St Jude Championship tips: Jon Rahm to shine again, Tyrrell Hatton and Wyndham Clark set to step up
Golf pundit Martin Colwell came close with Wyndham Championship runner-up Russell Henley last week, so we’re hoping that one of his picks can go one better for us this weekend.
2023-08-08St Jude Championship tips: Jon Rahm to shine again, Tyrrell Hatton and Wyndham Clark set to step up
As the regular US PGA Tour draws to a close, it's time for the top-ranked players to move on to the season-ending FedEX play-offs over the next three weekends.
A high-class field of 70 elite golfers will gather in Memphis to battle it out for the St Jude Championship, which carries a $20million purse in its own right, plus an additional target for the top 50 in the rankings to progress to the BMW Championship the following week.
It is a no-cut tournament, so there is no Friday jeopardy and everything to play for across all four days at TPC Southwind, a par 70 and 7,243 yards in length.
As is the norm, the top three players vie for favouritism, with Scottie Scheffler shading it at 13/2 while Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm are not far behind on 8/1. Scheffler's winning woes continue, and so we cannot be with him at these odds in this field, but McIlroy usually plays well in August and brings good form.
Pick of the trio for me, however, is Rahmbo, who has excellent course form, and although he has played sparingly in recent months, he showed his game is still in great shape at the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, where he rallied after just making the cut to score a memorable third-round 63 to end up tied for second.
Next in the betting are those two highly-rated non-winners, Patrick Cantlay (14/1) and Xander Schauffele (16/1). Of the two I prefer Schauffele as a potential winning option, although Cantlay may well finish in front of him come Sunday, due to his penchant to backdoor top-ten finishes.
Further down the field, Viktor Hovland has played this course on three occasions in tournaments, although his record here is not great, despite it being set up ideally to suit his game, so 18/a appears to be a fair enough price.
Over the past 36 completed rounds, Tyrrell Hatton is second only to Scottie Scheffler in the rankings, and if he can eliminate his one-hole blow-out per round, then he can be a serious contender here.
Missing the cut just once all season (although that wouldn't be an issue here anyway), the temperamental Englishman has landed eight top-20 finishes in his last nine efforts, including four in the top six, so we can be assured that he knows how to battle for four days, and he looks worth an each-way play at 22/1.
The enigmatic Jordan Spieth is at 33/1, and while the three-time Major winner has a decent course record here, he does not seem to get all aspects of his game firing at the same time, which means he struggles to get over the winning line these days.
The in-form 2023 Major winner, Wyndham Clark, looks a snip at the same 33/1 price. Few can boast a better year so far than Clark, who has landed five top six finishes in his last dozen tournaments.
He backed up his Wells Fargo victory with a memorable first Major in the US Open, and I see no reason to suppose his form will slip from those high standards this week.
Last year's runner-up here was Sepp Straka, who lost in a play-off to Will Zalatoris, so he clearly knows his way round this testing course.
The likeable Austrian missed the cut at the 3M Open on his last outing, but had previously shared the runner-up spot at the Open just two weeks after storming through the pack to land the John Deere Classic, so the 50/1 available looks tempting each-way value.
Last week's Wyndham Championship winner, Lucas Glover looks tasty at 70/1, but history is against him as it is notoriously difficult to win back-to-back tournaments.
Chris Kirk withdrew last week, but if back to the form he showed a few months ago, he could make his triple-digit price look very generous by Sunday afternoon.
Please note: All prices were available withPlanet Sport Betat the time of writing, but can fluctuate
