TRAVELLERS CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL THOUGHTS
This week’s PGA Tour heads to TPC River Highlands in the tri-state area for the Travellers Championship. The Travellers Championship celebrates its 70th anniversary this year with River Highlands hosting this prestigious event since 1984.
Throw out what you saw last week. This golf course will play a little easier with average winning scores of 14 under, we should see plenty of birdies and a few eagles. Even with the course being easier the golf course has to be respected with thick Kentucky rough, water hazards, and plenty of bunkers.
This course will offer a true test for the 156-man field that features the best golfers in the world. The top 65 and ties will get the opportunity to play the weekend, with the winner becoming golf’s latest Travellers champion.
More information can be found on our Travelers Championship preview by CLICKING HERE
FanTeam Travelers Championship contests start on 23rd June at 11.00 am BST.
This week’s Main Event contest features two buy-ins, €2 and €20. The difference in the contests is of course the prize pool at stake. In the low entry, the prize pool sits at €1,000. A massive €4,500 is up for grabs in the high entry.
Standard FanTeam golf fantasy scoring applies.
The great thing about FanTeam as a platform is I can play daily fantasy contests, and player matchups and make my sportsbook bets all in the same place.
WEATHER
Weather in this area of the USA can be very unpredictable but for the most part this week it should be sunny. At present, there is a slight AM/PM split on Thursday and Friday so it might be worth factoring into lineup construction. As always with the weather, it’s not guaranteed and is always worth monitoring.
Thursday: A nice sunny start awaits the morning wave on Thursday with perfect scoring conditions to boot. Things get a little trickier for the afternoon wave though with wind gusts up to 12mph expected to arrive around 1 pm. There is also a small chance of rain expected around noon on Thursday but at present that is at 20% so I’m not worrying about it.
Friday: Those wind gusts from Thursday afternoon will die off through the night and Friday will see perfect scoring conditions with beautiful sunshine and limited wind gusts of 5mph throughout the day.
Saturday: Saturday will see easy scoring conditions again, with hot sunny conditions throughout the day. The wind will start to increase during the afternoon wave at present with gusts up to 7mph.
Sunday: Sunday is expected be hot again with sunny conditions, however the wind will blow a little more in the final round with gusts getting up to 12mph throughout the day.
Obviously, things can change hour to hour with the weather so I would look again before lock tomorrow but at present the weather favors the AM/PM split slightly for Thursday and Friday.
TEE TIMES
Travellers Championship tee times are shown below.
STATS I’M LOOKING AT
All stats in my model are based on the last 24 rounds.
- Strokes gained off the tee (Courses under 7,200 Yards.) – There are a lot of different ways to attack TPC River Highlands off the tee, but I wanted to identify players that dominate off the tee on shorter tracks.
- Strokes gained on approach (Proximity 125-175) – 19% of approach shots last year came from 125-150 yards, which is above the Tour average. A huge 27% of approach shots came from 150-175 yards, which is well above the Tour average. So With almost 50% of approach shots coming from between 125-175 yards, this is the key stat we need to be looking at this week.
- Strokes gained around the green –TPC River Highlands ranked 6th out of 40 courses in up and down percentage from the fairway, and historically it has always ranked inside the top-six. There’s something about the short grass here around the greens that gives golfers nightmares, so this is well worth a look at this week.
- Strokes gained putting – As usual I will be weighting the ever-important putting between the 0-10ft range within my model again this week.
- Opportunities Gained – TPC River Highlands is neither a pure birdie fest, nor a grind it out course either. For this reason, I will refrain from looking at stats such as birdies or better percentage, and bogey avoidance. Instead, I will turn my attention to opportunities gained because of all the scoring clubs that players will have here.
TOP 25 PLAYERS IN MY MODEL
Sam Burns, Tony Fianu, Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Xander Scauffele, Mito Perrira, Jordan Spieth, Joaquin Niemann, Sungjae IM, Tom Hoge, Keegan Bradley, John Huh, Tommy Fleetwood, Harold Varner, Patrick Cantlay, Si Woo Kim, CT Pan, Adam Long, Brian Stuard, Aaron Wise, Brendan Steele, Christian Bezuidenhout, Lanto Griffin, J.J. Spaun and Anirban Lahiri.
TEAM REVEAL
Although I will be entering multi entries, this is one of my lineups for the Travellers Championship contest on FanTeam.
As you can see my selections are based on players within my player pool this week.
Scottie Scheffler – I’m all in on the world number one again this week! He is the world’s number one for a reason and has already won 4 times this year. It could have been 5 three starts ago but he narrowly lost out to Sam Burns in a playoff. Scheffler only missed cut this year come at the PGA Championship where he was on the wrong side of the weather draw. He is gaining strokes in all key areas over his last 60 rounds, and coming off a tied second at last weeks US Open. He is cheaper than Rory this week and is a much easier option for me to get to.
Aaron Wise –.His stats resemble Davis Riley who is similar in price. Thats great for us as we will get Wise at low ownership I think. He has been rewarded with good finishes recently with five top 27’s in his last six starts, two of those were top 6’s including his 2nd at the Memorial. His finishes here have been a bit better than average, but his game has never been better and I’m expecting a top 25 this week with a decent chance to finish top 10. He also has good course history here too having made the cut in 2 visits, with 2 top 30 performances in that time.
Brendan Steele – Steele has made 7 consecutive cuts thanks in part to his excellent ball striking ability. He was 4th at the Zurich Classic with his partner, and has three top 10’s in his last four starts. He is gaining strokes in all major areas of my model this week and with eight top 25’s since 2011 including a T5 and a T6 at the Travellers Championship he is an easy go to option for me this week.
I will be building a large chunk of my teams this week around the 3 core plays above with a variety of others based within my player pool. As you can see above this is a very balanced build so I will be spreading the captaincy across my 3 core plays.
FanTeam Travellers Championship Contests can be found by CLICKING HERE
FANTEAM SPORTSBOOK BET
Scottie Scheffler to win 9/1- As mentioned above I’m all in on the world number One again this week. He already has those 4 wins to his name this year on 4 very different golf courses and quite frankly it should have been 5. He seems to have gotten over that little slump in form that he had after the Masters which is understandable, so he is an easy outright choice for me this week.
A £20 bet would return £200 should it land.
Rory McIlroy First-round leader 25/1 – Rory is carrying the PGA Tour on his back at present and is ticked off with the new LIV tour. He has been on fire over his last five starts with four top 8’s including winning last week at the Canadian Open, a 2nd at The Masters, and his worst finish during this stretch was a T18 at the Memorial Tournament two weeks ago. I can’t bet him outright as I don’t trust him over 4 days but he is a great choice to be a first-round leader this week.
A £20 bet would return £520 should it land.
The Sportsbook lobby can be found by CLICKING HERE.
I hope this article has given you plenty of food for thought – especially for those of you that know very little about Golf but are playing in the Travellers Championship contests.
Please feel free to message me on Twitter @JackHumphreyKM if you have any questions – all support queries should go to @FanTeamOfficial.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
If you’re new to FanTeam, you’ll need to create a new account here – alternatively, head on create a new account here – alternatively, head on over to fanteam.com and click the green ‘Register’ button in the top right corner.
Existing users can click the graphic below for direct access to the game lobby.
Best of luck to everyone entering – I look forward to seeing your usernames on the Leaderboard.
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