The oldest, the most prestigious & the toughest competition, it’s time for The Open Championship!
With top-ten finishes here in the past two years and two other Majors under his belt, can Jon Rahm (+1200) claim his first title as “The Champion Golfer of the Year,” or will the favorite, Scottie Scheffler (+450), get his first win at The Open? The crème de la crème will compete at the Royal Portrush Golf Club to win the final Major of the 2025 season & our experts are here to provide their best picks & predictions for The Open Championship!
Analysts Bo McBrayer & Conor Coughlin share their top PGA Tour bets for the 29th stop of 2025 on “The 19th Hole (S5 E29).”
⏰ Time Stamps:
00:00 Introduction
05:30 News Niblick: PGA Tour News Update
06:20 Chris Gotterup Wins 2025 Genesis Scottish Open
09:56 William Mouw Wins 2025 ISCO Championship
14:33 Grace Kim Wins LPG Major 2025 Evian Championship
18:39 Caddie Notes: Royal Portrush Breakdown
27:00 Club Twirls: 2025 The Open Championship Picks & Predictions
27:35 The Favorites
34:49 The Mid-Range
38:08 The Longshots
46:07 2025 Barracuda Championship Picks & Predictions
49:53 The Hat Pick
51:16 Plugs + Outro
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🏌️♂️ Conor Coughlin (https://twitter.com/Cough_DFS)
good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the nineteenth hole we are live on in between media make sure you like this video subscribe to the whole channel and jingle that bell for notifications we are sports we are lifestyle and everything in between we have reached the last major of the season on the pga tour It is the Open Championship or the Open, or if you’re a really cantankerous, old-fashioned person from America, it’s the British Open. Yes, it is in Britain. It’s in Royal Port Rush in County Entrem, Northern Ireland. It’s going to be a raucous crowd, all rooting for probably Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy, especially McIlroy since he’s from Northern Ireland in the next county over. I can’t wait to dive in with Connor. Let’s hit it. yeah baby here we are open championship week we made it connor I’m ecstatic I’m drinking uh we’re drinking irish whiskey because the rhoda has blessed us with one of the the best golf courses on this entire little speck of dirt hurtling through the universe royal port rush County Antrim, Northern Ireland, the sacred ground of where I hail from. That’s the same county my ancestors came to America from. I’m excited. Get Royal Portrush on my TV. I’m actually going to be watching it on my cell phone screen on Saturday from the Barracuda. Shout out, NorCal. Connor, how are you doing? And you’re muted. Way to go. Way to start the week. He’s incredible. And if you ever doubt that we’re live, this is how you find out. Dude, I hadn’t done that in weeks. Weeks, literal weeks. At least two weeks, yes. I don’t know if you’re aware of this. First off, I’m from much further south. All my ancestry is from County Cork. Very southern tip, yes. But yes, Irish nonetheless. And then the other thing I was going to tell you in light of me screwing that up Did you know that this is our one hundred and forty ninth episode? Oh, dang. So we will hit lucky number one fifty next week for the Minnesota up here in my neck of the woods. Yes. The northern plains of. Oh, you betcha. And I need more ranch. Yeah, dude, we got into a debate about that the other day. I won’t drag on about it, but I’m of the opinion that if you put ranch on anything, you just like ranch because the minute you put ranch on anything, that’s all it tastes like. Yeah. And I make a good ranch. My ranch is on my website. It’s so good. And I give that recipe to anybody because if you want things to taste like good ranch, like as one does, you want that recipe. It’s way better. I haven’t eaten bottled ranch in forever. Ranch is not a condiment. It’s a dressing. I don’t want to go into it. It’s a hot button for me. You are correct. Anyways, we digress. Digression. What are you drinking? I just took the last pour of my Jameson Blender’s Dog. Ah, Jameson from Ireland. From Dublin. I’m going to miss this one. Oh, that’s a precious bottle from a bygone era. Oh, it’s so damn good. Darn good. I’m going with the Shortbread Cookie Pot Still Red Breast Twelve Irish Whiskey. It’s delicious, and it’s delicious neat, which is something I cannot say about Jameson. As long as it’s not standard baseline Jameson. That’s what I’m referring to. That’s what I’m referring to. Blender Dog is better. Standard Jameson. It has to be chilled if I’m going to drink it neat. Otherwise, it’s so bad that I can’t even tolerate it. But if you’re talking Irish whiskey and you want something that tastes good and not just trendy, Red Breast, number twelve or even fifteen, which I know Connor has in this cabinet. I do. I do. And it is delicious to your point. And then, yeah, like there’s just so many good Irish whiskeys. We could go on and on. We’ve had some on the show. Yeah. Teeling. Yeah. You can go on forever. So yeah, there he is. Double fist. Oh, DD from the lake house. We love DD. Hi, DD. Hello. Hello. I don’t know if Tim Tim’s on here too. I don’t know if Tim realizes, but the hat is, took it down last week. The hat took it down at eighty to one odds. Dang. Unreal. Shout out to our listeners in Western Tennessee listening on the radio. One oh one point five. Talk in West and say shout out Memphis Pollard’s barbecue. We love you out there. Uh, Let’s jump right into the news. I got nothing else to say. I want to get started. Let’s get through the news, Niblick. We took down two tournaments on the show last week, both the alternate and the main. We’re going to do it again this week since there’s an alternate and a main. We’re as hot as can be. We’re in Fuego. Don’t let us get hot. They already let us get hot, and you never walk away from the table when you’re on a heater. And speaking of the hat pick, Chris got her