The PGA Tour returns to East Lake Golf Club for this week’s Tour Championship.
It’s the FedEx Cup playoff finale played with a unique twist. For the fifth straight year, the event will utilize starting strokes to handicap the event based on lead-in FedEx Cup standings.
When looking at the betting board this week, we want to make sure we read all of the terms and conditions. You want to know whether your bets include those starting strokes or not. The two matchups that stood out to me did include those starting strokes.
Tony Finau over Corey Conners - Tournament Matchup (-105)
The first thing I look at when searching for matchup bets is baseline performance. For this one, Finau edges out Conners when you take a long-term view (2 years) but that easily flips to Conners when looking at anything from 2023. Finau is going through a huge putting slump this summer.
There is hope for Finau, though, and it comes in the form of course history.
Finau has gained strokes putting in five of his six trips to East Lake. He’s also gained strokes around-the-green in five of those six starts.
Conners is the inverse as he’s lost a whopping 15.5 strokes putting in 12 rounds at East Lake while also losing strokes around-the-green in all three visits.
Both golfers are opening the week with two starting strokes and I like Finau to earn more throughout the week, given his past performance on and around the greens in Atlanta.
Wyndham Clark over Brian Harman - Tournament Matchup (-110)
When you look at previous leaderboards at East Lake, you’ll quickly see that good driving is heavily rewarded.
For Harman, he’s in great form but driving would be the one area of his game considered to be a weakness.
Perhaps it’s no surprise to see that he’s lost 4.7 strokes off-the-tee in two starts here.
While Clark doesn’t have any history to lean on, he does have the power to shorten a lot of the holes at East Lake. His average drive is 14 yards longer than Tour average this season which ranks second in the field behind only Rory McIlroy.
This bet is a toss-up according to the bookmakers but I will gladly back the big-hitting Clark at -110 odds.
