ZURICH: The PGA Tour’s lone team event gets underway this week from America’s most unique city, New Orleans, where the laid-back party atmosphere is the perfect setting for a tournament that tends to feel like an exhibition despite there being $9.2 million up for grabs. And I don’t mean to sound harsh or negative when I say it mostly feels like an exhibition, it’s just that, when you watch the telecast, you see nothing but high-fives, smiles, and birdies. Mostly absent are the stressors and struggles that play such a big role most weeks, and that’s not all bad — there’s nothing wrong with something different every now and then, and this tournament was slipping into irrelevance before the change of format in 2017 (prior to that it was an ordinary stroke play event).
It’s still not a week where you’ll see a lot of big names, with one notable exception — Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry won this event last year, as the good friends and Ryder Cup teammates rode the good vibes and pure iron shots all the way to the trophy and a large cardboard cheque, and the Masters champ has returned to defend. He and Lowry are unsurprisingly the clear favorites on the BETDAQ exchange, where they’re currently trading at 4.9.
The format is best ball (fourball) in rounds 1 and 3 and the more difficult alternate shot (foursomes) in rounds 2 and 4. 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. You’d better bring your birdies this week.
With that in mind, here’s what I’m thinking:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Nico Echavarria/Max Greyserman (30.0)- While this price may feel a bit short at first glance, remember that there are only 80 teams in the field and 33 cut-makers, so if you get on a bit of a roll you find yourself on the first page of the leaderboard pretty fast. Both of these guys have been playing well this season, racking up seven top-25 finishes combined over the past two months, and they’re both averaging more than 4 birdies per round, so there should be plenty of fireworks in this group. We got a glimpse last year of what they are capable of, as they posted 23-under to finish 4th, only two shots behind winners McIlroy and Lowry. Don’t be surprised if these guys make a serious run this week.
Brice Garnett/Sepp Straka (39.0)- To win this week, you need offense — you need birdies. Well, nobody on Tour has been better at making birdies this year than Sepp Straka, who ranks first in both total birdies (213) and birdies per round (4.84). His partner this week, Brice Garnett, is more of the steady, consistent type, and he’s had quite a bit of success in this tournament, finishing 11th or better three times in the past six years, including a T11 with Straka last year. Both of these guys do their best work on bermuda, they’ve both contended fairly recently, and they should be plenty comfortable playing together in both the foursomes and fourball formats after a good run here last year. They’re a nice value at 39.0.
Nick Hardy/Davis Riley (76.0)- This is a big price for a team that won this event just two years ago, posting a tournament record 30-under par as they laughed, high-fived, and fist-pumped their way around TPC Louisiana. It was Riley’s second top-5 finish in three career starts here, so he clearly thrives in this format, and he’s been playing well lately, making six straight cuts and finding the top-10 twice in that span, a T6 in Puerto Rico and a 7th-place showing at the Valspar. Hardy has been struggling a bit but made his first cut in a month last week at the Corales Puntacana, and he’s a bomber who is able to power his way past much of the trouble at TPC Louisiana, which partly explains his excellent record here. This team may be the best value on the board at a price like 76.0.