up, wins the Scottish Open over Rory McIlroy, over our other guys that we picked. It didn’t matter. Our last pick of the week was the hat pick last week. We decided to talk more about it because he was number four in my model. And I was just going to use them for DFS. But when we dove down deeper, the value was there. Eighty to one for a guy who’s in the top twenty of every ball striking category and was riding a hot putter and a decent short game lately. What do you have? Five consecutive top twenty five finishes entering the week. Nine this season overall. No top tens until now. Chris got her up. Youngster from Jersey. Rookie on PGA Tour last year won the Myrtle Beach Classic. This year goes out there and takes down the Scottish Open over the best field in golf. How good is Chris Goddard? He’s great, and he wins us money. Connor, talk about Chris Goddard getting down. At the Renaissance Club. It’s everything that we kind of hit on at the end of the show. I mean, you just start looking at it, and he was kind of primed. The course made a ton of sense. The approach games. We talked a ton about how important ball striking was going to be last week. I don’t know. It just wasn’t the sexiest of names, and maybe that’s why we both didn’t look at it right straight away. Yeah. Came around in the end and another good hit. How hot was my betting card when I added Goddard up at the end? It was next to Rory and Marco Penge, who, as you know, finished third. Marco Penge out of left field. Goddard up, bomber. Rory, bomber. Penge, bomber. And guess what? One, two, and three right on the leaderboard there. Yeah, it was wild. Rory was kind of like… I don’t know. Just didn’t make the putts. Just looked so good. Got our hopes up like Rory tends to do. And then just kind of cruise control a little bit. Yeah, but Peng really was making a nice run, especially on Sunday. I thought he was going to do it. I thought he was going to do it. And that would have been a hundred and twenty to one win. I’ll take the top five, top ten, because I got a little I got a little frisky when I saw his his ball striking metrics. He was he was a pretty aggressive hundred twenty to one pick by the end of the day. I was surprised to see Fitzy pop up, although I shouldn’t do in this part of the world. I mean, I guess if he was going to show up, it should be Scotland, maybe Northern Ireland. But especially when it got all baked out on the weekend, like you could see Fitzy when it’s hot and running hot and fast on the fairways. That’s a dangerous player because he’s so good when things are fast. It just seems like he’s immune to it. Yeah. He’s, he’s just got an, it’s not, it’s not the same as having an eye. I guess he’s just got to feel for it, you know, like the baked out conditions just really he’s, he’s always played well on them. And yeah, I mean, I got some, I got some late round DFS action on him, but it was definitely not on the radar to be a top five here. So yeah. Speaking of DFS, how about the ISCO championship last week in Louisville? There is a post on Twitter that Brian Kirshner put up, and he was just asking for people to bet on at the ISCO between forty and one hundred to one. And I threw out a couple of names. I threw out Taylor Montgomery, who’s been riding a hot stick after coming off a neck injury, where I mean, swings always been garbage, but this is one of the best putters in the world. He finished pretty well. But my other guy they threw down there was a sixty five to one pick that I also predicted would win a tournament this year back in January. And that’s William Mao. William Mao, baby. Right about now. Let’s go, brother. Check it out now. Yeah. Right about now. What year was that? Like ninety ninety seven. Ninety eight. We were both alive for it. I guarantee it. And it was, it was all the rage for a long time in the nineties, but William Mao, the youngster final round, when everybody else is struggling to shoot one or two under par William mouse shoots a blistering in Louisville to win the ISCO championship and win me a lot of money on both DFS and on the betting cards. Thank you, William Mao. Thank you. I predicted back in January again that there would be two guys that are under the radar, so to speak, not mainstream names. I’d pick two names to win a tournament for a Calcutta type of salary cap draft in January. And the first one was Aldrich Potkeater. Check. And the next one was William Mao. Check. don’t let them get hot people. This is, this has been a wild ride. Um, some of the hottest, uh, betting and DFS that I’ve ever had. So I’m trying to keep it hot for the open championship because I’m so excited for these two events this week, but man, right now I just need to sit on my laurels and enjoy this because this is a good feeling in case anybody’s at all confused, but very, very modest, very never been, never been wrong in his life. When I am, I’m very wrong, though. No. So William, yeah, you and I have been on him all year. Like you made a really nice early call, you know, a couple months back about on William. So a heck of a round on Sunday, obviously. But, you know, it’s an interesting it was kind of a kind of a young guns meets old game. The old guard across like the top twenty here. I mean, if you if you go down the list, you got people like Kevin Kisner who popped into a T-eight here. First top ten since twenty nineteen for kids. It’s good to see Jackson Coivoon up there. Top six Fishburne, who we’ve both been on for weeks. Yep. But then, like I said, you go down the list a little bit. You’ve got Luke List, Kevin Kisner, Scott Piercy. It was an interesting leaderboard, to say the least. But that nine under on Sunday, that’s… That’s a crazy run. That’s a crazy run. Cause that the, the course in Louisville was baked out too. It was running fast. Like they weren’t holding greens anywhere on that course. Cause it was just dry as a bone baked out super fast. And Mal was just throwing darts out there. This dude was sticking it close where nobody else was. He’s already a really aggressive player, but everything was clicking for him on Sunday. Sixty one. I think the next best score that day was sixty six. That should tell you all you need to know about how good that final round was to come from seven shots back and win by one over Paul Peterson, who had a good chance to tie and force a playoff and just couldn’t make the birdies on the last two holes. Who is also an elder statesman at thirty seven years of age. Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey. But yeah. Yeah. It’s okay. It’s with William Mao too. Last thing I’ll say on that is, you know, a lot of these younger guys, like we keep talking about it, they play aggressive. If they get a hot hand, watch out. And you don’t necessarily know when they’re going to pop off. So you just got to kind of roll your dice on them every week. Once you pick one, you see something in them, you keep riding, keep riding. And that’s a, And I honestly went back in January when I said he was going to win a tournament. I was picturing the ISCO. I was like, it’s going to be one of these alternate events where the top half of the field’s overseas. And I was thinking it’s going to be something in October, November after the FedEx Cup is over, or it’s going to be the ISCO or the Barracuda or something like that. And that was my vision was it’s going to be something like that. And here he is. with his first PGA Tour victory. Let’s do it. DM Bo for Powerball numbers. Right, right. Now at this point, it might be worth it. I’ll give you numbers. For better or worse, you’re going to get some numbers from me. I will play. You can’t win if you don’t play, guys. No truer words have been spoken on this show. uh final story news niblick the the lpj tour had their evian championship which is their one of their five majors and grace kim was needing a final stretch to get into a playoff she needed an eagle on the second hole she got the eagle she finished her last seven holes including the last two the two playoff holes seven under over her last six holes to win the evian Amazing, Grace. Seven under through six holes anywhere is crazy, but to win a major going through that stretch where she went, seventy-second hole through the two playoff holes, eagle, birdie, eagle. To win, that’s incredible. That’s clutch. That is ice water in the veins. Grace Kim, felicidades. That’s insane. Wow. That is… It’s otherworldly, really. I mean, I don’t… Yeah, and she took it right from the clutches of Thai player Thiti Kool, as well as one shot better than amateur Lottie Wode, who’s going to be a superstar for a long, long, long, long time. The English woman who’s still an amateur, not for long. She’s almost finished at Florida State, I believe. So Lottie Wode, very imposing presence there on the leaderboard, along with Minji Lee, who also tied for third there. But Diddy Cool in the playoff thought she had it won. And Grace Kim made a crazy birdie from off the green. And then, of course, the Eagle bomb chipping the Eagle on the on the second playoff hole to win. It’s it’s just crazy. Like Grace Kim’s finish was spectacular. Yeah, we were talking about it before the show. Like, you know, I catch some LPGA. I don’t catch enough. Like, the ladies are going out and absolutely firing shots all weekend long. So really, really, really good golf, especially as of late. there’s a lot of dudes out there that might be scratch golfers or even a plus one or plus two that think they got enough game to take down one of these lg pga pros let me tell you right now right here you got none chance you will get routed you can you can have them give you five shots a side they’re still not gonna let you even get close they’re that good Like you scratch golfer. Some of these ladies out here on the LPGA Tour are playing to a plus seven or a plus eight handicap. You have zero chance. No matter the yardage, no matter the tee box, you name the course, you name the tee box, they’re still going to absolutely crush you. No chance. You have zero percent chance to beat them. Zero. Because of the eye contact, I felt like you were saying that to me. and uh no I I know that you have reasonable expectations of even if you were a scratch golfer to know that you had none chance against an lpga tour pro I have I have none chance against somebody who’s missing limbs I mean let’s be honest I’m playing no you saw the the some of the ones in the in the and the other the the disabled one it was the I forget what they call the the um I forget what they call it. I want to use the wrong terminology, but where they had the people in wheelchairs or missing limbs, they’re out there shooting . Yeah, that is crazy. I played against a college DME minor for sale. I’m giving up. Right, yeah. I played against some college, some NCAA-level female golfers back when I was in college, and I was playing to a two or three handicap. And I was just like, I’m not going to bet them money because as soon as you watch them hit and see how straight they hit it and how consistent their short games are, you’re like, I don’t have a chance here. This is not going to end well for me because they’re just better. They’re just better. I want to get into the Open Championship. Royal Portrush. Connor, are you ready to be as poetic as your Irish heart can be for Royal Portrush? Just locked and loaded. All right, let’s hit it. Royal Portrush, County Lantern, Northern Ireland. That’s part of the United Kingdom. A lot of people don’t know that, that the Emerald Island is divided into two nations. I was just laughing about the very somber tone you were using. One’s part of the United Kingdom. One is independent republic. Dynamite, dynamite. So par seventy one yardage, seventy three, eighty one. Fairways are red fescue. Greens are red fescue. Royal Portrush