2025 PLAYERS Championship Final Thoughts

Weather

Okay, here’s the deal on the weather this week, because I’ve changed my opinion on how I expect the course to play since my Sunday podcast. Let’s address Thursday and Friday first and a potential wave advantage first. All of my players above $9K, and 60% of my total pool is PM/AM, and although this is wave has only had the winner three of the last 17 years (LOL), I’m willing to take my chances on the pure belief that Friday morning will be easier than Thursday morning. Thursday morning will see temperatures in the mid-50s till noon, whereas Friday will hit 60 degrees by 10:00 AM. The only reason why I wouldn’t go all in on this theory is that Friday still looks windier overall, beginning in the morning, but the wind is steady throughout the day, so those playing on Friday afternoon will also see more difficult conditions than those playing on Thursday afternoon. Overall, I’m glad that all of my main players above $9K are on the PM/AM side, but I wouldn’t use it as anything more than a tie-breaker at the bottom.

As far as scoring average goes, this feels an obvious spot to come in on the Unders on Thursday, and then come back on Overs as the week progresses. I say with high confidence that Thursday and Friday will be easier than Saturday and Sunday, and Thursday will be easier than Friday. My guess? The golf course plays around a stroke to a stroke and a half under par Thursday, half a stroke under par Friday, and up to a stroke over par over the weekend with far more aggressive gusts. Yet overall, you’ve got to score here across Thursday and Friday. The golf course is in absolutely mint condition and will reward players who are in control of their golf ball from tee to green and are in great recent form. The only real way to get yourself in trouble at this version of TPC Sawgrass is extremely wayward driving. The progression of these course conditions have only caused me to lean harder on recent accuracy off the tee and approach play in exchange for scrambling. If anything, I would take a look at players that get off to a hot start too. I think you’ve got to make a lot of birdies on Thursday and Friday to make this cut, and then hang on over the weekend. Here are the best Round One and Two performers over the past 12 months:

1.    Scottie Scheffler

2.    Collin Morikawa

3.    Xander Schauffele

4.    Rory McIlroy

5.    Corey Conners

6.    Aaron Rai

7.    Ludvig Aberg

8.    Sepp Straka

9.    Hideki Matsuyama

10. Tony Finau

Winning Score Prediction: -18

Scoring Average Prediction: -0.35

 Core

Scottie Scheffler, $12,800: For whatever reason, I actually feel like the discussion on Scottie Scheffler going for his third Players Championship in a row has been somewhat muted. For what it’s worth, I almost considered betting him at +550 this week, and I have absolutely zero reason to believe that he isn’t the most likely winner of this event, who also possesses the highest floor. No, I don’t think Sawgrass is Scottie’s best course on Tour, but its damn close. I would place it third behind only Muirfield Village and Bay Hill, and I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that easier than projected conditions are a bad omen for Scottie either. His last two Players Championship wins came in uncharacteristically easy Sawgrass conditions (especially last year), and if anything, this year will probably still end up being more difficult than last. Ultimately, Scheffler is just in complete command of his golf ball at this golf course. I think the strategy and conduciveness to shot-shaping and creativity that the Pete Dye design ignites are all positive checkmarks for Scottie, as are the clearly defined hazards. Scottie doesn’t like it when the missed fairway penalty doesn’t perfectly line up with the miss (Pinehurst, Royal Troon, etc.), and Sawgrass is the opposite of that. It might truly be the most fair execution test on Tour. Everything is all out in front of you, and how much a player wants to challenge the hazards is completely in their control. It’s been a pleasure to watch him sink into this strategic design and meticulously pick it apart over the last two years, and I have no reason to believe we shouldn’t expect a similar outcome this week.

Collin Morikawa, $11,100: The Morikawa question is a fascinating one to me. The golf course makes all the sense in the world for him on paper, and yet his results have been middling at best. He underperforms on approach at this golf course and has struggled immensely on the greens, yet he actually drives it quite well. This somewhat breaks my brain because an over-generalization of TPC Sawgrass would suggest that it favors a draw on more holes off the tee and a cut into more holes on approach. Morikawa still has an aversion to comfortably hitting draws off the tee but drives it better than he hits his irons at Sawgrass. This also may be one of the best golf courses on Tour for him on approach, but he has lost strokes on approach in two of his last three appearances here. In fairness, 2023 was a stripe show. Then there’s the question of last week. We can litigate until we are blue in the face whether last week’s result at the Arnold Palmer Invitational was a positive or a negative for his mental state. I choose to believe that the grifters psycho-analyzing his mood by how big his smile is while he’s signing autographs are the Worst People on the Internet. I’m not in the business of clickbait analysis and would rather focus on the controllable in this question. The reality of the situation is that Morikawa still has the second highest top-10 percentage by my numbers, and while I am far lower on his chances to win this week than market, I struggle to view another contending performance as anything but a further sign in his ability to sleepwalk his way up the leaderboard based on the insanely high floor of his ball-striking. Keep in mind, Morikawa gained over eight strokes ball-striking last week and did not even putt well. The sharp support for Morikawa to win the tournament has been hard to ignore. Getting hit from 12 to nine on Bookmaker is no joke and solely indicative of money is no good at other legal books, where Morikawa is unanimously in the 14 range, still a comically low number for a player that hasn’t won in 500 days. Maybe it’s just written in stone for him this week. I choose to believe this is the best way to deploy him, and his first top-10 at Sawgrass will be easy work.

