BYRON NELSON: The PGA Tour returns to the Lone Star State this week for an event with an illustrious history and a new, rather awkward name: the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. Yes, this is the same “Byron Nelson” that has been held in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area since 1944 and has been won by a who’s-who of golfing greats, everyone from Lord Byron himself to Hogan to Nicklaus to Woods. While it hasn’t had the same pop in recent years and has jumped around venues a few times, it appears to have now found a permanent home at TPC Craig Ranch, a sprawling Tom Weiskopf design that sits on the northern edge of the Dallas metroplex, and the big names are starting to return (some of them, anyway).
Why the CJ Cup, formerly a standalone event that was last held in October 2023 at Congaree in South Carolina, is now conflated with this event is a mystery to me. I’m sure sponsorship dollars are behind it. At any rate, we should be in for a fun week and the tournament is as wide-open as any we’ve seen this year– Jordan Spieth, who hasn’t won in ages, currently sits atop BETDAQ’s Win Market, if that tells you anything.
The course, TPC Craig Ranch, is a flat, sprawling layout with wide fairways and large green complexes. Like most Texas courses it’s prone to high winds from time to time, but the forecast appears to be pretty mild this week with the exception of a few showers, which should soften things up. The players absolutely tear this place apart, with the cut generally sitting in the 4-5 under range and a winning score around 25-under. Jason Day got the job done last year, his first victory since 2018, and right now he sits right behind Spieth and Si Woo Kim on the BETDAQ exchange, trading at 25.0. That seems a bit short for Day, who hasn’t logged a top-10 since February… I’d advise looking at players who have been hot lately and have been putting well, as you’re going to need birdies in bunches this week. With that in mind, here’s what I’m thinking:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Stephan Jaeger (32.0)- The 34-year-old Jaeger has blossomed and is playing the best golf of his life, recording five top-20 finishes and three top-5s already this year, including his first career PGA Tour victory at the Houston Open a few weeks ago. He currently ranks 19th on Tour in strokes gained tee-to-green and 13th in strokes gained around the green, which means he’s both striking it beautifully and getting up-and-down most anytime he does miss a green. He finished T18 at RBC Heritage last time out so he’s still in excellent form, and he seemed very comfortable at TPC Craig Ranch last year, finishing T11 after a scintillating Sunday 63. (As an aside, I’ve been doing this column for nearly a decade and I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve ever typed the word “scintillating”. So there’s that.) Jaeger seems primed for another big week and is reasonably priced at better than 30/1.
Mackenzie Hughes (46.0)- Hughes if off to a great start this season, making 9 cuts in 10 starts and finishing 31st or better six times. Lately he’s been hanging around the top of leaderboards, finishing 3rd at the Valspar, which is only three starts ago for him, and 14th in Houston the following week. At the RBC Heritage last time out, he found himself a shot back of the lead heading into the weekend after back-to-back 66s before fading on Saturday. In other words, he’s playing extremely well, and now he returns to a course that he knows and likes, as evidenced by his T14 in this tournament last year, when he shot 65 or better in 3 of 4 rounds (Saturday again tripped him up). Last year’s performance came smack dab in the middle of a run of missed cuts… 5 MCs in 6 starts to be exact, with this one the lone exception. It makes you think that he could do quite a bit better than T14 now that he’s in such fine form, right? Sounds logical to me, and it means Hughes is very much worth a bet at a price like 46.0.
Justin Lower (94.0)- Though he is 35 years old, Lower didn’t earn his PGA Tour card until 2022 and is still finding his footing on the big circuit after 78 starts. That said, he’s in the midst of the best stretch of his young career, with five top-30 finishes and a pair of top-5s across his last eight starts, including a T4 at the Corales Puntacana a couple of weeks ago. He’s played in this tournament in each of the past two years and has made the cut both times, so he knows his way around TPC Craig Ranch, and he’s top-20 on Tour in total birdies, which will definitely come in handy in a week like this, when red numbers will be everywhere and pars will sometimes feel like bogeys. Lower is capable of winning this tournament and is a nice long-odds dark horse to ride.
