Ben Coley's Dell Technologies Championship free betting tips
In-form golf expert Ben Coley is backing Sergio Garcia to land the Dell Technologies Championship, which begins on Friday.
Recommended bets: Dell Technologies Championship
1pt e.w. Keegan Bradley at 125/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7) - local ties, strong recent form
Click here for our transparent tipping record
Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth served up a battle for the ages on Sunday at The Northern Trust, with Johnson just coming out best, and it's the former who now shades favouritism for the Dell Technologies Championship.
Played every year at TPC Boston, this is the most familiar of the FedEx Cup Playoff events and it's probably the most enjoyable for the players, too. Raucous New England crowds and a golf course on which scores of 63 and 64 are fairly common means that the world's best can come here and freewheel in a way that wasn't possible a week ago.
With the field now down to 96, another high-class champion is quite possible. Yet this tournament has eluded the very best of the home challengers in the main, Rickie Fowler the sole exception in the last decade, and in among two wins for Rory McIlroy there have been some undoubted surprises such as when Chez Reavie should've beaten Webb Simpson, and when Charley Hoffman carded a Sunday 62 to take the title in 2010.
Pound-for-pound this looks the most open of the four Playoff events. The Northern Trust is typically played on a very demanding golf course which has produced top-class leaderboards, while the subsequent two are confined to players who have by nature enjoyed superb seasons.
Here, we have close to a hundred players who are all guaranteed their cards for next year, all have played well fairly recently, and at least 90 of them have some kind of chance.
In that spirit, I'll start off with Sergio Garcia, who looks overpriced at a general 50/1, with Betfred quoting 55s.
The Spaniard has enjoyed the year of his life, winning that elusive first major championship and then marrying for the first time, and it could yet be capped with another high-profile win.
As you might have expected, Garcia's form has dipped a little since Augusta. That's probably in the most part down to those welcome off-course distractions, but also a small degree of complacency which comes with achieving a lifetime's ambition. At this level, any player who isn't totally focused on the next shot is going to struggle.
That being said, Garcia hasn't been far off and had made every cut since the Masters until struggling at the PGA Championship. In among this run was second place in the BMW International Open, where he struck the ball beautifully, and solid-but-unspectacular efforts in both the US Open and the Open Championship.
This will be just his 16th start of the season and a degree of relative freshness may work in his favour. Certainly, missing a really tough event in New York last week doesn't look to be a negative and after a break back home in Switzerland, the hope is he'll be ready for one last push.
It begins at a course which suits his game. Garcia remains one of the world's elite ball-strikers, and that's very much the starting point at TPC Boston, where McIlroy is a twice-champion and Henrik Stenson should be.
Garcia's record shows six starts, six cuts made, nothing worse than 31st and a best of fourth in 2013, which came on his first visit after the most significant of the ongoing renovations made by Gil Hanse and his team.
What's particularly impressive about Garcia's run of form at the course is how strongly it has been powered by iron play. He's ranked third for greens hit in four of those six visits and given that he's just about as convincing as he's ever been with putter in hand these days, that makes for a dangerous combination.
The fourth-placed finish I mentioned can be marked up, too. Garcia was playing his fifth event in a row - something he hates to do - and simply emptied on Sunday, falling from first to fourth. He'd been sensational for 54 holes, shooting 65-64-65 to lead by two, but couldn't sustain the effort having sounded the alarm of fatigue to the media all week.
A break since the PGA Championship is of little concern for a player whose first two professional wins came after month-long absences, and who has since won all over the world after two or three weeks off, and the price on offer simply looks far too big about the world's seventh-ranked player given how well he is suited to the course.
To underline the importance of iron play here, every winner of the event since the beginning of the PGA Tour's archived stats in 2004 has ranked inside the top 50 for strokes-gained approach shots at the conclusion of the season.
Given that over 200 players are listed, that's a very strong trend alone, but when you consider that seven of the 13 ended the year inside the top 10, it's even harder to ignore.
Spieth and DJ rank second and fourth respectively, so it's easy to see why they're such strong favourites while the credentials of course winner Webb Simpson and the in-form Paul Casey are further supported by their respective positions.
However, I'll go a little further down the list to 28th-ranked Jhonattan Vegas.
The Venezuelan secured his third PGA Tour title in Canada last month, producing Sunday fireworks before toughing it out to beat Hoffman in a play-off.
A top-20 at Firestone the week after suggested that this out-of-the-blue win was no fluke and despite a missed cut in the PGA, he demonstrated that he really is at the top of his game by finishing third behind the big two last week.
That performance, powered by a pair of bogey-free 65s on a very penal golf course, put Vegas in prime position for a Presidents Cup debut and, at eighth in the standings with one event left, he'll again be all out to take care of business.
"I've said it all along, I really, really wanted to make the team," he said on Sunday.
"This is I guess the first time that I've actually had a really good shot at making it, so I really want to be a part of it.
"I've watched so many Presidents Cups on TV, so I know how much fun it is to play in one of those. Especially (captain) Nick Price, a good guy, I love the way he plays."
As the first Venezuelan player to make the PGA Tour, Vegas is nothing if not tough and he's exactly the type of character to rise to this challenge, rather than shirk the issue when push comes to shove.
That's why I'm expecting an improvement on two previous starts in this event, albeit he at least made both cuts to get some valuable experience in the bag.
Crucially, he puts his recent run of form down to the department which might well prove decisive here once again.
"You know what, it's been simple. It's been my irons," he said in New York.
"The moment I went back to my MP-4 Mizunos, I've been striking it really well. I've been driving the ball great all year but my irons haven't been that great. So I put them back in and obviously I've been hitting the ball really solid with the irons.
"When you start hitting the ball close like that, good momentum starts happening. A few putts are going in and it's easy to keep that going once you're hitting your irons that close."
