AT&T Byron Nelson betting preview and tips
Ben Coley has three selections for this week's PGA Tour event, the AT&T Byron Nelson Championship.
Recommended bets:
0.5pt e.w. Robby Shelton at 250/1 (1/4 1,2,3,4,5,6) - top-class talent in the making
Considering that host venue TPC Four Seasons is not perhaps among the more popular layouts on the circuit, another strong field has been secured for the AT&T Byron Nelson.
That's in part a reflection of the sponsors, in part the fact that so many touring professionals have a connection to Texas, and in part the the schedule, which kept many of the game's biggest and best away from the spotlight between the Masters and last week's PLAYERS Championship and now in need of exercise.
As can be the case at Sawgrass, it was in some respects a bizarre result as an out-of-sorts and hitherto far-from-fit Si-woo Kim became the youngest ever winner of the so-called fifth major, with none of the fancied players offering any sort of challenge as the tournament unfolded.
Yet while Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Sergio Garcia arrive here in Irving with some questions to answer, Dustin Johnson went through the PLAYERS as you might've expected given that he was returning from an injury, hadn't practiced as much as he'd have liked and isn't particularly well suited to the course.
It's no surprise, then, that the man who won three in succession prior to an unfortunate fall on the eve of the Masters is a popular 5/1 favourite to add to his haul at a course he's taken apart in the past, shooting 62 in 2015 and 64 last year - albeit not yet securing the silverware he has threatened to.
And to be frank, of the 5/1 shots you'll see this season there will be many worse. Yes, three of his biggest rivals in the world rankings are in attendance, among them a local favourite (Spieth) and two former winners (Garcia, Day), but Johnson's form remains a cut above and it's quite possible this lot don't see which way he goes.
That being said, this is a peculiar par 70, where Brendon Todd and Mike Weir filled the first two places just three years ago before Steven Bowditch won by fully four strokes in 2015, and it just doesn't quite feel like the right time to steam into a short one.
The course might not be universally admired, but what it does offer is a kind of parity in that long hitters have just two par-fives to go at, even if many of the par-fours are around 500 yards.
Bombers have established good records - Johnson, Gary Woodland, Keegan Bradley, Brooks Koepka and Day among them - but Todd, Colt Knost, Jon Huh and a few others demonstrate that this is almost as much a test of precision as it is power.
Indeed, any advantage the big hitters do hold will have been at its most extreme during the course of the last two years, where they were gifted a rain-soaked course and ball-in-hand, so under more favourable conditions my belief is that a blend of accuracy to match some degree of power is the formula.
Step forward Byeong-hun An, a fine driver of the ball when on-song.
This youngster continues to impress, finishing eighth on another new course last time out, and perhaps missing the PLAYERS Championship could prove a blessing in disguise.
Indeed, you have to go back for the 2016 PLAYERS for the last time he missed the cut in a non-major, his only subsequent failure coming in the PGA Championship, and in little more than a dozen starts as a PGA Tour player he's already lost a play-off and led heading into the final round.
Given that An was the youngest ever US Amateur winner and took the BMW PGA Championship as a European Tour rookie, it's pretty clear that he is both a top-class player in the making and one who can adapt quickly, which is good news as this will be his first visit to Four Seasons.
Certainly, it's a course which should play to his strengths and the fact there have been so many breakthrough winners here - Day, Bradley, Todd and Sang-moon Bae to name the four most recent - also suggests it's a nice fit. Remember, he came closest at the Zurich Classic before its reformatting, another event known for producing breakthrough winners.
I'm also intrigued by the countryman angle here. An's play-off defeat at the Zurich came in an event his friend Seung-yul Noh had won, and it might just be that he's able to follow Bae in landing this title, making for back-to-back Korean winners after Kim's stunning victory on Sunday.
There's no evidence that I can find to suggest that Kim and An have even held a conversation let alone class each other as a friend, but I do firmly believe that An will be delighted to see his compatriot win, particularly in light of words exchanged with a less worldly-wise US rival recently.
