Best bets
4pts win Viktor Hovland @ 4/1
2pts win Rory McIlroy @ 16/5
Without-strokes market
1pt each-way Xander Schauffele @ 12/1
0.5pt each-way Tom Kim @ 30/1
Place FIVE pre-tournament bets and get an in-play matched FREE BET! T&Cs apply.
Nobody saw Viktor Hovland’s meteoric 61 coming on Sunday but it enabled the fearless Norwegian to leapfrog Scottie Scheffler and Matt Fitzpatrick to nick the BMW and jump into second spot as the race for the FedEx Cup’s bumper $18m payday reaches its climax this coming weekend.
Yes, we’ve got there at last – the Tour Championship at East Lake, Georgia. The last 30 left standing in the season-long points chase will do battle after 20 more bit the dust at Olympia Fields. The majority realise they are there just to pick up their fat end-of-term consolation cheque and don’t have the ghost of a chance of hitting the jackpot.
Hovland fell into the latter category in the first three FedEx showdowns he contested as he received starts of zero in the first, three in the second and two in the third. Little wonder his East Lake record reads only 20-5-15. Nobody has yet won off those lowly marks and it will probably be a long time until anyone does.
But that dazzling victory in the second Playoff tournament in Chicago has sent him soaring into second behind world No. 1 Scheffler and qualifying for an eight start, a massive upgrade. At last Viktor has a realistic shout at FedEx Cup glory.
It’s not as if last week was a one-off. Hovland’s rock-solid Majors record this year, 7-2-19-13, and earlier triumph at Memorial had marked him down as a big-occasion golfer even before Sunday’s magic. And this is undoubtedly a big occasion.
The highly contentious handicapping system means those who have played the best golf from flagfall at the start of the year are rewarded with extra shots. Unlike horseracing where handicap winners have to carry more weight to make it a fairer fight, the FedEx Cup system hands the No. 1 Scheffler ten extra, Hovland eight, the No. 3 Rory McIlroy seven extra, the No. 4 Jon Rahm six extra and the No. 5 Lucas Glover five extra.
You can totally forget those between 11th and 30th whose start ranges from zero to three. Those in sixth place on +4, Max Homa, Patrick Cantlay, Brian Harman, Wyndham Clark and Fitzpatrick, have a chance of sorts but giving the world No. 1 a lead of six and Hovland four, even over 72 holes, makes it highly unlikely.
Yet that was McIlroy’s starting point last year and somehow, from six behind Scheffler at the start and still six behind starting round four, he won. But it required a baffling collapse by the leader for Rory to pull it off.
Not only had McIlroy teed off on day one six adrift, by the time he’d reached the third tee the deficit was up to ten. What a nightmare start – triple-bogeying the first and bogeying the second. “It just goes to show that anything’s possible,” said the winner.
There’s also the Rory Factor to consider as he’s done it from way behind not once but twice. The 7346 yards sounds long for a par 70 but East Lake clearly brings out the best in him and his length brings it down to size.
He had to spot No. 1 Justin Thomas five shots in 2019, the first time this weighted starting-strokes system was brought in (principally, one feels, to ensure a household-name winner for the sponsors) and on that occasion it was the brilliance of his golf that carried him to a four-shot victory.
In a nutshell: we’ve had four Tour Championships under the staggered points regime, Rory has come from five and six behind the back-marker to win two (adding to the 2016 Championship he won when it was played under the old method) and the other two have gone to the men with ten, Dustin Johnson in 2020, Cantlay in 2021. Neither would have won on a level playing field. Runner-up Rahm and third Kevin Na took fewer strokes than Cantlay; Xander Schauffele starting seven behind DJ had closed the gap to three by the end.
So don’t do a double-take when you see skinny prices like 6/4 for Scheffler and 16/5 for McIlroy. Because when you get past them and the next two, the bang-in-form Hovland and the bang-out-of-form Rahm, at 4/1 and 15/2 respectively, the rest need not quite a miracle but something akin to that and, almost certainly a helping hand from the top, to pull it off.
After covering the final nine in 28 shots on Sunday, the bold Hovland will go flag hunting again and could overtake Scheffler, the only runner ahead of him on the handicap, just as he did at the weekend. As his gobsmacked playing partner McIlroy said after watching Hovland’s record-breaking round at first hand: “I’m glad he’s on my Ryder Cup side!” They could be the pair to back, Hovland to win, save on course specialist Rory – a European 1-2 that’ll get right up American noses right on cue with the Ryder Cup just around the corner.
