In this weekly feature, we will take a closer look at the upcoming PGA Tour event to see what the best outright winner values are on the board and also analyze some of our other favorite golf props and DFS PGA picks for Rounds 2-4.
Early in the week, our top winner plays and analysis will be posted, and we’ll then check in with our favorite selections for Round 2, Round 3 and Round 4. Let’s see if we can pick some winners!
Golf Props Today – Outright Winner & Round 2/3/4 Picks
Every week, we look at our top outright winner picks for the upcoming tournament.
NOTE: The tournament was delayed for most of Friday, so there will be a lot of catch-up to do on Saturday.
This content will return for Round 4 on Sunday!
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PGA Round 2/3/4 Picks – CJ Cup
Each week we take a look at our favorite individual round DFS PGA picks and golf props for Rounds 2, 3 and 4 on sites like Underdog and Sleeper.
Round 2 (Friday, May 2)
Scottie Scheffler came out firing in Round 1 at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, shooting -10 to lead by two strokes over Rico Hoey and Jhonattan Vegas.
Here’s who led the way in strokes gained: tee to green (via Data Golf):
Scottie Scheffler (+6.46)
Ricky Castillo (+5.14)
Eric Cole (+3.62)
Michael Thorbjornsen (+3.54)
Rico Hoey (+3.36)
Top five in strokes gained on approach:
Victor Perez (+4.00)
Scottie Scheffler (+3.79)
Joel Dahmen (+3.21)
Jackson Suber (+2.94)
Ricky Castillo (+2.84)
And here were the worst putting performances, followed by the golfers’ tee-to-green data for the round:
Trevor Cone (-3.89, +2.60)
Jackson Suber (-3.36, +1.07)
Joel Dahmen (-3.08, +1.80)
Taylor Moore (-3.02, -2.27)
Matt NeSmith (-2.92, -0.37)
PGA DFS Round 2 Plays
We are looking at Ben Griffin for the later tee times on Friday. He wasn’t able to capitalize on some chances in the opening round, shooting -2, so he’ll need a strong day two if he wants to make the cut.
During yesterday’s round, Griffin gained 1.31 strokes tee to green and 2.34 strokes on approach yet lost 1.60 strokes on the greens and 1.21 strokes around the greens.
If he can bring that ballstriking level and bounce back with the short game, we like the chances of a low round on a course that’s extremely beatable.
Pick: LOWER Than 67.5 Strokes (Underdog)
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CJ Cup Byron Nelson Winner Picks
This week’s PGA Tour stop is the Byron Nelson outside of Dallas. The host course is TPC Craig Ranch, the latest in a long history of varying host courses in the DFW metroplex.
This course definitely shades towards shorter hitters, and has the odd combo of being not very penalizing off the tee. On paper it brings the “putting contest” label into the fold, but the key word here is SHADES.
The largest advantage according to Data Golf is less than a tenth of a stroke in either direction for the best and worst course fit golfers. So this presents an opportunity for the shorter hitters and putting-dependent players, but it’s truly anybody’s ballgame.
Biggest Favorites (As Of 4/30/25)
Scottie Scheffler (+280)
Jordan Spieth (+1800)
Sungjae Im (+2200)
Byeong Hun An (+2500)
Taylor Pendridth (+3000)
The first interesting play is a guy who has been kind of a hidden gem in the mid-tier on Tour for a few years now: Taylor Moore.
He’s got a solid all-around game and just kind of flies under the radar, despite winning in 2023. 2024 was kind of a lull but still solid for Moore, which is fairly common after a breakthrough win.
In 10 starts in 2025 however he’s actually having by far the best year of his career statistically, gaining over 1.00 strokes on average which is typically good enough to put somebody in the top 50 in the world. Even with that, he has only recently found his putting stroke.
All these factors combined with a weak field make him a strict overall value play at +6000.
The other option jumping out is the old standby Joel Dahmen. Joel is tough because of his relative fame compared to his talent level, he gets recognized and bet down fairly often probably due to being a fan favorite and his Netflix stardom … which isn’t kind of the opposite of a Taylor Moore type.
However, he’s been trending this year and of course peaked with a devastating finish at T2 at the Puntacana a couple of weeks ago.
He’s always been a short but deadly ball striker, and when he was struggling it’s been on the greens. His form in 2025 has shown basically the best putting of his career. It’s still hit-or-miss where he will putt the lights out for 2 or 3 tournaments and then be completely stone cold for a tournament or two, but that is actually a pattern we like to bet on for win bets.
At +10000 it’s just too big of a number for a guy with so much upside, at a course and in a field where he can definitely hang.
Best Bets:
Taylor Moore +6000
Joel Dahmen +10000
Outright Winner Picks – Zurich Classic
This week’s PGA Tour stop is at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. This marks the 8th year the event has played host to an annual partner/team competition, in an exclusive change-of-format event for the PGA Tour.
Biggest Favorites (As Of 4/21/25)
Lowry/McIlroy (+360)
Kitayama/Morikawa (+1200)
Detry/MacIntyre (+1800)
Poston/Mitchell (+1800)
Moore/Clark (+2000)
Novak/Griffin (+2200)
Rai/Theegala (+2500)
The field here digs really, REALLY deep with the vast majority skipping this event, usually gathering just a few headliners and scraping the barrel with some oddball names off the semi-retirement lists and some Korn Ferry regulars.
