3 Free Bets for the Charles Schwab Challenge

The week after a major always brings interesting dynamics from a golf handicapping perspective. Will players that were in contention be more fatigued from such a big week? 

That is often the narrative but as we saw at the RBC Heritage in April, that is definitely not always the case. Scheffler went back-to-back to win both of them while Ludvig Aberg and Collin Morikawa both secured top 10s in back-to-back weeks. 

There will be instances where the opposite happens and that is when the “narrative” crowd becomes most vocal. Overall, we want to assume that everyone showing up is doing their best to compete and throw those silly narratives out the window. 

Let’s dive into the course fit details and then see if any names pop off the page when looking at the odds sheet.

Course Fit

The host course this week is Colonial Country Club. When you hear “classical course on the PGA Tour,” this is often one of the first courses that will be thrown around in that category. 

What that typically means is that the course doesn’t test you with distance, but instead uses doglegs, bunkers, treelines and tricky greens to test the golfers. 

That is certainly the case at Colonial, but the course underwent a major restoration since last year. Will that change things up? It’s possible a few holes will play easier or tougher but overall, Gil Hanse is a master at keeping the bones of a course intact while adding modern elements to test the pros. 

Through the use of historical ShotLink data in combination of player consultation, he typically tries to tweak a few holes to keep up with the modern distance gains. Overall, we should still expect a similar course that doesn’t require distance and rewards mid-irons, wedges, and short game as a result. 

When finding a course fit, I prefer to look at split stats and this week I’m honing in on less-than-diver performance, history on bentgrass greens and windy conditions while also looking at past success on short courses. 

If we factor in all of those split stats, here are the names that show the biggest increase in performance over their baseline. 

Davis Riley
Daniel Berger
K.H. Lee
Justin Rose
Matt NeSmith
Tom Kim
Rickie Fowler
Robert MacIntrye
Ryan Fox
Chandler Phillips

Berger’s baseline stats have been nothing to write home about since returning from injury this season. I’ve had zero interest in him all year, but this would be a spot where I at least consider a sprinkle of DFS share or have a look at his finish position odds in the betting market. 

Head over to the Split Stats page to see who the top performers are in these split stat categories. 

Outright Odds

Here’s what the top of the board looks like on DraftKings Sportsbook:

Scheffler is showing up for a home game but most of the other superstars are resting. His odds imply a 27% chance of winning and that’s actually not too absurd. If you look at his weekly performances over the last year, he’s put together win-worthy weeks relative to this field in nearly 40% of his starts. The historical win rates for someone of his caliber in a field like this is around 14% and if you average those two numbers, what do you get? 27 percent. 

Charles Schwab Challenge Free Bets

Scheffler is stealing such a big percentage of the win equity this week but there are other markets to explore. It’s the top-20 market where I find two of my favorite bets this week. 

Daniel Berger Top 20 Finish +280

Boog is top 25 in this field when it comes to total strokes gained off-the-tee this season, despite being in the bottom third in driving distance. 

Coming to a classical course like Colonial seems like a great spot then. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a past champ here and also sports another top 20 on his course resume, in five total visits. 

As I said above in the course fit section, this is the first time Berger has really caught my eye this year and the top-20 market looks like the best value. If he fixes his short-game woes then we could see him surge even higher on that final leaderboard, but that is a big ‘if’ at the moment as that’s been the hardest part of his game to find since returning from injury. 

Robert MacIntyre Top 20 Finish +360

The big-hitting Scot has talked about his adjustment to PGA Tour life and how hard it’s been for him. Well, things are starting to look up with a strong finish at the NOLA team event in addition to back-to-back top 15s in the lead-up to this week. 

Looking at his career trends, there are more than a handful of instances where he’s pieced together at least three straight top 20s, so he seems to be a golfer that gets in a groove and stays there. 

If he had past results here at Colonial, then I may have considered a full outright here, but I think a top 20 in his course debut is well within his range of outcomes. 

Tom Kim to Win (50-1 each-way, 6 places)

The youngster burst onto the scene with a trio of wins in his 18 months on the PGA Tour. 

He’s slowed that pace dramatically but with those wins coming at Sedgefield and TPC Summerlin, we know that classical, position-based courses are well-suited for his game. 

In fact, when you look at two-year performance on similar courses using split stats then his win-worthy rate is third in the field behind only Scheffler and Finau. 

Narratives are never the leading factor for me but this being a home game for him certainly adds to the appeal, as well. 

Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.