last held the Open Championship in twenty nineteen with Shane Lowry claiming the Clara Jug. The course features three par fives, four par threes. Par fives present some really tricky challenges, especially on approach. Green side pop bunkering can be pretty nasty. So you’re going to need a very accurate approach from a little bit longer distance on those guys to really capitalize on scoring. Nice thing about them. They are pretty gettable. Believe it or not, even with the danger, a lot of birdies, a lot of eagles are going to come on those holes. The par threes also fairly manageable with the exception of the sixteenth. The sixteenth is pretty darn long at about two hundred and thirty plus yards. It’s pretty tight as well. There’s a lot of corners. calamity yep and that’s uh that was uh yeah so named uh because of the dangers that lurk around it you’ve got some pretty tight uh some pretty tight out of bounds areas it’s also a very oddly shaped and placed green um it’s kind of a kind of a long thinner type of patch crazy runoff area on the back right if you hit it down there you put x’s over your eyes because you did Yeah. And that’s that’s the thing about some of these par threes especially is there’s a lot of close danger on them. There’s a lot of out of bounds, even on some of the par fours that’s actually in like in the actual like fairways themselves. First hole. Yeah, exactly. So there’s a there’s a lot of tricky stuff to look out for here. I will say it’s a pretty tough walk. The course itself has a ton of elevation changes, which is pretty abnormal for the Open Championship. um tons of undulation uh not gonna see a whole lot of flat lies typically zero very very bumpier well and to that point like it’s it’s a lot about mitigating uh how how bumpy it is like there are very specific landing areas that you’re trying to get to that allow for the best look on your approach And if you look at historically here, the elite approach game, the precision approach game is absolutely critical. When Lowry won it back in twenty nineteen, I think he gained something like five strokes on approach. And I think it was upwards of three and a half off the tee. He won by six, which is impressive because he can’t putt. No. And he did putt OK that week. It wasn’t so close to the hole. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was crazy. His approach game was so locked in. But that’s you know that this place truly is going to be and we love this about major events when we can say this, it’s truly the entire bag that you need. There’s going to be carnage. Yes, there will be. And the other variable that comes into play here is the weather right now. It looks good. It looks OK. Thursday is going to be a little little on the colder side, a little moisture in the morning. Definitely would prefer guys teeing off in the afternoon on Thursday. Friday looks about as close to a perfect day as you’re going to get. So Friday is going to be your scoring day. And then Saturday and Sunday right now are calling for kind of off and on rain. Some wind. Hard to say what the gusts are going to be like at this point. Could get a little hairy. But yeah, the weekend, cool, rainy, little breezy, but nothing terrible right this second. But like I said, these winds fluctuate like crazy. So small greens, lots of lots of trouble lurking everywhere and possible wind, rain and cold get nasty in a hurry out here. Yeah, it’s on the northwest corner of the island, which is right up against the North Atlantic. And as you might know about the North Atlantic, it gets quite stormy in the summertime and at the drop of a hat. We talked about that on the North Sea, on the east coast of Scotland. This is even more so where you get the Atlantic Ocean currents blowing storms in off in a moment’s notice. You can go from mid-sixties and sunny to gale with sideways rain. And there is rain in the forecast over sixty percent chance all four days of the tournament, which just means that you’re going to have passing showers throughout the week. That’s not as big of a deal. It was very wet and rainy when Lowry won in twenty nineteen. But the wind, you just never know this. Like they don’t have meteorologists there that are earning much of a salary because the weather changes every hour. even every minute sometimes, in the summertime especially. It’s crazy out there. But if we stick to mild weather, you could see this be twelve under. I don’t think Lowry’s fifteen under stands up because he won by six. The dude was so locked in. But between five and twelve under sounds about right. I mean, it’s not going to be brutal like the U.S. Open, but it is going to be tough if the wind picks up. Yeah, I think I actually – I think it’s a big what if if the if the wind doesn’t really do much on the weekend and they get they get fifteen easily. Yeah. If it’s just more like kind of cool and kind of moist conditions where everything is super receptive, you’re not getting a ton of rollout like I and these guys are just throwing darts in there and watching them stick. Yeah. Yeah, it could go it could go low pretty quick. But but yeah, I would say I would say somewhere between I think it’s pretty safe to say somewhere. Twelve to twelve to sixteen is probably what I see happening. I think you’ve got some pretty favorable scoring conditions, both Thursday afternoon as well as most of the day on Friday. So you can get out to a pretty good start. Yeah. And I think you said it earlier, total bag challenge this, regardless of whether it’s good scoring conditions or poor scoring conditions, you need to be great off the tee. You need to be really good on approach. And if you’re not great on approach or if you’re scrambling around, you better be good at scrambling and bogey avoidance and double bogey avoidance because this place will light you up. Rory McIlroy, twenty nineteen. We’re going to talk about him a lot today. He