Fantasy Golf Predictions
Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions – 2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship
Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions for the 2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship
FedEx St. Jude Championship Fantasy Preview
If the FedEx Cup race is all about seizing the moment, Joohyung Kim has got that down to a fine art.
The Korean, who prefers to be known by his Western moniker of ‘Tom’, opened his Wyndham Championship with a snowman eight on the very first hole, and yet come Sunday evening he was hoisting the trophy following a remarkable final round which saw him play his opening nine holes in -8.
There were nerves thereafter – not surprising for a 20-year-old who has still only made single digit appearances on the PGA TOUR, but in the end Kim had more than enough to close out a five-shot victory.
In doing so, he became the first player in nearly 40 years to win on TOUR with a quadruple bogey on their card, the first player born in the 2000s to win a PGA TOUR title, and the youngest overseas player since the 1920s to win on the TOUR.
Perhaps most pertinently right now, Kim has crashed into the FedEx Cup standings at 34, and that – incredibly – gives him a chance of gate-crashing the TOUR Championship in a couple of weeks’ time. Not bad for a young man who has barely played on American soil to this point!
The next point of business is the FedEx St. Jude Championship, which replaces the NORTHERN TRUST as the first of the playoff events this year.
Last Week’s Fantasy Results
Three top-3 finishes in our main picks last week including Sungjae Im (T2), plus Taylor Moore and Russell Henley at T5.
On the Sleeper Report side, we had 3 of our 5 picks make the cut with two Top 13 finishers (Stallings and Smalley).
FedEx St. Jude Championship Field
The top-125 in the FedEx Cup standings will tee it up at TPC Southwind, with only three of that number – Daniel Berger, Tommy Fleetwood and Lanto Griffin – deciding not to make the journey.
But you can probably guess what that means: this is a high-quality field that features the likes of Scheffler, McIlroy, Rahm, Thomas, Smith, Spieth, Matsuyama and many of the world’s other leading players.
Abraham Ancer, who has since departed for the Saudi LIV Tour, clearly won’t be back to defend the title he won here last season, although the red-hot Tony Finau – the 3M Open and Rocket Mortgage Classic winner – kinda defends in the sense that he prevailed in the first FedEx Cup playoff event, the NORTHERN TRUST, in 2021.
Rickie Fowler, sat at number 125 in the standings, will look to utilize his good fortune this week, and those with hopes of playing in the BMW Championship will have to crack the top 70 to book their spot – Marc Leishman (62), Gary Woodland (73), Adam Scott (77), Justin Rose (94) and Webb Simpson (122) amongst those with work to do.
This Week’s Course Preview
As you may be aware, the St. Jude has enjoyed WGC status in recent times – a status befitting this TPC Southwind host course.
This is the perfect test of golf from tee-to-green, with designer Ron Pritchard on fine form when he drew up the blueprints for this layout in Memphis, Tennessee.
His vision was to create doglegging fairways without the need for an extensive tree-planting regime, and with the rough generally left up there is still a great emphasis on shaping shots and finding the short grass off the tee.
TPC Southwind will play in the region of 7,240 yards for its Par 70, so it’s a decent stretch that rewards the longer end of the straight-hitting brigade – and especially so when we consider how small the Bermuda greens are.
By our measure, they are the fourth smallest on the PGA TOUR, on average, and given that they are also super-hard and fast there will be an emphasis both on hitting quality approach shots and being able to recover when things go awry.
There’s plenty of sand and water is in play on ten holes too, and in 2021 two holes racked up double-figures for double bogey or worse. All told last year, nine holes averaged under par and the other nine over – that indicates how fair this layout is.
There aren’t many ‘gimme’ holes on this real estate as you might expect, but the two Par 5s do serve up eagle chances for the more adventurous. The 401-yard Par 4 second is also an opportunity for the players to free their arms and leave themselves with just a flick wedge in for birdie.
Mind you, the eighteenth averaged over par last season with just 39 birdies and 66 scores of bogey or worse, so we could be in for a fun finale come Sunday.
Weather Forecast for Memphis, TN
Although it’s a rarity for this part of the world, there are some thunderstorms and rainy spells in the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday.
How heavy those are will determine whether any impact is made on TPC Southwind, because otherwise it’s a typically hot week in Memphis.
The mercury could hit a stifling 90˚F across the four days, with hot and sunny spells very much on the agenda.
The breeze could get up into double figures (mph) on Friday, but otherwise it looks set to be fairly benign on the wind front – not that the scorching temperatures will make matters any easier even if there is no wind to speak of.