Aaron Rai, $7,100: Well, well, well. There are a couple players who my numbers have just been consistently higher on than most all year. Some have worked out phenomenally well, and others haven’t. Long-time readers of this column know that Aaron Rai, Shane Lowry, Russell Henley, Doug Ghim, Kurt Kitayama, Patrick Cantlay, etc. those are just my guys. And I’ve experience the gamut of emotions with all of them. I’ve hopped off at the worst time possible. I’ve hopped off at the perfect time. I’ve hung on for far too long. I’ve been doing this long enough to experience all of it. Conventional wisdom would suggest this is the time to hop off Aaron Rai. He’s been incredibly kind to us as a core play the past two weeks, and when we add the 2024 Wyndham victory, he’s been as profitable to me as any golfer in recent memory. Am I clutching Rai even closer this week after I profited zero dollars and zero cents off a two-year-long Russell defense? Maybe, but its purely golf course-dependent for me. If this was any other golf course, I would probably let the fish have him. Yet at TPC Sawgrass, one of the most accuracy-based golf courses on Tour, with a high missed fairway penalty, I just think the floor is too damn high. Sawgrass may look a lot flashier than Sedgefield, but there is a reason why Datagolf has the host of the Wyndham Championship as Sawgrass’ number one skill profile comp. Both golf courses test accuracy off the tee and overall approach play throughout the bag in a highly specific sense, and Aaron was built for this type of set-up based on his current skill-profile. Of all the chalk this week below $9K, this feels the most sensible to me by a country mile based on the actual golf course fit, and I strongly believe he has the upside to win the tournament. I will be getting weird, however, with the other three slots if I put him in Scottie/Morikawa lineups. So to avoid the Dupa Lipa, I will simply be discerning with how to deploy Rai. I’ll have him in quite a bit of Xander/Cantlay lineups as well.

Adam Svensson, $5,500: I always love me some Adam Svensson, and I highly believe that he and Kevin Yu are the sharp response to Doug Ghim and Joel Dahmen. I often play the Canadian on golf courses that test accuracy off the tee and middle-iron approach play, and I was certainly around for his 13th-place finish at this course in 2023. Outside of the success at Sawgrass, Svensson has also recorded multiple top-15 finishes at Sedgefield and PGA National, two of my strongest comparative courses this week, as well as a win at Sea Island, another positional, accuracy over distance, Southeastern Bermuda golf course. The form is better than his results would suggest, as Svensson still gained nearly three strokes on approach en route to a disappointing missed cut at the Cognizant Classic, where he was chugging along nicely until a fateful finish. Svensson continues to drive the ball, and he absolutely possesses the approach upside to finish top-10 in this event and break the slate for us sickos. Why not us?

Pool

• Scottie Scheffler, $12,800

• Xander Schauffele, $11,100

• Collin Morikawa, $10,500

• Patrick Cantlay, $10,000

• Tommy Fleetwood, $9,800

• Corey Conners, $7,900

• Keegan Bradley, $7,700

• Denny McCarthy, $7,700

• Brian Harman, $7,600

• Matt Fitzpatrick, $7,500

• Aaron Rai, $7,100

• Keith Mitchell, $7,000

• Kurt Kitayama, $6,900

• J.T. Poston, $6,900

• Lucas Glover, $6,800

• J.J. Spaun, $6,700

• Austin Eckroat, $6,100

• Nicolai Hojgaard, $5,700

• Kevin Yu, $5,700

• Doug Ghim, $5,700

• Adam Svensson, $5,700

Betting Card

Outrights

• Justin Thomas (30/1) (0.255U) (win: 7.7) BetOnline

• Tommy Fleetwood (30/1) (0.26U) (win: 7.8) Bet365

• Patrick Cantlay (40/1) (0.19U) (win: 7.6) FD

• Daniel Berger (70/1) (0.11U) (win: 7.7) FD

• Aaron Rai (75/1) (0.1U) (win: 7.5) FD

• Will Zalatoris (90/1) (0.085U) (win: 7.7) Bet365

Top 20

• Hideki Matsuyama (+125) (1U)

• Justin Thomas (+120) (1U)

• Tommy Fleetwood (+120) (1U)

• Patrick Cantlay (+150) (1U)

• Sepp Straka (+150) (1U)

• Daniel Berger (+200) (1U)

• Joel Dahmen (+450) (0.5U)

OAD: Russell Henley

2024-2025

• Outrights: -17.45U

• Positionals: -7.5U

• Matchups: +9.57U

• Total: -15.38U

2023-2024 (2023 Procore - 2024 Tour Championship)

• Outrights: +30.4U

• Matchups: +5.42U

• Positionals: +28.54U

• Total: +64.36U

• ROI: 313.4U Risk, +64.36U won, 20.5% ROI