2019 Charles Schwab Challenge Picks

The Charles Schwab Challenge
May 23-26, 2019
Colonial CC – Ft. Worth, TX
The Golf Channel/CBS

With two remarkable Major Championships already in the books, the 2019 PGA Tour season is shaping up to be one of note and the pacing that comes from the Major shuffle has us just a month away from the U.S. Open. Before we get to Pebble Beach however, the Tour will make three high profile stops, including a trip to Jack’s place in a couple weeks and Texas again welcomes the players for this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge. This event has seen a steady rotation of title sponsors and even some years without a sponsor so the name has changed often but Colonial County Club has been a fixture as the host and the invitational status of this tournament consistently makes this field one of the strongest of the regular stops.

Justin Rose won the 2018 tournament at Colonial and he will be back to defend against the likes of Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Tony Finau. Jon Rahm is one of the top Euro players staying stateside to prep for the U.S. Open and he is joined in Ft. Worth by Louis Oosthuizen, Paul Casey and Francesco Molinari as part of a very strong international contingent. Rose’s 20-under par winning score was just one short of the tournament record at Colonial and a look at recent champs suggests a clear pattern. Rose was playing better than anyone at this time last season so don’t overthink that result alone but seeing names like Steve Stricker, Zach Johnson and Kevin Kisner also among former winners should tell you this is purely a shotmakers course. All have the putter to match so ball striking alone may not be enough but the tee-to-green game is most important this week, just as it was last week at Bethpage Black. Players that did well at the PGA Championship should fare well here as well from a macro standpoint although Colonial is more forgiving and conducive to scoring. Winning totals have most commonly been in the 12-to-14 under par range with Zach Johnson topping out at 21-under during his win.

Colonial CC has been associated with the Tour since 1946 and is one the premiere “thinking-man’s” courses in the rotation. Players will be required to hit precise tee shot on many occasions and raw power is rarely necessary around this 7,200 yard, par-70 layout. The greens will be smaller than what players encountered last week but will also be more complex and feature more breaking putts. Playing angles and avoiding the strategic bunkers is important and GIR-putting becomes a necessity to keep up with a faster scoring pace. We saw Brooks Koepka win while being just 46th in the field on the greens last week. The winner at Colonial will likely need to be better than that, unless they plan to lead the field in greens hit like Brooks did. This will be a more wide open event with more scoring chances so look for the winner to be one of the more well-rounded performers this week.

Each week, we take a look at the online betting sites and highlight the best value bets on the board. We make a short, middle and long odds pick to win and breakdown a couple of head-to-head matches that you can find at just about every golf betting outlet. Odds and pairings this week are courtesy of the board at Bovada. Here are our picks to win the 2019 Charles Schwab Challenge.

Xander Schauffele (16 to 1 odds to win)

A basic look at Xander’s PGA Championship shows a player that ran out of gas and bogeyed the last five to tumble to a 16th place finish. Despite the rocky finish, I think he had one of the better weeks of the players not named Koepka with Schauffele hitting nearly 70% of his greens for the week. Xander couldn’t solve the Bethpage greens on Sunday but in general, he is a top-50 putter in terms of strokes gained and enters the week 34th in GIR putting. Xander is 27th in off-the-tee performance and 19th in strokes gained from tee-to-green so he clearly fits the profile of a player that should fare well at Colonial. After two seconds and two thirds during his 2018 season, Schauffele has moved up to 9th in the OWGR after winning the HSBC and the TOC. His T2 at the Masters showed he is on the short list of those ready to break through for a Major and winning this week would make him a bigger threat for the upcoming US and British Opens. Top-20 marks in both birdies and scoring suggest a fast-paced shootout could be to his liking but Xander is an accomplished grinder as well, especially for his relative lack of experience on Tour.

Bryson DeChambeau (25 to 1)

DeChambeau spent much of last week politely criticizing the current state of course setups at the Majors but don’t take that for the Mad Scientist being distracted. His criticism of Bethpage was that it was simply a one-note challenge and that too many courses rely only on length to set the scoring pace. He isn’t wrong in many cases, but Bryson is going to get everything he wants in terms of diversity at Colonial and that should fit him well as a player with a complete stat sheet. DeChambeau is 4th on Tour in total driving, 34th in strokes gained from tee-to-green and enters the week at 16th in GIR putting. All of that adds up to the 6th best scoring average on Tour and four wins since the start of 2018 shows that the good version of DeChambeau has the gas to win against any field. This course has the quirky nature that is mostly absent at a place like Bethpage and that matches well with all the quirks of Bryson himself.

Chez Reavie (60 to 1)

Reavie was one of the few light hitters that did well last week, in fact, he shot no worse than 72 on any day at the PGA and finished 14th. Reavie was outmatched by the course length at Bethpage but that won’t be the case at Colonial, allowing Reavie to rely on his 2nd best fairways hit mark to gain strokes on the field. Chez is such a solid player overall that it is hard to find a weakness beyond that general lack of power. He ranks 13th in approach proximity and makes enough putts to net the 34th best scoring average. Reavie’s lone Tour win came back in 2008 and his career has seen him take medical exemptions and included a trip back to Q-school at one point. Many of his career highlights have come in just the last few seasons, including a playoff runner-up in Phoenix last year and three top-seven finishes in 2019. Chez have fared well in tough ball striking environments this season and should be a factor if that putter gets hot.

Each week, we take a look at the sportsbooks and highlight the best betting lines on the board. We make a short, middle and long odds pick to win and breakdown a couple of head-to-head matches that you can find at just about any golf betting outlet. Odds and pairings courtesy of Bovada Sportsbook. 

Head-to-Head Matches

In one of the more high-profile pairings of this week, we see two wildly popular players that should be at the top of the leaderboard all week. Fowler is coming off a T14 at The PGA Championship and his 2019 season includes zero missed cuts in twelve starts with a win in Phoenix and a runner-up finish at the Honda. Spieth is still mostly mired in what has amounted to a significant slump although his T3 at Bethpage last week was seen as a sign of positive things to come. The result was certainly good for Jordan but his ball striking was below average for most of Saturday and he will need to improve on that if he is to win his second championship at Colonial. Fowler owns significant advantages in terms of greens hit, overall tee-to-green play and scoring. Both players are right around the top-10 in putting on Tour and it is that solid work on the greens that has kept Spieth from becoming a complete afterthought. Jordan is outside the top-200 in fairways hit and that is just too troubling of a stat to ignore. He has good vibes around this course but not enough to stray from a player of Fowler’s talents. Bet against Spieth while you can as it may not last long and don’t overvalue his T3 last week as that was his first top-10 finish of the season.

For being light hitters, both players did fairly well at Bethpage last week but Grillo was able to go 2-under over the final three rounds to secure a top-25 finish while Fitzpatrick struggled after shooting a Friday 65 and landed at T41. Grillo has made the cut in each of his three previous starts at Colonial, topping out with a 3rd place finish last year after carding two rounds of 64 during the week. This will be Fitzpatrick’s first appearance at the Schwab. If this were a different course, I would perhaps side with Fitz and his putting advantage, but this course should reward the same things that were rewarded last week and Grillo has a better GIR percentage, birdie average and scoring mark. I can see both players doing well this week as their profiles suggest success at Colonial but Grillo has the experience edge and he also has the motivation to stay exempt for the WGC events as he sits close to the bubble at 63rd. Fitzpatrick isn’t mailing one in but he is probably more concerned about Pebble three weeks from now if he gave you an honest answer.