
MATT KUCHAR is similar to Garcia in that he's a veteran who presumably hasn't given up on representing his country in the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, and whose form away from majors is much better than it has been during the biggest events on the calendar.
This spring, Kuchar has missed the cut in The Masters and the PGA Championship, as well as The PLAYERS, but on his other four starts he's finished no worse than 18th, and has twice been inside the top six with a round to play. That includes two weeks ago in Texas, where he was third entering the final round.
It's disappointing that he played poorly on a difficult Sunday where rain and wind made a soft, long course a real grind, but Kuchar will be much more at home at Colonial, where he was runner-up having led through 54 holes in 2013, finished sixth in 2016, produced an excellent weekend for 12th in 2017, and shot a third-round 65 to climb the leaderboard to a decent position in 2018.
Last year's missed cut came on the number, at a time when he was returning in hope of finding some form rather than expecting to play well, but since a quarter-final run in the Match Play his game has been much better. Those key elements, approach play and putting, have been behind the improvement and he's sure to look to Mickelson for inspiration.
Brandt Snedeker could easily slot into this list but looks short enough, having been bigger than Kuchar in the Nelson, not got as close to the lead, and with a slightly worse record here for all he too is a past runner-up. Nevertheless, the 40-year-old is respected and experience really is a good place to start at Colonial.
I would rather take a real flier on HENRIK STENSON, whose winning PGA Tour form is similar to Snedeker's, and suggests that Colonial Country Club would be a likely venue for another trophy were his game in better shape.
The fact that it isn't explains why we can have 200/1, but there's no doubt he's made small improvements lately, first defying expectations at The Masters, then finishing 11th alongside Justin Rose in the Zurich Classic, before making cuts at both the Valspar and the PGA Championship.
Clearly, he needs to improve a good deal more to be landing the place money but I'm drawn to the fact his strokes-gained approach figure at Kiawah Island was his best since the WGC-HSBC Champions two years ago. Two starts later, Stenson caused a bit of a surprise to beat Woods, Patrick Reed and Jon Rahm in the Hero World Challenge, his last recognised victory.
If he can improve again with his irons, this is a course which will better reward his accuracy, which has returned as he's ranked second, 20th and 19th in fairways hit across his last three individual starts. Put him in the fairway, add that progressive approach work, and suddenly it wouldn't need much for him to be on the first page of the leaderboard.
At a course we know he likes, he'd be much shorter, but his Colonial form can be viewed in a better light than at first glance. He was 27th here when out of form on debut, and had flown in from the BMW PGA Championship in Surrey. In 2011, he was at his lowest ebb, yet despite missing four cuts beforehand and another after, he played reasonably to finish 44th. In 2012 he'd missed two of his last three cuts and failed to make the weekend, while in 2013 he was 35th, this time having flown in from Bulgaria.
Sixteen rounds from his last four tournaments, all much closer to Texas, is a far better way to prepare, and he's won two post-major tournaments before. To do so this time he'll need to put behind him a sustained run of troublingly poor golf, and perhaps calm down a little, but there's been enough in what he's done more recently to take a chance at 200/1.
Camilo Villegas would be in the staking plan at the standout 200/1 but is generally half that, while Andrew Putnam and Danny Lee haven't quite done enough to give them the benefit of the doubt at a course both of them adore. Lee does have that Greenbrier form having won there and was 21st two starts ago, but he's been a little lost for a while and Putnam would be preferred given how well he played a couple of months back.
Rolling the dice is certainly no bad policy after a major, as we saw when Stewart Cink won the RBC Heritage. There are always exceptions, including Spieth, but other skinners in the aftermath of a major include Davis Love, Billy Hurley, CT Pan, Satoshi Kodaira, Hudson Swafford and Robert Streb, the change in challenge and intensity perhaps explaining why the best players sometimes flatter to deceive.
I'll therefore sign off with two more at fairly big prices, starting with HAROLD VARNER III.
He opened 63-66 here last summer, producing some outstanding golf on just his second visit to the course. Varner put it down to how desperate he was to get back out there on the PGA Tour, but with strong form at the Heritage, Greenbrier, Wyndham and Mayakoba Classic, just as relevant is the fact that Colonial is a good fit.
Varner ranked ninth in approaches and first in accuracy that week, hitting 18 greens in round one, only for the putter to desert him under the pressure of the weekend, which he began in the company of Spieth. That's long been the club which holds him back, but he's ticking along just above average right now and that helped him to his best PGA Tour finish three starts back as he took second at Harbour Town.
While a missed cut in his hometown event at the Wells Fargo will have disappointed him, Varner hit the ball really well at Kiawah Island only to rank 80th of 81 players in putting, and if he can make his share then better awaits at this far more suitable course.
And as far as putting last year's T19 into context, it's worth remembering that it came at a time of heightened racial tension in the US, so much so that Varner was interviewed at length at the start of the week, not something he's used to.
It was plain to see how uncomfortable he was having effectively been forced to be the spokesman for the PGA Tour and what they're doing to tackle inequality and injustice, and after two rounds he confessed that it had been a "super long" week, despite only having arrived on Tuesday.
No wonder he ran out of gas, but a year on, his form better, and bentgrass greens his best surface, I wouldn't be surprised to see him stick around towards the top of the leaderboard.
Finally, MATTHEW NESMITH is ranked eighth on Tour in strokes-gained approach and second in greens, which marks him down as the right sort of player for a classical test such as this one.
Key will be getting some putts to drop, and it's worth noting that he's a significantly better putter on bentgrass, as he showed when making more than he usually does in this tournament last summer.
Finishing down the field on debut was a good return given the strength of field and he's been one of the quiet success stories of this season. Since missing the cut at Sawgrass, he's made five from five, maintaining his excellent approach play and finally seeing some putts go in more recently.
At some stage I expect he'll find his way into one of the final groups, probably at a course like this one, or else somewhere similar. At 150/1 generally he's good value to put everything together.
Posted at 1230 BST on 25/05/21
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