Last Year’s Results from the FedEx St. Jude Championship
Although it wasn’t a FedEx Cup event 12 months ago, the St. Jude Championship still engaged a first-class field thanks to its WGC standing.
At the end of the four days, three players – Abraham Ancer, Hideki Matsuyama and Sam Burns – could not be separated, and they embarked on a two-hole playoff.
It was the Mexican who would end his PGA TOUR title duck, making birdie on the tough eighteenth to triumph in a playoff that, frankly, he wasn’t expected to win against a pair of more prolific champions.
Ancer broke the back of his title win with a round of 62 on Friday – low scores are available at TPC Southwind, but he slipped into reverse thereafter and Harris English’ disastrous final round of 73 saw him exit from contention.
Matsuyama and Burns, with rounds of 63 and 64 respectively, forced their way into the reckoning on a topsy-turvy Sunday, but Ancer was not to be denied as he wrapped up a high-profile victory.
Where to Play Fantasy Golf for the FedEx St. Jude Championship this Week
With these smaller-field, high class tournaments, discretion is often the better part of valor – you should pick a single lineup and stick with it, or build a canon of 12+ players around which to pivot. Here’s two options for either strategy.
- GOLF TOUR $100k Medium Leaderboard: Single entry contests can be the go-to for events where there’s plenty of different player options to choose from, and this GOLF TOUR game pays out a top prize of $10,000 from your $40 entry in a contest with just 2,915 contestants.
- PGA $400k Drive the Green: A cool $100k in prize money has been added on top of last year’s Drive the Green bounty, so if you want to play a cheaper multi-entry contest – it’s $5 a turn with a top prize of $50k – this could be the way to go.
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This Week’s Fantasy Notes for the FedEx St. Jude Championship
With so much at stake this week, the players will have to be savvy in how they approach things at TPC Southwind.
Yes, scores of 64 and lower are available, but that should not diminish from what a firm and fast test this layout is – and how those small greens can play havoc with even slightly-errant approach shots.
A rollcall of recent champions at Southwind – Ancer, Thomas, Koepka and Dustin Johnson – reveals that you need to be a pretty handy talent to get the job done here, and so we would expect the cream to rise to the top once again in 2022.
Making birdies on the easy holes will need to be supported by bogey avoidance on the tougher stretches, and a willingness to grind out a score will be key – a number of players have spoken over the years of playing well at Southwind but not getting full reward for their efforts, such is the speed of the surfaces here.
We dug into the crates to find a couple of correlating courses with similar average approach distances – perhaps Bay Hill (Arnold Palmer Invitational) and Colonial (Charles Schwab Challenge) are the most obvious, although the right-to-left routing of many of Southwind’s holes, not to mention tough-to-hold greens, suggest Augusta National can be used as a reference point too.
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Our Top 5 (and Top 2 Sleeper) Fantasy Picks and Odds to Win the FedEx St. Jude Championship
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Top 5 Picks/Odds to Win the FedEx St. Jude Championship
Top Tier Pick #1:
Scottie Scheffler (Odds: 16/1, FPPG: 86.0, GPGP: 68.82 Salary: $10,800)
Has there been a better all-round player in world golf than Scottie Scheffler this past year?
He will be keen to frank a supreme season that has yielded four titles – including a green jacket at Augusta – and a rise to number one in the world rankings with the FedEx Cup crown, and there can’t be many places better suited to his game than TPC Southwind.
In fact, we drew up a shortlist of five correlating courses and Scheffler has at least one top-20 finish at each of them, and so we can say with some confidence this is a layout that should suit his eye – as evidenced by finishes of solo 14th and T15 here in the past two years.
His ball-striking has been exceptional in recent months, as you would expect, and if his flat stick heats up just a smidgen – as it tends to do on Bermuda greens – Scheffler could add a fantastic fifth title to his collection in 2021-22.
Key Stats:
- Greens in Regulation – 1st
- Scoring Average – 4th
- SG: Tee-to-Green – 8th
Top Tier Pick #2:
Sungjae Im (Odds: 35/1, FPPG: 75.9, GPGP: 60.74 Salary: $8,500)
Will Zalatoris is an interesting pick at an event where all-round class is required, but his decision to sack his caddie at the weekend – which could yet prove to be a masterstroke – seems slightly ill-timed with the end of the season just a few weeks away.
When the players took to the course on Sunday to complete the third round of the Wyndham Championship, before playing their fourth, many observers would have fancied Sungjae Im to convert a third PGA TOUR title.
The Korean held the outright lead at one point, but the brilliance of his countryman Tom Kim was ultimately the difference-maker – Im simply could not find another gear to match his compatriot.
