CJ Cup Byron Nelson
The Course:
The PGA Tour leaves New Orleans and heads West to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex suburb of McKinney, Texas to visit TPC Craig Ranch. This Tom Weiskopf-designed course plays to a par 71 across 7,400 yards, and hosts one of the two PGA Tour tournaments named after a retired professional golfer1.
This is the 4th visit to this course, but it has previously hosted the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, so it is not new to many golfers who will take it on. While this course has water via Rowleet Creek on 13 holes and tree-lined fairways, this will be a birdie fest, especially on the front 9 which has a few short par 4’s and 2 very scorable par 5’s. One thing that makes this course a little unique is that the fairways are Zoysiagrass, the rough is Bermuda and the greens are bentgrass.
For this course accuracy off the tee is not a big deal so figure being a bit of a bomber will give you an advantage. While hitting it a long way off the tee will help, being able to hit long approach shots will be key as many will be hit from the 200+ range. Hitting the green tends to be pretty easy at this course, but if you do miss the greens, watch out as there are tons of bunkers that surround the greens.
Here are a couple of changes to this tournament that may only interest me:
This tournament was moved in the calendar as it was held after the Wells Fargo and before the PGA Championship last year.
This tournament’s title sponsor was AT&T last year, but CJ is now the named sponsor. I am not exactly sure why this change was made, but I have a guess (spoiler alert: check out the list of recent champions and see what many have in common)
As with all Texas golf, wind can be a factor and it looks like we will get a fair bit of it with 25+ mph gusts expected every day. There also seems to be a pretty bad storm coming Wednesday night into Thursday so for those of you who like to build DFS lineups, you might want to wait until tee times are posted to see if the late tee times are forced to play 36 holes on Friday or if there is any real advantage based on the waves. Same is true for FRL wagers.
Something else to keep in mind this week is that the top 100 in the OWGR as of next Monday (May 6th) qualify for the PGA Championship. That means anyone on the bubble will have a little more to play for and focus on this week.
Previous results:
2023 - Jason Day (20-1) picked up his first win in over 5 years when he won his 2nd Byron Nelson (which was his first PGA Tour win in 2010) when he shot -23 to beat Austin Eckroat (200-1) and Si Woo Kim (35-1) by 1 stroke.
2022 - KH Lee (100-1 odds) defended his title and won his second PGA Tour event when he shot -26 and topped Jordan Spieth (20-1) by 1 stroke.
2021 - KH Lee (-25) captured his first PGA Tour title at 150-1 odds when he topped Sam Burns (30-1) by 3 strokes
2019 - Kang Sun-hoon (-23) started the South Korean run at 125-1 odds when he beat Matt Every (200-1) and Scott Piercy (40-1) by 2 strokes2.
The first-round leader in 2023 was SY Noh when he shot an astounding -11 60 in the first round on his way to a T74 finish (-7). The eventual winner Jason Day sat T4 and 4 shots back after the first round.
The event’s 72-hole-to-par record is -26 shot by KH Lee 2 years ago, while the scoring record is jointly held by Kang Sung-hoon, Aaron Wise, and Rory Sabatini at 261.
This is now the 3rd go-around on the Byron Nelson for us3 and thus far we have turned a tidy 14.2u profit (105% ROI)! Last year’s Byron Nelson was great for us as we nailed Jason Day as the winner. We have also had a great record with Top 20 bets thus far!
My bets:
As you can tell by the name of this tournament, this is sponsored by a company that heavily backs South Korean golfers and this tournament has a history of South Koreans playing very well. As such, I expect Benny An and Tom Kim to be heavily heavily backed this week. Two other players I am hearing being heavily backed this week are Seamus Power and Peter Kuest.
Some players I liked and took hard looks at were Jordan Speith (he has great course history, but he has looked so bad), Min Woo Lee (I need to see improvements in his approach game), Sungjae Im (I do not love the quick jaunt to Korea, even if he won the event), Keith Mitchell (not in the wind), Matti Schmid (I did not like what I saw last week), CT Pan (his odds are just too short), and Jake Knapp (it took everything I had to not bet him this week).
This week we have two events with this even in Dallas as well as the Volvo China Open (picks pending) so let’s get to this week’s card (about 6.8u of risk):
Outright:
0.75u Si Woo Kim 22-1 (FD / DK)
0.3u Mackenzie Hughes 55-1 (FD)
0.3u Adam Schenk 55-1 (FD / DK)
0.24u Mark Hubbard 70-1 (FD)
0.21u Doug Ghim 80-1 (FD)
0.16u Justin Lower 100-1 (FD)
T10 (0.25u on each):
Si Woo Kim +200
Mackenzie Hughes +450
Mark Hubbard +500
T20:
0.75u Si Woo Kim +100
0.5u Adam Schenk +165
0.25u Mackenzie Hughes +200
0.25u Mark Hubbard +225
0.25u Doug Ghim +250
0.25u Justin Lower +300
Matchups
0.7u Ryo Hisatsune over Garrick Higgo -140
0.5u Justin Lower over Sam Stevens +106
0.335u Joseph Bramlett over Peter Kuest -134
0.3u Chan Kim over Taylor Montgomery -120
Good luck with all your action!
The other is the API
The 2020 edition was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic
The Byron Nelson was the first tournament I bet with the model I use now.