missed the cut. First round shot seventy nine with the what I call the Connor Coughlin special. He had a double bogey, triple bogey and a quad bogey on the same round. And people don’t forget. Seventy nine. And then he turned around, shot a sixty five on day two and missed the cut by a single shot. But that’s the kind of danger that lurks around this place. It wasn’t even a tough scoring day on Thursday. But Rory McIlroy, all places in his backyard, shot a seventy nine at Royal Port Rush and then turned around and went six under the very next day. This place is going to have volatility. You’re going to make some birdies and you’re going to have some crooked numbers if you’re not careful. got nothing else to say other than I’m pretty excited to talk about the guys we want to we want to win some money on this week let’s bet on some golf and stay hot club twirls here it is number one on the board scotty scheffler plus four fifty can’t read fescue greens sorry he was number one ball striking last week number one hundred eighteen putting that’s bad he’s reading braille out there he cannot read braille uh Until Scotty Scheffler learns how to putt on a Lynx golf course, I’m not touching him, especially not plus-four-fifty. Some guy named Rory McIlroy is from the next county over, County Down in Hollywood. And this is County Lantrum. Lantrum County. There it is. I couldn’t think of it. But, yeah, Lantrum and County Down right next to each other. Royal Portrush is right in the backyard. Rory McIlroy, plus-seven-fifty. Yes, please. Full, full, full, full. Everything. Everything you got. Everything you got. Everything you got. Roy McIlroy. Plus seven fifty. Any disagreement? Connor. None. And I don’t think it’s going to be particularly close. I think he wins by five. I think he wins by five. I think he’s going to torch this place. He’s got this thing earmarked dog. Yeah. Dog. You don’t think he remembers his first round? Seventy nine in twenty nineteen. He’s come out. So, well, he quad bogeyed the first hole that week. that was that was first hole was an eight I will say I’ll say this about rory we’ve seen we’ve seen a bunch of different evolutions of rory as far as the mental game is concerned I think at that time in particular um I think that he was just um a head case I think he I think he got I think he had it in his head that he was going to come out and win and I think the minute that that deviated from his plan at all he had this first hole first on thursday quad bogey snowman Yep. And I think, I think that’s the problem with Rory that we’ve seen for a lot of years. Now this year, I feel like it’s been, uh, improved. I mean, we’ve definitely seen blowups out of Rory, but I, it used to be that if Rory, if Rory didn’t get off to a hot start, then you might as well fold because he just wasn’t going to be able to bring it back together. So, um, a determined Rory on what I would consider to be, uh, one of the better seasons we’ve seen him play and probably a decade. Um, I’m I’m pretty, I’m pretty excited for this. After that disaster round that he had, he went on to win the FedEx cup for the second time that year, so that round woke him up and he went on an absolute tear the rest of the season with the sixty five still missed the cut came out the rest of the year and completely locked it down took down the fifteen mil that year uh so yeah I think that he’s got some vind he’s got some vindication on the agenda for this week well if you yeah and if you look at like what you just said like has he had better better years right like like not statistically but like far as placement is concerned as far as like taking down the fedex cup yeah absolutely but in terms of in terms of like consistency and overall improvement to his game like you and I have said it a lot this year about rory this is probably the most well-rounded fine-tuned rory that maybe we’ve seen like every part of his game is is pretty well dialed and six years later his maturity is the biggest thing for me like the maturity to get over something that goes against him. Uh, this is, this is, I don’t think it’s going to be close. Um, and you can, you can squabble about all the other guys that we’re going to talk about. Um, I’m going to be betting on Xander Shoffley up to one. Uh, Connor’s going to make his weekly donation to the casinos in Las Vegas, uh, or wherever he’s betting, uh, for a Tommy Fleetwood outright. Um, So it’s fine with me. You can go and spend your money however you want. You’re a full-grown adult American man. You know Tommy finished runner-up here last time in twenty nineteen, right? I’m sure he did. But did he win? He finished runner-up by six shots. That’s not exactly blowing the doors down. Yeah, I’m just saying. I’m just saying. I’m just saying that he’s been runner-up quite a bit. What are you on with Xander Shopley? I mean, like He’s the best Lynx player in the last three years by a long shot by strokes gain total. I Don’t know man. I it’s not even close either like Scotty Scheffler gets it done with his tee to green But he loses stroke putting Xander Shoffley gains off the tee on approach on short game and putting across the board on Lynx golf courses he is by far the most strokes gained on Lynx golf courses, which includes all the open courses and the Dunhill links and the Scottish. Couldn’t get it done last week in a lesser field on an easier course. I don’t know. Not much of a lesser field. Honestly, that last week’s field is the best non-major field in golf. right next to the players like the players in the scottish strongest fields in golf for non-majors the open is up there too obviously it’s a major but uh xander softly defending champion golf for the year I understand that this golf course is different uh it’s it’s quite unique to the rhoda I just think xander is as classy as it gets as well round as it gets on lynx golf courses and his top five finished