ZURICH: The PGA Tour’s lone team event gets underway this week from the Big Easy, an apropos setting for a tournament whose laid back vibe and spirit of camaraderie sets it apart from your garden variety Tour stop.
This team setup has been in effect since 2017, when tournament organizers realized that fewer and fewer big-name players were showing up to an event that has been part of the schedule since 1958, and made the inspired decision to do something different. Now, the event not only attracts a handful of big names like Brooks Koepka, Shane Lowry, and last week’s winner Matthew Fitzpatrick, but there are some fun and interesting teams due in large part to a rule allowing one player from each pairing to be a non-PGA Tour member. That means a guy like Matt Fitzpatrick can play with his little brother Alex, which he is doing (as Koepka has done in the past with his brother Chase), and players can link up with old friends, countrymen, college teammates, or gambling partners to have a run at an opportunity that could be life-changing for some of those involved.
We’ve got some names from the past, too, like 48-year-old Geoff Ogilvy, who will be captaining the upcoming Presidents Cup but will first link up with countryman Cam Davis to give it a run this week, and 49-year-old Jason Dufner, who has partnered with Austin Cook, a player who hasn’t had his Tour card since 2023 and made just $4,245 on the Korn Ferry Tour last year. Those aren’t the only underdog teams… if you’re bored, feel free to check out what the James Hahn/Kyle Stanley team has been up to over the past couple of years. Yikes.
Though we’ve all been rooting for one of these true dark horse teams to shock the world, and I’m sure it’ll happen one of these years, this event is mostly won by the guys you’d expect… you know, the better players. Last year’s champion duo of Andrew Novak/Ben Griffin is back to defend and currently trading around 18.5 on the BETDAQ exchange, placing them firmly among the favorites. The brothers Fitzpatrick head the market at 11.5, while teams like Lowry/Koepka (12.0), Rai/Theegala (22.0), and Thorbjornsen/Vilips (17.5) are also expected to contend. The format consists of fourball (best ball) for the first and third rounds and the more challenging alternate shot (foursomes) for Friday and Sunday. Things can get very interesting when it’s alternate shot over the final few holes of the tournament…
The host course will once again be TPC Louisiana, a Pete Dye design that is fairly friendly by Tour standards, with ample space off the tee and not as much severity around the greens as you normally expect from a Dye track. At 7,425 yards, it’s plenty long and it generally plays pretty soft, so length off the tee is a definite advantage, and the tee-to-green Bermuda should eliminate a few teams from consideration. The players generally tear TPC Louisiana apart, so we can expect another winning score in the 25 to 30-under range. It will be raining birdies this week, there’s no doubt about that. Hot putters are a must.
With all that in mind, here’s what I’m thinking:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Michael Thorbjornsen/Karl Vilips (17.5)- Close friends and college teammates at Stanford, where Thorbjornsen won National Player of the Year as a senior, these guys both pound the driver and play with an aggressive style that lends itself well to a course like TPC Louisiana. They demonstrated this last year with a 4th-place showing here, finishing the week at 25-under, just three behind the winners. Since then, Vilips has won an event, picking up his first PGA Tour title at last year’s Puerto Rico Open, while Thorbjornsen has established himself as a rising star, breaking into the top-50 of the world rankings earlier this year. Both guys come into this week in good form, with Thorbjornsen fresh off a Sunday 65 at the Heritage that propelled him to a T33 (his fourth finish of 33rd or better in his past five starts), which put him in a tie with Vilips, who is only three weeks removed from a top-20 in Houston. It feels like these two are gonna go low this week. They might just win it.
Davis Thompson/Austin Eckroat (36.0)- Though it’s probably not appropriate to call them a “sleeper” team, since there are only about a dozen teams with shorter odds, the Thompson/Eckroat pairing isn’t particularly flashy or notable but is all substance, as both players enter the week in good form, with Eckroat coming off a T10 at the Texas Open last time out and Thompson a T14 at the same event. They’ve experienced moderate success in this event, too, with both finding the top-25 here in their last appearance, in 2024, so they’re familiar with TPC Louisiana and know what it takes to get it done here. This is one of the few teams in the field where you have two in-form players in the midst of their prime who both have PGA Tour wins under their belt, as well as top-25 finishes in this tournament. I’m happy to take a chance on them at a price like 36.0.
Brandt Snedeker/Keith Mitchell (75.0)- Though it’s a bit more surprising to see the International Presidents Cup captain, Ogilvy, here this week, it’s also fun to see Snedeker, the U.S. captain, give it a go at age 45. He’s played sparingly in recent months, teeing it up only five times since November, but he’s showed flashes of form recently, finishing T18 at the Valspar last month and T39 at the Texas Open two weeks ago, where he broke par all four rounds. He’s an accomplished team player who has partnered with Mitchell before here — back in 2021, when they finished 4th. Mitchell, for his part, has been playing well of late, with two top-15s in his last five starts, and he’s had some nice finishes at this event in the years since his partnership with Snedeker in ’21, including a 6th-place showing in 2023 and a T18 last year. This team may be viewed asa longshot because of Snedeker’s age, but both of these guys are playing well, and we know they work well together. They strike me as a live sleeper and an excellent value at better than 70/1.
