While many of the stars of the PGA Tour are in China for the WGC event this week there is still a lower level event in Mississippi over in the States for those who haven’t made it to Shanghai.
That event is the Sanderson Farms Championship which carries full PGA Tour honours and FedEx Cup points as always. The tournament was won by Nick Taylor last year and he is as big as 66/1 with BetVictor to defend the title.
It has to be said it isn’t the greatest field ever assembled this week but whoever finishes on top of the pile and bags the money and points won’t care much for that. Last year’s runner up Jason Bohn is the 12/1 favourite ahead of Web.com Tour graduates Patrick Rodgers and Patton Kizzire. They are 14/1 and 22/1 respectively with William McGirt and Will Wilcox 25/1.
The Country Club at Jackson hosts this tournament for the second year. The course is a par 72 which measures 7,364 yards. Given that this is only the second year of the event here we’re still getting to know the course but the leading players last year ranked high up on Greens in Regulation and as with the last couple of weeks Par 5 scoring is likely to be key too.
I fancy length to be the key this week. Length equates to more greens in regulation and of course the longer you are the better you can take care of the par 5s so that’s my line in here.
With that in mind my first pick is the Canadian player Graham DeLaet. A few years ago DeLaet was challenging for much bigger tournaments than this but it is perhaps a sign of his decline that he is not only condemned to this tournament but that he is as big as 33/1 for it.
That said I think the course will suit him here with his ability to take care of the par 5s and find the greens in the right number. Assuming he does that then it will all come down to how his putter works and with an overall lack of knowledge of the place for most of the field he isn’t going to be disadvantaged on the greens so his price suddenly looks decent enough value.
Web.com Tour graduates are having a fine start to the PGA Tour season and I’m going to take another one here in the form of Jamie Lovemark. Lovemark led the tour on par 5 scoring on the Web.com Tour last season and there’s no reason why he won’t score well on them this week. Lovemark went well in Vegas and has a similar profile at least to Smylie Kaufman. Kaufman went well the week before he won so I’ll take Lovemark to do the same.
Brett Stegmaier might not be the longest off the tee but he has enough length to be competitive and competitive is certainly what he has been in recent weeks. He followed Kaufman home in Vegas two weeks ago and is another who could well build on that effort to claim a first win at the big boys level.
Finally I’ll go with a man who at his best would be the class act in this field in the form of Tim Clark. Clark is a regular tournament winner and there aren’t many of those in this event. His form hasn’t been the best but being African he’ll be used to playing his best golf at this time of the year and his tee to green game is rarely off colour. If he can just get his putting right he has the ability to be right in the mix here.
Back G.DeLaet to win Sanderson Farms Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 29.00 with Paddy Power (1/5 1-7)
Back J.Lovemark to win Sanderson Farms Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 41.00 with Paddy Power (1/5 1-7)
Back B.Stegmaier to win Sanderson Farms Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 67.00 with Paddy Power (1/5 1-7)
Back T.Clark to win Sanderson Farms Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 126.00 with Paddy Power (1/5 1-7)
Blog golf YTD: +162.71pts