last week or top ten I think it was eight That is a really good sign for his game shaping up finally. That sounds neat. Go ahead and make your donation, Tommy Fleetwood. We both agree on Shane Lowry at thirty five to one. Thirty opened at thirty. That’s where I got him at. Thirty five is fantastic. He won by six shots here. Same golf course. He’s playing good golf this year, too. He can’t putt. He never has been able to putt. But last last time at this golf course, he gained so many shots on approach that nobody had a chance to out birdie him. And I’m just going to ignore your Victor Havel in line because come on, come on, come on. So, Victor Hovland was third at the U.S. Open, eleventh at the Scottish Open, and over the last thirty-six rounds is second in this field for approach. He’s number one in this field for par threes, two hundred to two twenty-five. He’s number one in this field from one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred yards on approach. Victor Hovland is sneaky good right now. Sneaky good. I’m scrolling down to find him in my model. Well, that’s because you’ve got yours filtered to heck and gone. yeah but when I filtered a lot of great golfers are at the top a lot of them a lot of them that we would expect to see and I just don’t see victor I’m still scrolling don’t sleep on victor hovland this week I’m telling you eleventh last week if you’re gonna make comparisons to uh links play from last week to this course was xander or xander shopley who’s having a worse season than victor hovland excuse me I was just sleeping on victor hovland this week I was sleeping well too. Like a stone, like a log. I’m pretty excited about Victor Hovland this week. I’m excited to see how many chips it takes him to get out of these pot bunkers. It’s not going to go in a lot of them with being number two and overall approach. Okay. We’ll see. Uh, we both agree on a couple of mid price guys. Uh, We differ on not the golfer per se. Like I do like Robert McIntyre at forty to one. I just think he’s a little short. He’s obviously had a great season ball striking wise runner up at the U.S. Open. I like Robert McIntyre. I’m just I’m on the fence at forty to one. That seems like it’s right where it should be. And I don’t see the leverage there, the value there for betting. But I’m definitely seeing the sixty five to one value on Russell Henley, who is a ball striking extraordinaire. Any any difference here between those two? Obviously, Henley is having a good season, not lately, but McIntyre is coming on strong this season. Where do you draw the line there? I like them both. To be honest, part of the reason that Henley hasn’t made my card yet is I just like a lot. One, I’m going to be really heavy on Rory, Fleetwood, and Hovland. have some sprinkles on lowry because I do think if the weather kicks up at all uh lowry’s value increases of course he’s done well at obviously um so yeah henley’s just kind of the odd man out right now uh for me um there’s some long shots that I really like that I think are extreme values too so if I have a little room left in the budget I’ll all have some henley love but McIntyre, to me, loved the way he lined up last week, having a great season, very good ball striker. I think it’s going to stay relatively receptive. So I think Bobby Mack’s got some pretty high upside here. Yes, he does. And then I’ll let you talk about our next guy because we both agree on this guy as another guy. Yeah, and winner of the last week’s live tour event in Spain under Lucia, Patrick Reed. Nobody likes him. Nobody cares. He has the worst Starbucks order ever. Terrible personality, sues a bunch of people, blocks everybody on social media. Nobody can really stand to be around him, but this guy’s so good at golf that it’s ridiculous. And namely his short game and scrambling stats are off the charts. Good. Uh, this guy’s a wizard around the greens. He’s number three in my model. Number one and around the green number two and scrambling number one in San saves number two and double bogey avoidance. He’s actually number eleven and approach. So he’s not even putting himself in a lot of peril and he’s still great. Number eleven and bogey avoidance. Fourteenth and tea to green overall. Sixteenth and putting this guy’s just an absolute magician and off the tee. He’s been pretty bad, but everywhere else he’s been super duper good. That’s that’s where I’m going. Eighty to one for a guy of that caliber who just won. in spain unbelievable odds the value is extreme I I can’t believe it’s still eighty to one right now like right now well and just like bobby mack patty reed was in a finished top ten last time that uh held here so um and and we love we love reed when it’s more of a grind out um you got might have to get a Yeah, I’m in love with Reed this week and I especially love the fact that he’s coming in a great form that that went on late He was a little smashed. He smashed them last week. I Well, long shots. I have quite a few. You have quite a few. We agree on a couple of them starting at ninety to one with a guy who absolutely shouldn’t be ninety to one. Ben Griffin says there’s got to be a miss. That’s they got to they got to mess. They have to have messed up because Ben Griffin at ninety to one is insane. That’s insane, right? Like, what are we missing here? I I can’t put my finger on it, really. You can’t even say that it’s anything historical against the guy. I mean, yeah, he’s having an otherworldly season for him, but he’s having an amazing season. He’s in great form. He’s so hot right now. You’re going to be hard-pressed to find a model that isn’t going to spit him out in the top five. I don’t care how you’re sorting it. He’s not very high on my model. I’m still betting on him. Well, so again, I think the conditional modeling like you do, I think has a lot of value on a lot of these guys. I just don’t know if it’s as applicable