2023 Sanderson Farms Championship Matchup Pick: Bet Eric Cole Over Lucas Herbert
Via Gregory Shamus/Getty Images. Pictured: Eric Cole of the United States plays a shot on the tenth hole during the second round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind on August 11, 2023 in Memphis, Tennessee.
After back-to-back quality events where we hit on Sahith Theegala outright at the Fortinet Championship and Max Homa to be the top-scoring American during the Ryder Cup, we look to keep the momentum rolling in Jackson, Mississippi before the PGA Tour enters my hometown next week for the Shriners Children's Open.
If you haven't already, you can find me on Twitter (@TeeOffSports). There, I provide a link to my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user input to create custom golf rankings. That sheet is released every Monday, so be sure to check it out and construct your own numbers from my database of information.
Sanderson Farms Championship Thursday Matchup
Eric Cole -115 Over Lucas Herbert (bet365)
Everyone in the golf betting community has a ticket of some kind on Eric Cole this week. I don't necessarily love that fact for a golfer who has experienced massive movement in the opposite direction during his full-tournament matchups against Ludvig Aberg and Stephan Jaeger.
I'm not necessarily placing too much stock into that answer since my model also believes Jaeger and Aberg are the names to beat when teeing it up at the Country Club of Jackson.
However, it is worth noting that no player has received more support in the DFS and betting community than Cole, which makes any reverse movement away from him noteworthy since books clearly are placing little stock in the money that has entered the market supporting him this week.
It is something I wanted to mention before diving deeper into this bet because every bit of information plays a factor in this decision. I am always going to trust my math at the end of the day. It is why I run a model of my own, but this decision to wager on Cole has a lot more to do with the situation versus anything else.
As is always the case for me in full or in-tournament head-to-head battles, the opponent makes up a vast majority of my handicapping assessment because I am looking for options to take on beyond anything else.
We obviously need golfers we trust enough against them because bets too quickly transpire into these bust-versus-bust outcomes otherwise. Still, I am going to try and fade a golfer whom I always talk about being one of the highest ceiling/lowest floor names on the board for me weekly in Lucas Herbert.
We experienced both ends of that potential at the Fortinet Championship when Herbert catapulted toward the top of the leaderboard after day one and placed our J.J. Spaun wager against him in early jeopardy. Fortunately, Spaun overcame the quick start to get us across the finish line, which included a secondary win when we wagered on Davis Thompson over Herbert on Saturday.
Nevertheless, these have historically been spots where I am willing to chalk up whichever version we get from the Australian because there are multiple paths to find success.
My model placed Herbert into that prototypical boom-or-bust zone because of his high acumen for putting and distance, although there were some concerns with his flatstick when faced with fast Bermuda surfaces.
My numbers downgraded the 27-year-old 39 spots in expected putting on this surface against his standard baseline, making this a dangerous situation if his propensity to perform better at more challenging tracks than the Country Club of Jackson mixes with his lack of par-5 scoring.
I will go with a standard 1.15 units to win 1.00 since I don't fully trust Cole's total driving. However, out of six total key statistics that I weighed in my model, Cole ranked among the top 10 in a tournament-leading five of those categories, which gives me enough confidence that he can take us to the window against Herbert.
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