Nevertheless, that’s a second straight T2 finish in the bank, and he will be hoping to go one better at TPC Southwind – and why not, given that he’s won at one of our comparative tracks (PGA National) and performed admirably at others like Colonial, Bay Hill and Augusta.
Key Stats:
- SG: Tee-to-Green – 10th
- Greens in Regulation – 10th
- Scoring Average – 19th
Mid-Tier Pick #1:
Hideki Matsuyama (Odds: 40/1, FPPG: 73.8, GPGP: 69.37 Salary: $8,400)
Although he’s not in the flush of a hot run of form right now, Hideki Matsuyama has done what all out-of-sorts players should do – work on their game behind closed doors.
If the Japanese ace finds a spark on the range, he could be a below-the-radar contender at a course he knows well – he lost in that playoff to Ancer 12 months ago, and was T20 the year prior to that at TPC Southwind as well.
With form at Augusta, Bay Hill and Riviera, and brilliance from mid-range with irons and wedges in hand, it comes as no great shock that Matsuyama is a noted performer at Southwind – he’ll be hoping to go one better this year than last.
Key Stats:
- Approaches from 150-175 yards – 9th
- SG: Tee-to-Green – 16th
- Scoring Average – 28th
Mid-Tier Pick #2:
Russell Henley (Odds: 66/1, FPPG: 75.9, GPGP: 90.34 Salary: $7,800)
A lengthy spell of time off has worked wonders for Russell Henley, with T5 at the Wyndham Championship and T10 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic signalling a clear and obvious return to form.
He’s often of interest at layouts that are fast and furious on and around the greens, and his fondness for Bermuda is such that he is a regular performer of note on the surface.
Load up our correlating events from the past few years and you’ll note that Henley’s name is a regular feature on the leaderboard – he has top-20s at PGA National, Bay Hill and Riviera to name just a couple.
Key Stats:
- Greens in Regulation – 7th
- SG: Tee-to-Green – 11th
- Scoring Average – 15th
Low-Tier Pick:
Justin Rose (Odds: 125/1, FPPG: 64.9, GPGP: 54.52 Salary: $7,200)
Here’s a player who knows what it takes to win the FedEx Cup.
Justin Rose may be some way shy of challenging Scheffler and co for honors in 2022, but he has been showing positive signs of late and could well surprise one or two who have written him off as an elite-tier player.
T4 at the Canadian Open, T13 at the PGA Championship and top-40 at the US Open in recent times, Rose’s T54 at last week’s Wyndham Championship featured a middle 36 holes played in -7.
One bad round per tournament is hampering his progress right now, but he’s played well at TPC Southwind (plus Colonial and Augusta) in the past, so maybe this is the venue where he shakes off that bad habit.
Key Stats:
- Approaches from 150-175 yards – 7th
- Approaches from 125-150 yards – 20th
- Scoring Average – 38th
Sleeper Pick for the FedEx St. Jude Championship
Brendan Steele (Odds: 150/1, FPPG: 56.5, GPGP: 54.79 Salary: $7,000)
When you draft Brendan Steele, there’s always the fear that the wheels will come off on the greens and he will putt like a club amateur.
But his ball-striking is just so good right now, and to emphasize the point in his last five strokeplay starts, Steele has finished 30-MC-25-10-9 – despite losing strokes to the field putting in four of them.
Why are we confident this week will be any different? Well, we’re not in truth, but what we do know is that his exceptional tee-to-green game will be rewarded at TPC Southwind, as it is at PGA National and Bay Hill where he has performed admirably before.
Key Stats:
- Greens in Regulation – 16th
- SG: Tee-to-Green – 27th
- Par 4 Scoring Average – 40th
Alternative Sleeper Pick for the FedEx St. Jude Championship
John Huh (Odds: 200/1, FPPG: 58.2, GPGP: 55.84 Salary: $6,700)
It would be easy to write off John Huh given his lowly status in a field of giants of the game.
But he has been playing well lately – if you zoom out for a 10-week or so view of his efforts, and T12 at our correlating Colonial plus T13 at the Travelers Championship mesh nicely with his T2 at the Wyndham Championship last week, where he did very little wrong.
Notably better on Bermuda than any other surface, Huh has also shown his class at PGA National, and his excellent short-range approach game could yield rewards for those who take the gamble on him at TPC Southwind.
Key Stats:
- Approaches from 50-125 yards – 9th
- Approaches from 150-175 yards – 15th
- Birdie Average – 34th
This Week’s Sample Fantasy Lineup
Note: Sample lineups provided as examples only. Be sure to mix-and-match players to best fit individual contests.
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Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2021-2022)
Tourneys Played '21 -'22
Season Earnings YTD
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