PGA PrizePicks for the Travelers Championship

PrizePicks offers a different way to play fantasy sports than simply building a lineup of different golfers on a salary. There are different categories of props and matchups which are not often offered anywhere else. I’m going to go through a few different angles on how to play during the Travelers Championship.

PrizePicks has birdie matchups, fairways hit, greens in regulation, score and occasionally scoring on set holes on the course. These props are setup for single round action allowing you do adjust as you go and get more information as the tournament progresses. 

If you have never played on Prize Picks or what more background, I highly suggest reading this article by FTN’s Tyler Loechner on how it works. It’s a great breakdown of the site works.

Travelers Championship Breakdown

Currently on PrizePicks, they are offering birdie or better matchups, strokes, birdie or better, greens in regulation and fairways hit. I decided to look through my simulations for an edge for round one and decided to go with a couple of birdie or better matchups. Perhaps after the first round we can dive further into the other categories if we learn a little about how the course will play this year, so for now I’ll avoid the other categories. 

Birdie or Better Matchups

• Harold Varner III OVER J.J. Spaun
• Keegan Bradley OVER Austin Smotherman

Bradley over Smotherman stood out for a couple reason but mainly because I think Bradley is a superior golfer by a large margin. While this doesn’t always translate directly to more birdies, it’s a great starting point and Bradley’s ball striking should give him ample opportunities. Also, in just the plain-Jane birdie stats, Bradley has a higher % and total and takes advantage of the par 5’s at a slightly higher clip. 

Choosing Varner over Spaun is roughly the same analysis as above but Varner has an even larger edge in simple birdie generation over Spaun. He had a nice little resurgence with his victory at Valero, but he wasn’t playing all that great before it and he hasn’t played all that well since. Varner continues to string together solid results and the combination of him being more talented on top of the simple stats lining up leads me to selecting him for this prop. 

Historically, there are a high number of fairways and greens hit at TPC River Highlands and perhaps looking forward to the weekend we can see if any course setups or changes will play in part in these numbers and perhaps a new edge will show itself.