Of course, this serves only to supplement the basic logic behind my headline selection. An has played consistently well for months, I believe this is a great course for him, he's not endured a gruelling week at Sawgrass and he looks good value at 66/1.
He's already better player than many of those ahead of him and the best is yet to come.
Louis Oosthuizen is among the second wave of the market having shared second last week, but at twice the price I'm keen to chance his compatriot Charl Schwartzel.
The obvious negative is that Schwartzel missed the cut at the PLAYERS, but he's never played well at Sawgrass, a course which perhaps demands more patience than he possesses, and it's just not any kind of factor as far as I'm concerned.
Prior to that, he was of course third in the Masters, a much better measure of his overall game, and having dusted off the cobwebs in Florida I'm hopeful that he could get in the mix from an early stage here.
Schwartzel was third behind Bae four years ago, despite putting really poorly in rounds two and three, and he might've gone really close in 2014 too were it not for an opening 73, which he followed with a trio of very sound 67s for 11th place.
All told, his scoring average at Four Seasons is 68.53, a hair better than the favourite's 68.54, and that gives you some indication of just how well Schwartzel can perform here when everything clicks. Indeed, when third here nobody hit more greens and nobody hit the ball closer.
While Oosthuizen still seeks his first win in the US, Schwartzel has two and although frustrating at times, he's playing well enough to be a major factor here.
In his last 10 starts, the former Masters champion has three top-six finishes and all in strong fields. Another might just be coming.
Marc Leishman has gone off considerably shorter in past renewals than he appears set to here, despite winning already in 2017, and that's due to a pair of third-placed finishes at Four Seasons in the past.
It's easy enough to envisage a return to form for the Arnold Palmer Invitational champion - he didn't fare too badly at the Masters or indeed the Heritage before a missed cut at Sawgrass - but my instinct is that two wins in relatively quick succession may just prove beyond him.
Graham DeLaet would've made the staking plan at 100/1, but the prospect of watching him flub chips on Sunday means I can't take anything shorter, and while part of me desperately wants to back Gary Woodland at 80/1, his mind is quite rightly elsewhere going by recent results.
In fact, try as I might I find this event tricky. The prospect of Johnson turning it into a procession and the unconvincing profiles of those considered his biggest threats really makes it a week for fairly small, somewhat speculative bets, and I'll end with the most speculative of them all in 250/1 chance Robby Shelton.
This one is pretty simple: I believe he's the real deal. Not just very good, but potentially a superstar.
I've seen no more of him than anyone who watches the PGA Tour regularly, but I've read plenty and also had one or two messages and emails to support the suspicion that he could be good enough to ascend rapidly in a way we've seen with players like Spieth or, say, Jon Rahm.
Already, Shelton has grabbed a top-three finish on the PGA Tour from just 10 starts in regular events and it's just a month since he contended at the Valero Texas Open when playing on an invite.
Two weeks ago, he dominated Monday qualifying for the Wells Fargo Championship with 11 birdies in a single round and again proved that he isn't out of place by making the weekend, and since then he's secured medallist honours at an early US Open qualifier back home in Alabama.
Before this stretch, he won Mackenzie Tour Qualifying School, which is both further evidence as to how well he's playing and confirmation that he can freewheel to some extent as his card in Canada is secure for the summer ahead.
How well suited he'll be to Four Seasons I don't know, but a return to Texas has to be a positive based on what he did in San Antonio and he has the mindset to break the rules which say 21-year-old players without full privileges do not win PGA Tour events.
As we saw last week with Kim, and as we've seen all year with Rahm, age is no barrier to success anymore - regardless of the event.
And while patience may be required with Shelton, when he's playing such obviously good golf, backing him at this sort of price doesn't need too much in the way of considered thought.
All 3 tips to finish in top 20 - 50/1! Check out Sky Bet's Sporting Life specials
Posted at 2130 BST on 15/05/17.
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