Value Report: Zurich Classic

As much of a story you could have told to why Scottie Scheffler wasn’t going to succeed at the RBC Heritage, the man once again absolutely delivered with no questions asked. Even spotting the field multiple strokes with a mediocre Thursday, Scheffler put it in cruise control to clear the field by three strokes and a 16.5 DraftKings-point gap from the next golfer. Despite not being in the flagship Summer Sand Trap-winning lineup, the optimal pairing of $7K golfers with Scheffler was the way to hit the nuts, and if his performance doesn’t slow down, this key range of golfers will be the way to win each week.

Focusing on that Summer Sand Trap, we saw just one of our seven longshots cross double-digit ownership. With only 69 golfers in the field, I will gladly take that. It was a bit of a barbell result for the selections with Sepp Straka being the needed piece at $7,200. If it wasn’t for Tom Hoge’s quintuple bogey on the final hole after the delay, he would have cruised to a top-10 finish and flirted with triple-digit points on the week as well. But from the other end of the leaderboard, the trio of Keegan Bradley, Brendon Todd, and Nick Dunlap were arguably some of the worst plays on the slate. Both Eric Cole and Mackenzie Hughes popped up throughout the week, but outside of single-entry/3-max contests, they were not close to paying off on expectations. I’d say it was a middling week of returns overall for those that focused on this bunch.

The real warrior you needed, in addition to Straka, was the one and only Patrick Rodgers. He came in with almost zero form, a recent withdrawal, very far off the radar, and, even in a large-field contest, it was a plug-your-nose type of click. But in a non-cut event with such a small field and Scheffler’s dominance, we may start to see those squeamish plays get paid off handsomely if you can correctly pin the tail on the donkey.