TRAVELERS: After a memorable week at Shinnecock the world’s best will make the short trip to Cromwell, Connecticut for the Travelers Championship, an event that has seen its profile rise considerably since becoming one of the PGA Tour’s $20 million Signature Events. This past week the Tour’s braintrust announced some upcoming changes to the schedule and the way tournaments will be grouped and prioritized beginning in 2028, and when the decision was made to reshape things in a fairly drastic way, no-cut cash giveaways like this week’s event were squarely in the crosshairs. The new PGA Tour will have two defined tiers, the Championship Series and the Challenger Series, and the top-tier events (“Championship Series”) will have larger purses (though not $20 million each), but they will all be standard 120-man fields with a cut, so players will have to earn their money, just like they’ve always had to in professional golf. It’s a step in the right direction, I think.
For now, though, the 72 players comprising this week’s field can sleep peacefully knowing that everybody, even the last place finisher, will receive a check of at least $36k, with a cool $3.6 mil going to the winner. A purse like that will bring just about everyone out of the woodwork, even the week after a major, though it should be noted that “just about everyone” doesn’t include World No. 2 Rory McIlroy, who decided to take the week off and join Jon Rahm as the only two top-20 players not in attendance this week (Rahm is ineligible, of course). Scottie Scheffler is the favorite, naturally, and is still commanding tremendous respect in the market despite having not won since January, as he’s currently trading at around 5.6 on the BETDAQ Exchange, with the next closest competitors priced at around 20/1. Scheffler won here in 2024 and has racked up four consecutive top-15 finishes at this event, including a T6 last year, and with his recent frustrations in big events, you know he’s chomping at the bit to win again. That said, he looked like a blind man on the greens last week, so if you’re backing him at a price like 5.6, a small leap of faith will certainly be involved. His putting simply must get better.
The course this week is a familiar one: TPC River Highlands has played host to this event since 1984 and has been the site of some truly memorable finishes. A shortish par-70 measuring just 6,840 yards, it’s not a one-trick pony, as a variety of different styles have won this tournament over the years, from bombers like Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson to short and straight types like Chez Reavie and Russell Knox. And then there are those who hit it both long and straight, like Scheffler, or defending champ Keegan Bradley, who has won here in 2 of the past 3 years. The greens at River Highlands are small and speedy and can be difficult to hold from the rough, so putting the ball in the fairway will be important this week, but if players are hitting their spots, they can really take it low, as Jim Furyk proved with his record-setting 58 here back in 2016. River Highlands is a straightforward test that features plenty of wedges and short irons– the winner this week will be a player who gets on a roll and rides it, not one who perseveres through tremendous difficulties. This will be a far cry from what we saw last week at Shinnecock.
With that in mind, here’s what I’m thinking:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Xander Schauffele (20.0)- A player who manages to be known as both a tough, “grinder” type and a birdie-making machine who can take it really deep (a rare combo of traits), Schauffele has been up to his usual tricks of late, finishing 11th at Shinnecock last week and logging top-15 finishes in 6 of his past 8 starts, with four top-10s in that span. He has a terrific record at TPC River Highlands, winning this event in 2022 and finding the top-10 four more times across seven career appearances, and with the way he’s been playing lately it would be a surprise not to see him around the first page of the leaderboard come Sunday. And if it comes down to a duel with Scheffler, we’ve got one guy who’s a great putter and another who’s really struggling with his confidence on the greens. I know which one I’m rolling with this week.
Viktor Hovland (44.0)- While he may not be playing quite the same brand of golf that earned him the FedEx Cup title in 2023, Hovland has righted the ship after some bumpy waters caused by a swing change and seems poised to find the winner’s circle soon. Yes, he missed the cut by a shot at last week’s U.S. Open, and he also missed the cut at last month’s PGA Championship. Those two results have some observers thinking that Hovland is playing worse than he actually is… remove those two unfortunate weeks and you’ve got 10/11 made cuts, four top-15 finishes, a T18 at the Masters, and a 3rd-place showing in Canada two weeks ago, when he closed with 64-65 to post 14-under for the week. These are not the exploits of a player who is in a slump or struggling with his game. Hovland has had success at River Highlands before, finishing 11th here in 2020 and T20 in 2024, and the course really sets up well for a great iron player like him: small targets, lots of opportunities. He feels like a sneaky one this week and a nice value at a price like 44.0.
Bud Cauley (100.0)- Finally back to peak form after a bad luck injury run, Cauley’s season went from good to great at the Canadian Open two weeks ago, as he rode a 2nd-round 63 and a Sunday 65 to his first career PGA Tour title. TPC River Highlands shares some similarities with TPC Toronto in that neither course provides a tremendous edge for the longer players, both courses feature lots of wedges and short irons into small, firm greens, and putting the ball in the fairway is of paramount importance at both places. Cauley made the cut at Shinnecock last week but ran into some difficulty over the weekend, and I think he’ll be very comfortable returning to a course like River Highlands to pick up right where he left off– nine straight made cuts and five top-25 finishes were what preceded the win in Canada. He finished 25th in this event last year and is playing much better these days… don’t be surprised if Cauley finds himself in the mix this weekend. He’s certainly worth a bet at a triple-digit price.