to Ben Griffin, just less experience on these types of tracks. So I am leaning a little more. I run two every week. I run one that’s heavily mixed conditions. And then I run more that’s just kind of a last-thirty-six generic type of deal. So I’m leaning a little more on that one. He’s third in that one. Excellent on the longer par threes. Excellent at bogey avoidance. Approaches twelfth, which is just steadily getting better every single week and is off the team game. He’s added a little bit of distance. He’s been deadly accurate this year. So I really I really think Ben Griffin sets up really nice here. And especially if the weather doesn’t get haywire. Oh, yeah. The weather stays good. Ben Griffin’s going to be right there. The next guy on our list is one hundred ten to one. And again, what is going on with these odds? Because Harry Hall, one hundred ten to one. I’ll take that all the way to the bank. Give me a break here. That’s ridiculous. Harry Hall is a magician. we talked about Harry Hall last week and we, we even made reference to the fact that if it gets, if the conditions get worse, Harry Hall gets even better. Um, so, uh, a guy who can make a lot of birdies can definitely keep up here. Um, scores well on par three scores well on par fives. Um, yeah. And like, like I said, if it gets worse, he still finds a way to score. So Harry Hall, uh, is, uh, we’re going to ride with him again this week. All the way to the bank, baby. Um, You’re the second person I’ve heard today tout Tom Kim. I get it. On that list of strokes gained on Lynx courses where Xander was number one, Scotty number two, number nine on the list was Tom Kim, which as badly as he’s played the last year and a half, he’s a Lynx specialist. That’s just what it is. Tom Kim, one hundred fifty to one. I don’t hate it. I’m going to go with the guy who matches up with this particular links course a little better. And it’s actually at one hundred seventy to one. I like his wedge game. I like his putting that’s been gone from one hundred and twentieth in the on tour to twentieth this year. Yeah. The short game, the approach game, the creativity that Akshay Bhatia exhibits. I don’t love him on a Lynx course because he’s more of a shot shaper, a thinker, a creative type off the tee and on approach. But one hundred and seventy to one for a guy with that much talent. I got to see what he does. I got to like Tom Kim’s a safer bet because he’s traditionally a good Lynx player. But actually at one seventy, that just seems weird. I’m Tom Kim all day. I played him last week. It’s amazing. He’s miscut, miscut, miscut, then tease it up on a links course and he’s magic and just magically finds himself inside the top twenty with next to no form. So Um, I’m going to definitely ride with Tom Kim again here. Um, I think, I think this actually could play even more to Tom Kim, uh, if it stays receptive, like I think it’s going to. Um, so yeah, sign me up Tom Kim again this week. I, that he could be a shocker come Sunday. Like really, uh, this is, um, exactly the type of setup for Tom Kim. I just, like you said, uh, something about links golf with Akshay. I get it. Um, like the upside I love that upside it’s so tempting because one seventy is a lot of money you can lay five bucks on a guy with two or three pga tour wins uh and especially I think he does better like tom kim and akshay are very similar in the fact that if the weather gets nasty I don’t see them both lasting but if the weather stays as mild as it’s supposed to be these both both these guys are in play especially tom kim with his consistency on links courses and Akshay with his upside making birdies and bunches when the weather is good. Yeah, I think, I think with Akshay, like the, the big upside with him is the overall approach, especially over the, again, over the last six, he’s inside the top ten for almost every approach metric I looked at. So I think, I think as long as the wind stays down, Akshay is pretty live. I do worry about the off the tee game. I do worry about the long iron game a little bit with Akshay. you do not want to be finding yourself too wayward here. So you just got to hope that he brings that. But overall, the approach and a lot of the wedge play, I do like Akshay quite a bit. Yeah, fair enough. I have two Englishmen at the bottom of my card. You have Haotong Li again, three hundred fifty to one. That’s pretty cool. Talk to me about Li because I got to talk about these two English guys to wrap up the British Open, if you want to call it that. Well, I’ll let you just run with them. I talked about Haotong quite a while last week. Like I said, I think… we knew he’s super volatile peaks and valleys, uh, how Tong Lee having a good year. This could be, this could be a peak for him. And, uh, I, again, I think he, uh, his value only increases like the more mundane the conditions are, um, which can be said about a lot of people, but if there isn’t a whole lot of roadblock in front of how Tong and he can just kind of line up and fire at these pins, um, stick them close, like he’s prone to doing, uh, three hundred and fifty to one pretty, pretty good number on somebody that I was pretty high on last week so I’m just gonna ride it out yeah why not uh marco pinch man last week was so fun because it’s like I I’d obviously have followed the dp world tour and the guy’s lighting it up he hits the ball a mile and he comes out and finishes top five at the scottish and I look like a genius for once uh Marco Penge is very live here as a hundred and eighty to one. I don’t care about as an experience. He definitely showed it on Sunday where he got a little nervous. He was he was really close to pulling that off for the win. Got her up just better. But Marco Penge is the future of European golf. That’s a that’s a very talented player. And then Jordan Smith, two hundred one for an Englishman who keeps winning on the DP World