Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions – 2023 John Deere Classic

Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions for the 2023 John Deere Classic  

John Deere Classic Fantasy Preview

When the PGA TOUR hands out their annual awards at the end of the 2022-23 term, the Shot of the Season award will surely go to Rickie Fowler.

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His drive on the first playoff hole at the Rocket Mortgage Classic was more likely to endanger the health of the patrons than the fairway grass. But Rickie dug deep and muscled an iron out into the middle of the green, landing about 11ft from the cup. Adam Hadwin and Collin Morikawa, his two playoff combatants, were unable to hit their approaches closer from the fairway.

Fowler, as he had done on the final hole of regulation play to even force his way into the playoff, completed a clutch birdie to end a long four-year wait for a PGA TOUR title. Given how well he has been playing this season – and the confidence that a new Odyssey flat stick, which is clearly working, has brought – it’s been fully deserved.

So much so, you’d do well to name ten players that are playing better golf right now than Fowler, which is a remarkable turnaround in fortunes given the nature of the doldrums he has previously fallen into.

Next week starts the two-week Links golf swing in the UK, which perhaps explains why the field for this week’s event – the John Deere Classic – is sparse to say the least.

Last Event’s Fantasy Results

Big week for us in Detroit with Rickie as our Top Pick (Winner) and Stephen Jaeger as our Top Sleeper (T9). 

It’s a great feeling being back in the winner’s circle again just a couple weeks our from our last Major of the year.

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Last week’s win marks our 7th picked winner so far this season!

2023 John Deere Classic Field

Ordinarily, we might argue that the JDC represents the perfect opportunity for Cameron Young to clinch his maiden PGA TOUR title, but a lack of any form whatsoever of late may scupper those plans.

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Only nine golfers from the top-50 players in the world are making the trip – Russell Henley, Denny McCarthy, Sepp Straka, Tom Hoge, Chris Kirk, Emiliano Grillo, Nick Taylor and Taylor Moore joining Young in Illinois.

Defending champion J.T. Poston and former John Deere Classic victors Lucas Glover and Michael Kim also make the trip, while Hadwin, Adam Schenk, Justin Lower, Stephan Jaeger and Peter Malnati will be looking to build on top-10 finishes at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. 

This Week’s Course Preview

Trying to fashion 100 words or more about a golf course as run-of-the-mill as TPC Deere Run is a challenge.

Measuring 7,268 yards for its Par 71, D.A. Weibring has satisfied the brief in his design if said brief was to draw up blueprints for a layout with so few discernible features that even the PGA TOUR’s description of TPC Deere Run lasts all of fine lines of text.

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Water is in play on seven holes and there’s around 75 bunkers, with some risk-reward holes and notable elevation changes. The fairways are reasonably generous – albeit challenging enough for a low-quality field, while the large Bentgrass greens are receptive enough that Grillo, who finished T2 here last year, found 87.5% GIR.

The three Par 5s are the easiest holes on the layout alongside the Par 4 fourteenth, a 361-yard hole that can be attacked off the tee or laid up – an accurate flick wedge almost guarantees birdie here.

Only six of TPC Deere Run’s 18 holes averaged over par in 2022 – the hardest of them, perhaps pleasingly for TV viewers, was the eighteenth; a well-protected Par 4 where 21 double bogeys or worse were plundered.

Weather Forecast for Silvis, IL.

One of the chief defenses of TPC Deere Run is the potential for foul weather, but for the most part that doesn’t appear to be on the menu this week.

Thursday is set fair with sunshine and cloudy spells and perhaps the stiffest breeze of the week at 11mph.

Friday is more of the same but with a slower wind at 7mph, before things take a turn ahead of the weekend.

Scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms are mentioned here, although the wind won’t whip up to anything more than 9mph according to the early predictions. Indeed, a rain-softened TPC Deere Run could become an even easier nut to crack.

SILVIS WEATHER

Last Year’s Results from the John Deere Classic

Poston created a nice slice of history for himself at the 2022 John Deere Classic when he became the first winner in 30 years here to go wire-to-wire.

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An opening round of 62 will always help, and a second set of 65 helped to consolidate the ‘Postman’s’ cushion at the top of the leaderboard.

Others threw the kitchen sink at catching him – there were eight rounds of 64 or better on the Friday, but as conditions toughened over the weekend nobody was able to make a concerted effort to catch Poston, who slammed the door on the rest with three consecutive birdies to open his final round.

In the end, he would clinch a second PGA TOUR title by three shots from Grillo and Christiaan Bezuidenhout.

Where to Play Fantasy Golf for the John Deere Classic this Week

We cannot, in good conscience, recommend you go big for the John Deere Classic. This is an event where playing a couple of ‘lottery ticket’ contests is the way, with better days to come with the switch to Links golf and its very specific requirements in the weeks ahead.

• PGA $250k Drive the Green: At $5 a go, we can have a couple of entries into this contest and simply hope for the best – with $25k to the winner, you’ll have more fun tracking the leaderboard than you would playing the lottery anyway.

• PGA $40k Albatross: If you want a single bullet approach to the JDC, this $12 contest has only 3,921 teams battling it out for the $4k top prize. Given that it’s single entry only, you won’t be outmuscled by a multi-roster whale either. 

This Week’s Fantasy Notes

When the FBI are hunting a serial killer, they come up with a profile for the archetypal individual that fits the bill. If they had the John Deere Classic as their victim, coming up with a profile of a winner would stump even their sharpest of analytical thinkers.

Poston, Lucas Glover, Dylan Frittelli and Michael Kim; put their mugshots up on a whiteboard and try to connect the dots. You will do well to find any evidence that links the quartet together.

Each simply ‘had a week’, be it on the greens or – in the case of Poston who ranked first for SG: Tee-to-Green – an unexpectedly excellent week of ball striking. 

At least Poston had offered a clue as to what was coming – he had just finished T2 at the Travelers Championship prior to his win in Illinois, so perhaps our profile should focus on exactly that: players heading to the JDC in good form. 

The leaderboards here in recent years haven’t coughed up a series of premium ball-strikers or classy tee-to-green merchants, and instead what you do off the tee is of little relevance – last year, many on the top page of the leaderboard added 20% to their Driving Accuracy ratio to GIR, which shows how important approaching well out of the rough is.

But we can eliminate most of golf’s weapons from our inquiries and instead focus on one tool that our ice-cold killer will utilize: the putter. Yes, the leaderboards at the JDC have been well stocked by reliable putters in years gone by, and that is once again the focus of our investigation in 2023. 

Copycat crimes have been committed at TPC Deere Run and TPC Twin Cities, home of the 3M Open. A number of players – including John Deere champions Poston and Bryson DeChambeau – have finished T11 or better at both venues in a short span of time, while Grillo has been a nearly man at both when finishing T2.

Our Top 5 (and Top 2 Sleeper) Fantasy Picks and Odds to Win the John Deere Classic   

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Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2023-2023)

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