Not only was Burns in my top picks to win, but I was 9-5-2 in my singles matchups.
This week the Tour comes to Las Vegas for the Shriner's Childrens Open. Not sure why they dropped 'hospital' from the title...
Last week I discussed how The Sanderson Farms Championship is starting to grow on Tour veterans. The Shriner's Childrens Open is one of the more favorite Tour stops on Tour.
A large subset of the Tour lives in the Palm Beach/Jupiter Florida area, Orlando, Scottsdale, Sea Island Georgia and the Dallas area. But a growing number of players live in the Las Vegas area as it has a major airport, good winter weather and private clubs that will cater to their every need and basically leave them alone.
TPC Summerlin is a fair track and doesn't beat up their ego too much and since it's Vegas, there's a lot of big moneyed people with a lot of power and influence along with the high rollers. It's also endorsed by Justin Timberlake so it has the celebrity vibe going on as well.
As a course, it's very much about iron play, particularly from 150-175 yards. Players typically will hit 70%+ of the greens. And it's a good thing because it's one of the top-3 most difficult courses to get up-and-down from 10+ yards. It yields a lot of birdies, but a mistake by missing a green puts the player at high risk of making bogey or worse.
Having said all of that, in recent years it has favored some of the more 'all-around' players on Tour like Webb Simpson and Martin Laird. The data leads to the winner being an all around player who has the best week on Tour from 150-200 yards.
3JACK'S FAVORITES
Viktor Hovland +2,000
Abraham Ancer +2,200
Brooks Koepka +2,200
Hideki Matsuyama +2,500
Paul Casey +3,300
3JACK'S DARK HORSE PICKS
Joaquin Niemann +4,000
Russell Henley +6,600
Emiliano Grillo +10,000
Joel Dahmen +15,000
Doug Ghim +15,000
Since there are so many tournament matchups for this event, I put them into Google Sheets. You can access them by following this link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Glt6U96PNQCXaIFMAdm7-PMStJ3kHfIUpJcWwn2BbMs/edit?usp=sharing
3JACK