Best outsider could well be Schauffele at 28/1. He receives only +3 and nobody’s won from that far back but a small each-way play with Fitzdares offering four places has some merit. Like McIlroy, he thrives on this unusual format, the moral winner in 2020 and best of the rest behind runaway Rory the previous year.
If the golf’s going to be hot, the weather’s likely to be hotter, stifling in the mid-90s until cooling slightly for Sunday.
Fitzdares also have a ‘72-hole without starting strokes’ market – in other words a ‘normal’ tournament – and given Schauffele’s past East Lake history, he looks the one at 12/1 for that, along with excellent driver Tom Kim, a more speculative bet at 30/1 but playing some tip-top golf in the UK recently.
Best bets
2pts each-way Adrian Meronk @ 14/1
1.5pts each-way Eddie Pepperell @ 40/1
1pt each-way Shane Lowry @ 12/1
1pt each-way Max Kieffer @ 40/1
0.5pt each-way Adrien Dumont de Chassart @ 22/1
Time is running out for the Ryder Cup fringe contenders with just two counting tournaments left – the Czech Masters and next week’s European Masters in Switzerland – before captain Luke Donald announces the squad attempting to wrest the trophy back from the mighty Americans in Rome at the end of September.
Trying again after a disastrous trip to Northern Ireland last week are Bob MacIntyre (missed cut) and Victor Perez (withdrew after poor Rd 1, no reason given but back trouble had caused a similar situation before). Both were considered shoo-ins for Rome at different times – MacIntyre in particular as he won on the Ryder Cup course last year – but the strain of this nerve-shredding long-distance race is showing.
It took two sensational McIlroy birdies to deprive Bobby Mac of his home Open and that luckless defeat seems to have left a mark. Hopefully, he’ll come back with all guns blazing in Prague but there are plenty in the Czech Republic capable of elbowing him out of a Ryder place, not least Shane Lowry, the Hojgaard twins, Rasmus and Nicolai, and 6ft 6in Pole Adrian Meronk.
As a Major champion, Lowry is really a cut above but the big Irishman has posted only one top-ten on the PGA circuit. What he does have is consistency at the top level with three top-20s in the Majors and good showings at the Scottish Open, Memorial and the Travelers. He has to be favourite but there is a question mark over his putting.
I like Meronk best because he knows how to win and will be fresher than those who went over to Northern Ireland. His victory on the Ryder Cup course in this year’s Italian Open surely clinched his place anyway after that earlier success in Australia and there have been plenty more positives since, notably a third in Munich.
Eddie Pepperell’s first decent form for a while came at the weekend with his third to Daniel Brown and Alex Fitzpatrick in the grandly titled World Invitational and was quick to tweet afterwards: “Felt good to be back out competing and not playing like a complete turnip!”
The Englishman has had a soft spot for the Albatross course (7468 yards, par 72) ever since it first hosted the Czech Masters in 2014. He finished fifth then and has compiled a course record since (5th again in 2017, top-tens 2018 and 2022) that makes you want to back him, all the more so as he arrives high in confidence, always a problem with him. It’s check rather than Czech-mate at the moment but as a two-time tour winner, we know Pepperell has it in him to get the job done.
We know far less about Ludvig Aberg but captain Donald was hugely impressed when partnering the young Swede in one of the 23-year-old’s first pro starts after a sensational college career but whether he has done enough to merit joint-favouritism here is dubious. Six PGA Tour cuts made out of seven, including a fourth at John Deere and 14th at Wyndham, is no mean feat but comes in the promising category rather than the spectacular and a bit more is required before getting involved.
Possibly worthier of interest at the respective odds is the new Belgian talent Adrien Dumont de Chassart who won on the Korn Ferry Tour in June, was second in Kansas at that level and has got people talking. There is obviously much more to come.
Finally, Germany’s defending champion Max Kieffer seems to save his best for this neck of the woods as his two best 2023 efforts have come in his neighboring homeland, runner-up in the European Open in Hamburg and third in the BMW in Munich. He conquered the Albatross on only his second visit and looks solid each-way material.
Looking less solid is the weather as thunderstorms are forecast for the last three rounds. Dry to start with though and temperatures in the mid-to-high 80s.
For all your bets on the PGA Tour, visit our dedicated golf betting page.