Vegas ranked fifth in strokes-gained putting last week as the confidence from his long game revealed itself on the greens, and a continuation should make him a factor. Last year's win came after a top-five and it's possible he wraps up his Presidents Cup place in style, while also rubber-stamping a place in the world's top 50.
The Presidents Cup is also a big factor with Patrick Reed, as discussed last week. He's been placed here in each of his last two visits and there are possible ties to the Wyndham, scene of his breakthrough win, so the Texan is tempting again.
However, with 40/1 disappearing fast and the memory of Sunday's poor final-round still very fresh, I'll stay focused on stronger iron players starting with Patrick Cantlay.
It would be against the grain for a 25-year-old to secure his maiden PGA Tour title in FedEx Cup Playoff territory, but Cantlay has been achieving things beyond the reaches of most players for years now.
His performances this season, playing on a medical having been out injured for three years, have been sensational. Last week's share of 10th was his ninth cut made in as many starts, his third top 10, and saw him complete a climb into the world's top 100 from outside the top 1000 in January.
It came courtesy of leading the field in greens and had Cantlay played enough rounds to qualify, he'd be just behind Vegas in the approach-shot rankings. He would also be 20th in greens hit for the year and 14th in strokes-gained tee-to-green, thanks to the fact he's exceptional off the tee.
All of which is to say you should expect Cantlay to win the first of several PGA Tour titles over the next year or so, and I see no reason he can't get off the mark here at TPC Boston on what will be his first visit.
Cantlay shot 60 at the Travelers back in 2011, an event played in Connecticut on a TPC course with obvious similarities to this one, and a tree-lined, medium-scoring layout looks ideal for the time being. Indeed the closest he's come to a breakthrough this year was at Innisbrook in the Valspar, another course which should be a useful Boston pointer, and he's fancied to go well once more.
At a similar price, Daniel Berger is also worth backing.
The two-time PGA Tour winner also has that tie to the Travelers, where he lost a play-off to Spieth earlier this year, and has played well in both visits to TPC Boston.
Berger was 10th at halfway and a fair 33rd at the close last week and if we ignore missed cuts in the two stateside majors this summer, he's been in fine form with a win, a second, a fifth and three other rock-solid performances.
Most of them have been powered by strong iron play. Berger is sixth on Tour in strokes-gained approach and as one of the top-25 putters, that makes this fairly low-scoring, iron-play-favouring test absolutely made for his skillset.
Berger has already locked up a Presidents Cup debut but a modest PGA Championship has seen him drift down the market, which is so often the time to back these in-and-out youngsters.
He confessed to being inspired by Justin Thomas's win at Quail Hollow, as you'd expect, and this unorthodox player with a big-time mentality can make the minor improvements needed from last week at a course where he's contended to a point in both visits.
Truth be told, my shortlist for this event was anything but. Branden Grace might bounce back to form, which he needs to if he's to make the next event of the Playoffs, while similar incentives helped Bubba Watson go well for us last week and he could improve on a modest course record.
Russell Knox has found this course exactly to his liking in three visits and is a winner at TPC River Highlands, while players like Hoffman, Brian Harman and Woodland also love the course and, like Bubba, are playing for Presidents Cup places.
Justin Rose appears to have found the key to his swing and is one to watch very closely with the rest of the season in mind, Hudson Swafford is one to consider if you like a top-20 bet and James Hahn is a proven winner who was fifth here last year and hasn't done much wrong despite missing his last two cuts.
But to complete a six-pronged attack on the fancied runners, I'll put forward Keegan Bradley and Si-woo Kim.
This is essentially a home game for Red Sox fan Bradley, who went to college in New York having been born in Vermont, and having made every cut since the US Open he arrives in the sort of form which could see him go well at a three-figure price.
Last week was similar and he was seventh after 54 holes, only to have one of those Sundays and shoot 80. That's of course a concern, but Bradley's career-low round of 60 came just days after he'd signed off a miserable week at the PLAYERS with a second-round 77 and he's good enough to bounce back once more.
Certainly, being in Boston should help in that regard and four top-25 finishes in succession here speak to the fact that he can up his game in front of the loudest support he encounters all year.
That he failed to qualify for this event in 2016 means he'll be all the more excited to get back to the course and while concerns remain around the putter, one good week on familiar greens could have him right back in the mix.
We know courtesy of his PGA Championship win, WGC at Firestone and breakthrough success in Texas that tree-lined courses suit and the general toughening-up of TPC Boston over the last three years has to help, too.
Bradley has often gone off much shorter here but has shown enough of late to confirm that he's no back-number.
As for Kim, there are huge risks attached to supporting a player with more missed cuts and withdrawals than he has pay cheques this season.
The upside is he's won two of his last 32 starts, including that sensational front-running performance in the PLAYERS back in May, and is only a clean bill of health away from becoming a truly world-class player.
His inconsistencies mean that stats never look good on paper, but when Kim is on, he's brilliant from tee-to-green. This is a player who gained close to 16 shots on the field with his long-game and putted just okay en route to his Wyndham win last autumn, and it was a similar story at Sawgrass where he was second from tee-to-green and 37th with the putter.
Given that Kim also contended in the US Open and was 15th on his debut in this event last year, 300/1 is impossible to resist. He made the cut last week to suggest he's fit enough, there's a Presidents Cup spot up for grabs, and the risk that he isn't fit enough to do himself justice is worth taking.
To be honest, Kim is the sort of player we should just be backing every week at this sort of price regardless of form, the course and every other variable. Given that this is a rare occasion where there's evidence that he's healthy and does like the layout, he's must-bet material.
Posted at 1215 BST on 29/08/17.
Related links
MOST READ
Next Off
Fixtures & Results
