Value Report: John Deere Classic

The Travelers Championship always brings the juice, as does Viktor Hovland when he gets in contention, and it was so cool to see his country’s fans rooting their hearts out for him. He didn’t back down at all in his battle with Scottie Scheffler, and making the putt in the playoff to put that pressure on him emphasized how strong Hovland can be on his best day. He’s also shown the other end of his tail variance-wise quite often this season, but that’s why a play like him made so much sense in GPPs, and it was awesome to be rewarded. The Fantasy Golf World Championship had kicked off as well, with the 200 entries cutting down to 100. I advanced one to this week’s second round, while my second team was the bubble squad, missing out by just a half point. A bit gutting when thinking through where one more par could’ve made the difference, but that’s the game we play. All eyes will be on that contest this week as the last cutdown happens to the final 50 for the live final!

The Value Report shot out of a cannon on Thursday at the Travelers, but sadly tapered off the rest of the tournament with only Corey Conners coming through massively. It was great to see the Canadian build on his U.S. Open performance, and he was a staple in winning lineups across the slate. Eric Cole would be the next one to at least give partial kudos to, as he once again was first-round leader, but his putter finally went cold the rest of the way. Brandt Snedeker really wasn’t all that bad for the price and ownership either, especially when it looked like a Scottie runaway for a bit, but with the emergence of other top-end players, the stars-and-scrubs style wasn’t necessary. I sadly got the coin flip of Akshay Bhatia and Ryan Gerard wrong, which really made a big difference on the results. Akshay stayed in single digits while Gerard ended up quite steamy, and Akshay really pushed the leaders for a good bit of time on the weekend before winding up tied for fifth. Lastly, Ben James was the biggest disappointment. He had a really good opening two rounds once again before falling off a cliff over the weekend. He was also a very popular IKB in hand-build contests, too. It’ll be interesting to see how his ownership plays out the rest of this season, especially now with Jackson Koivun busting onto the scene officially.