Tour. The guy’s a winning machine on the DP World Tour. He plays links golf. Great. I don’t understand why he’s two hundred one. I understand why Penge is one hundred eighty. But what did Jordan L. Smith do to anybody to be one hundred eighty one at the Open Championship? I don’t understand. Another dude we liked last week, too, at even better odds. So that doesn’t make any sense. OK, I’ll throw some a few bucks on two hundred to one multiple time winner on the on the DP World Tour. Yeah, I mean, I think we’re getting him at double the odds we got him at last week. Which is insanity. Sign me up for another run with him. Not as hot to trot on Penge, but everything you’re saying is true. I think he’s going to be good. Yeah, Penge for me is just like, hey, man, let’s just ride to the guy while he’s as confident he’s going to be this season. We do have another tournament in Northern California this week, the Barracuda. Are you going to throw some bets down at the Barracuda? Because I’ll be boots on the ground on Saturday. I’ll be there, man. I’ll be there. I am going to throw some bets down this week. Just got to switch my models here real quick. But go ahead with your first guy. Some guy is the favorite in this tournament. It’s the first time he’s played this tournament from Chico, California, which is about two and a half hours away from Truckee where the tournament is. Shout out NorCal, Kurt Kitayama, twenty to one. Yes, please. Favorite in the tournament for a reason. He’s playing great golf this season. Albeit without any semblance of a putter. Like this guy hasn’t made a putt at all this season. And yet he’s still scoring. His tee to green this season has been so good that he keeps giving himself opportunities to make birdies. And every once in a while, he makes some birdies. And this course is at elevation. It’s at six or seven thousand feet elevation. Uh, you’re going to be hitting it long. It’s stable ford. So, uh, the, the birdies and the Eagles that he’s going to be able to take advantage of this golf course with that elevation, with his power, this is one of the longest top ten driving distance guys in the world. Uh, I think Kurt Kittayama wins this pretty easily. Twenty to one is a great favorite price on the books. Um, I also like Rio at forty to one Hayden Springer at seventy five one, which was the best value on the board. Hayden Springer is having a great season. Lots of money made this season on tour. A seventy five to one for a guy of that caliber is a great value. And then I throw a couple of bucks on Cristobal Del Solar at two hundred and fifty to one playing so good. I have no idea how we still get two hundred fifty to one guy that seems to pop up every couple of weeks on easier golf courses like this. Old Greenwood is gorgeous, but it is not difficult. These guys are going to be going low and stable for scoring system. del solar yes please you got you got four guys that also have lots of merit including one of your favorites from minnesota uh yeah so mine uh lee hodges at thirty to one uh lee hodges actually rates out number one in this field for me for approach uh so I love that for him uh great great great iron player great iron player um and we you know we’ve been off and on lee hodges all season so I like him in this field especially Andrew Putnam, who’s having a pretty darn good year as well. Really solid on approach. Great around the greens. Does not like him bogeys. He tends to avoid them better than anybody in this field. Forty-five to one there. Mack Meisner, somebody that we don’t talk about nearly enough, probably hasn’t really had the type of season that he was having last year. Yeah. I like the number on that guy a little more than I like the form. And I need to miss the cut at the ISCO broke my heart. I would have, I would have won so much more money if he had made the cut. Yeah. And I think, I think I’m betting on the guy. I know he can be not the guy he is right now, but ninety to one’s a good number. And then I can’t quit him now. My, my, my buddy who doesn’t know it yet, Frankie Saban, the third from Minnesota. Yes. Oh, more ranch over here. Let me scoot right past you there. I like Frankie. I like Frankie in this field a lot. I think this is probably the least challenging field that he’s played in in quite some time. He might be a little more comfortable. You can fire away here. So I definitely think that there’s a ton of upside, four hundred to one on Frankie Saban. All right. Are you ready for the hat? Oh, yeah. How dare I? The hat was on fire last week. Yeah. Drew number one, which was Scotty Scheffler. And then we took another one because nobody really wants the hat to pick Scotty Scheffler and it picked Chris Goddard. So the, the hat, the hat’s a little more bold this week. Number seventy four, seventy four, seventy four. Yeah. Very bold. Oh, gross. What do you got at seventy four? You’re going to love this. It’s bold, but it’s funny because you just talked about him. How Tong Lee. I love it. But the hat, man, the hat is either that or Jesper Svensson. But now they’re tied. I’d rather take how Tong Lee because he has more rounds in my model. You’re never going to believe who number seventy four in my model is. Tony female. Yeah, that’s bad. Come on hat. The hat, the hat, the hat blew it all out on last week’s Scottish open champion. I’ll tell you what though, that the hat, the hat made its mark on the season. That was a, that was a great call. The hat made me a good chunk. All right. Next week is the three. I’m open at TPC twin cities. That twin cities there. Join us for the three M open the Tony Fino open. Actually, honestly, we’re being honest. Don’t like on area. Spoiler. Spoiler. We don’t like him at the three M anymore either. I think I will like him next week if he’s there. All right. Join me at the Barracuda on Saturday. If you’re going to NorCal, I’ll be there. Guns a blazing. Shout out.