The course at TPC Louisiana is definitely a bombers’ track. The Pete Dye design plays difficult for amateurs with tons of water and bunkers but the course is one of the lowest scoring courses on Tour when the PGA stops there.
One of the biggest stories here is that it represents a huge opportunity for some really dicey players to partner up with a stud and/or play really well and gain crucial points for their status for next season.
This, combined with the format (2 rounds best ball, 2 rounds alternate shot) makes the results fairly erratic here.
The first decision to make is whether to fade Rory and Lowry, the defending champs, especially after their Masters week performances.
Given all of the above, it’s an easy choice to start the handicap with being contrarian and fading the most obvious play on the board. Then dig in and look for an upset special.
Sure both are playing great, but this feels like a victory lap situation for Rory and while they are so much more talented than everyone as a combo and don’t even have to play that grew to win, it’s basically the most public play ever and an easy fade.
Getting into that meat, the longtime ballstriking dynamos Jhonattan Vegas and Kevin Yu jump out. These two guys are both quite long and are dominant drivers of the golf ball. Furthermore, Data Golf’s course fit numbers show that “guys who can’t putt” for lack of a better way of putting it, have much more of a chance here than normal.
There’s some statistical reasons for this with the best ball format but regardless, these guys are both big game hunters and worth a shot at a snipe at +6000.
The other duo that looks dynamic is Aaron Rai and Sahith Theegala.
Rai’s game (supreme accuracy off the tee) actually doesn’t do a ton for him here, but that might be why Vegas and the public have overlooked these guys a little bit.
This play is based solely on overall talent and value. This is one of only a few pairings that feature two basically “top” players, if you wanted to draw a line in the sad, and their odds at +2500 on FanDuel are significantly more than the comparable competition, quite simply.
Theegala is having a down year but his stats are kind of spiked by some really negative tournaments, but there’s a good mix of very solid performances in there, so it’s not time to bail on the budding star just yet.
Best Bets:
Vegas/Yu +6000
Rai/Theegala +2500
Good luck!
How To Bet On PGA – Golf Props & DFS Tips
Betting on golf is in many ways a completely different animal than normal head-to-head sports betting. However, fundamentally it is the same baseline proposition: can we find expected value against the value offered by the marketplace?
The situation is skewed however because in golf win betting we are often dealing with tournament results and not head-to-head results, which give us tantalizing payouts and maddening near-misses on odds that are dozens to hundreds of times the multipliers of most other sports.
Something to keep in mind: just like in real tournament golf, patience and discipline and belief in your process are key, and one big event can change your entire season.
So, how do we find expected value in golf?
The Importance Of Data
Really simply, we want to find golfers who have a chance of playing better than it seems they are playing. Datagolf.com is by far the pre-eminent resource for this in the industry, but the fact is their numbers are completely public and the Vegas lines immediately tail them. Buying a Data Golf subscription alone and just playing their numbers alone will NOT make you profitable. The advanced analytics are available to everyone, including oddsmakers.
The key is learning to understand why the DG numbers are what they are, and how we can dig into the details to find trends that are actionable. DG uses a strict formula to combine past results and recent results to create a projection, and it is the best overall formula anyone has ever made, but what we want to look for are golfers who can make a case that they don’t fit the exact model, and have value that isn’t being captured by the Data Golf projections.
So in layman’s terms, here are some really great ways you can find potential value in a golf tournament field:
Recent Form
Golfers who have a track record of playing very well, but have had some bad results lately that we expect them to bounce back from (if recent poor results are just due to poor putting alone, this is ideal, as putting is by far the most variable category in golf)
Young golfers whose true value is still increasing every week and hasn’t been captured properly by the modeling timelines that are used by Vegas and Datagolf, as well as being slow to catch the public’s eye
Golfers who have been playing extraordinarily well lately, but historically aren’t that good, are not well captured by Vegas models. For example a golfer having a “breakout” year can be slow to pop in the industry models. This is an especially good situation if we can tie this performance increase to something tangible, such as a swing coach change, an offseason increase in driving distance, or another technique change or injury comeback situation.
In these cases, we want to put particular emphasis on driving and iron play, as these are less likely to be the result of random fluctuations in performance.
Course Fit
The last angle that can sometimes be used to get an edge is extreme course-fit outlier situations. The thing about mathematical models is that they can be weak in truly capturing extreme outliers.
On the PGA Tour, course fit week-to-week is much talked about and a very entertaining aspect of the game for fans and commentators, but it is generally very well accounted for by Vegas, and most tend to over-value these adjustments.
OVERALL FORM AND RATING IS ALWAYS MORE IMPORTANT THAN COURSE-FIT — a good fit for the course should always just be the icing on the cake for a good play.
One thing to look out for is the really extreme length outliers – the very longest and very shortest few courses each season, that truly limit a portion of the field from competing with their best weapons.
This happens in just a few events per year, but it does happen, and there you can find value in a true “specialist” in the field, such as guys who make their career through putting and putting alone, or an absolutely wild bomber who doesn’t gain many strokes through the rest of the bag.
