With the PGA Tour stacking the elevated events around the Honda Classic, this week’s field has left little to be desired. With only two golfers inside the OWGR’s top 20, we will see quite a few lesser-known names grace the top of the leaderboard at PGA National. This course is challenging. The rough is thick, and there are plenty of water hazards and a ton of bunkers. If the weather holds, the winning score will likely be in the high single digits to the low double digits. Mistakes will happen, and players can see big scores. This week it’s all about betting on golfers who strike the ball well and limit those bogeys. The difficulty of the course worries me about going deep into the placement market. Here is the golfer I see as having the most value in this market.
J.T. Poston Top 10 +440
Betting a guy coming off a missed cut to finish inside the top 10 almost feels criminal. Betting a guy to finish inside the top 10 coming off back-to-back missed cuts feels like a capital offense. Yet here I am, putting 0.25 units on JT Poston to finish inside the top 10 at +440. Before I get into why I like Poston this week, we must acknowledge that he has yet to finish inside the top 20 here. There’s a reason why he’s +440. Implied probability suggests he has only an 18.1% chance of finishing in the top 10. I feel that number is too low.
Poston’s missed cuts happened, and if he doesn’t let his poor putting performances get inside his head, he should perform well. When he lost -1.4 and -1.7 strokes putting in his last two tournaments, he wasn’t putting on Bermuda grass. Of the four major putting surfaces, the North Carolina native is far better on Bermuda grass. The skills necessary to succeed here, Poston generally succeeds at.
This and most of the courses played during the Florida Swing are normally bested by great ball strikers, but that’s not the only pathway to victory here. As simple as it sounds, golfers can hit fairways and greens in regulation and putt well. The last piece to that puzzle is to avoid big scores at all costs. Poston does all that very well. He is inside the top 10 in Bogey Avoidance over the last 36 rounds. He’s hitting fairways at a decent clip and is above average at hitting GIR.
In a few of the weaker fields he has played in the last two seasons, he has quite a few top-10 finishes. At +440, he’s worth your consideration.
