Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2024 Rocket Mortgage Classic

2024 Rocket Mortgage Classic Fantasy Sleeper Report

Scottie Scheffler is a problem.

He’s a problem to every other player looking to win trophies, he’s a problem to golf course designers looking to ‘Scheff proof’ their layouts, and he’s now a big problem to bettors too.

Just when you thought there might be a 50/1 winner to celebrate in the shape of Tom Kim, along comes Scheffler to ruin everybody’s hopes and grind out a playoff victory – his sixth of 2024, incredibly, and all of them coming at single-digit odds….the kind that nobody, really, likes taking.

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The only player that can stop him is Scheffler himself, and even though Kim had a chance at the Travelers Championship on Sunday, arguably the pressure of going toe-to-toe with the world number one caused him to duff his approach into the first extra hole into a bunker – inexplicably, when so well placed in the fairway.

Scheffler can win from the front, he can win when chasing, and – almost inevitably – he will win a playoff due to the pressure he exerts on his opponent.

But hey, some good news: he ain’t playing this week!

The timing of the Rocket Mortgage Classic is downright unfriendly, with a feeling of after the lord mayor’s show in a stretch that has delivered a pair of majors and a couple of Signature Events in the past month or so.

Unsurprisingly, many of the big names have downed tools for the week – that’s bad news for tournament officials, but perhaps good news for us on the hunt for a long odds winner.

The patrons at Detroit Golf Club will get to see Rickie Fowler defend the trophy he won in such emotional fashion 12 months ago. He needed a nervy playoff to get past Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin, but when his birdie putt fell on the decisive hole there was an outpouring of emotion rarely seen outside of the majors.

Other headline acts in the field include Travelers Championship protagonists Tom Kim and Akshay Bhatia, with Cameron Young and Will Zalatoris also helping to add to the quality quota. 

And a number of players teeing it up this week are no strangers to winning: messrs Dunlap, Gotterup, Jaeger, Knapp, Malnati, McIntyre, and Riley have all won the PGA TOUR in 2024.

What can they expect from Detroit Golf Club? Birdies, and lots of them. The winning score here has only dipped below -23 once in the past five years, which perhaps tells you all you need to know about this layout.

There’s few hazards to speak of and little danger anywhere, with decent-sized landing zones (and generous rough) matched by easy Bentgrass/Poa greens to find and hold. At 7,370 yards for its Par 72, it’s neither long nor short, and with four easy Par 5s and a quartet of Par 4s measuring under 400 yards, quality driving and approach play are vitally important. 

One of the things that is wholly evident is that the cream generally rises to the top. Multiple-time PGA TOUR winner Fowler defeated major champion Morikawa here last year, the outstanding Tony Finau downed Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young, and Taylor Pendrith in 2022, while Bryson DeChambeau and Joaquin Niemann are just two others to have finished first or second in this tournament.

Quality tee-to-green merchants that have a solid week on the greens – it seems simple enough, but sadly that profile of player tends to be available at shorter odds with the sportsbooks.

Even so, we think we’ve found five that fit the bill in our Rocket Mortgage Classic 2024 sleeper shortlist.

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Ryan Fox – 50/1 – If we’re riding with the quality driver narrative this week, it’s easy to make a case for Ryan Fox.

The New Zealander is in tremendous form right now, with two top-10s in his last five PGA TOUR outings.

With the ability to produce striking approach play numbers, perhaps the key to his form lately has been his strong hand with the flatstick – that should come in very handy this week.

Ben Griffin – 55/1 – The curious case of Ben Griffin now.

An excellent putter normally, Griffin has lost strokes to the field – heavily – in each of his last two starts. And yet his ball-striking has improved immeasurably.

So if both regress to their mean somewhat, Griffin may turn up in Detroit with a similar vibe as the one he showed at the Canadian Open – three rounds of 65 seeing him finish in solo second after a disappointing opening 70.

A birdie machine when flowing well, Griffin has posted five top-20s on the PGA TOUR since the end of March – in this weak company, he’ll be looking to use that sort of a position as a springboard for another assault on the title this week.

Erik Van Rooyen – 60/1 – Although he missed the cut last time out at the U.S. Open, we can forgive Erik van Rooyen of such things at the hellacious Pinehurst.

We’re more interested in his long-term form, which has been good – very good, in fact, when compared to this company.

T4 at Myrtle Beach in May, the South African continues in his rich vein of ball-striking form, which is headlined by his arrow-straight length off the tee.

Sam Stevens – 66/1 – In the shadows of the U.S. Open, Sam Stevens took a step down in grade to play in the Korn Ferry Tour’s Wichita Open – and he should have won it.

Two rounds of 63 and a 66 saw him scorch to the top of the leaderboard, before a Sunday 70 ended his chances.

But Stevens is playing good golf nonetheless, with T10 at Myrtle Beach and T14 at the Canadian Open confirming as much.

A strong driver of the ball, Stevens fits the bill for success at Detroit GC.

Daniel Berger – 80/1 – To finish -1.10 strokes worse off than the field putting in a U.S. Open, and still finish T21, is testament to how well Daniel Berger played from tee-to-green at Pinehurst.

You won’t win when losing -1.10, but anything even closer to the +0.00 mark could be enough for him to contend at Detroit GC, if he continues to stiff his approaches close.

With previous at venues like Muirfield Village, Berger has form at correlating courses – we’re simply now waiting for that flatstick to become even a smidgen more reliable.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the Rocket Mortgage Classic here.

Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2024)

Cover photo via Instagram