Ben Coley's golf betting tips: CJ Cup Byron Nelson preview and best bets

Golf betting tips: THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson

4pts win Jordan Spieth at 16/1 (General - 20/1 Betfair Exchange)

2pts e.w. Tom Kim at 28/1 (William Hill, 888sport 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Sam Stevens at 80/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Nate Lashley at 100/1 (Sky Bet 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. C.T. Pan at 100/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

1pt e.w. Davis Riley at 150/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

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THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson is indeed the name of this week's PGA Tour event. It has been quite the ride for sponsors, the CJ Group, since they helped launch THE CJ CUP, held in Korea and won by major champions. First a pandemic came along, diverting the event to Las Vegas, before it popped up in South Carolina, then disappeared from the schedule altogether.

Apparently, we're to believe it is gone for good, but instead of this tournament therefore being called The CJ Group's Byron Nelson, or the Byron Nelson by the CJ Group, they've managed somehow to lift the title of something defunct and simply place it in front of the name Byron Nelson. Oh to go through life with such a carefree attitude towards absolutely everything.

Anyway, we are where we are, and at least we'll have Shot Link data for this annual shootout, which for the first time since it moved to TPC Craig Ranch is no longer in the pre-PGA Championship slot. That's probably a good thing as while there are many ways to prepare for a major championship, lights-out scoring on a wide-open desert course isn't the best. Jason Day and KH Lee went a combined MC-41-MC after lighting it up in Texas.

From a betting perspective, the move may add a sense of normality while removing some volatility. Pre-major tournaments are among the most vulnerable to shocks because of generally weaker fields and a sense that the bigger picture matters more, something we've seen here through Lee and Sung Kang before him, and elsewhere in Texas via Jim Herman, DA Points, JJ Spaun and the then-Monday qualifier, Corey Conners. This field isn't strong, but Valhalla shouldn't yet be front of mind for the big names who are here.

Still, Craig Ranch itself retains the potential for the unexpected. Marty Dou, CT Pan and Austin Eckroat all found something from nothing last year and the de-emphasis on driving means the playing field is immediately levelled off. You can compete here in all kinds of ways and while the change to a par 71 last year did keep a loose lid on scoring to par, Day was only just good enough in 23-under. That's a daily average of 65.25 and the runners-up were at 65.5.

If there has been a constant, it's been quality approach play. Punishment off the tee is limited and the course isn't overly long, so it's the other shots that carry greater significance, starting with the second. In 2021, five of the top six ranked seventh or better; in 2022, the first four ranked eighth, fourth, first and seventh. Day's iron play (third) gave him his edge over two better putters who shared second place, although as with Lee you'd have been hard pressed to reason that it would have done prior to the tournament.

Riley can chalk up first individual win

Unpredictability is part of the DAVIS RILEY experience but I don't mind that too much at what look like extremely generous odds.

He is admittedly the sort of headline selection you'd typically try to keep away from the headline, lest he make it all look very silly. The sort of headline selection, you might say, who could very quickly render every word I'm about to write a complete waste of time.

He's also a serious talent and on his last individual start, in the Texas Open, was unsurprisingly one of the Monday movers. Riley had been 14th in Houston the previous week, hitting the ball as well as he has in ages, and at a course he knew that was enough to see his odds quickly cut from 100/1 to 80/1 and then 66s.

Bear in mind that field in San Antonio was headed by Rory McIlroy, Ludvig Aberg and Hideki Matsuyama, also featured twice champion Corey Conners and subsequent Masters contender Max Homa, as well as JORDAN SPIETH, who is favourite for this week's event.

I suspect Spieth is a lot closer than he looks but the point here is that Riley is twice the price in a tournament which isn't just weaker, it's significantly weaker at the front end. Second favourite in the Texas Open was Aberg; here it's an out-of-form Jason Day, the defending champion, or else Si Woo Kim, depending where you shop.

That alone isn't enough to go on but one missed cut shouldn't dissuade anyone who saw enough positives there. We have a handy example, too: Billy Horschel was another of those Monday movers having played well in Houston, he missed the cut, then captured the Corales Puntacana just days later at a shorter but effectively much bigger price versus the strength of the field.

As for Riley and his credentials for this course, its wide-open nature is absolutely key. He's struggled off the tee all year, with two exceptions – Mexico, where fairways are close to 50 yards wide in places, and Houston, which features little in the way of rough and similarly vast expanses to aim at.

If we can get an above-average driving display, which is what he produced in both those events, then we might be in business. Riley is on his day an excellent iron player, something he demonstrated at Memorial Park, and his putting always has spike potential. For parts of last week's Zurich Classic defence, it looked in pretty good nick.

We're certainly in the right part of the world for this Mississippi native, whose best chances to win a solo title to go with the pairs one he captured in Louisiana have come in Florida and Texas, latterly just across the other side of Dallas at Colonial Country Club.

Ninth here on debut despite a level-par opener and having made a solid start last year before missing the cut at the beginning of a poor run, his performance in Houston recently was encouraging enough to believe he could make a mockery of prices around the 150/1 mark.

Spieth is clear pick of the favourites despite recent results, including a missed cut at Augusta and a limp finishing effort at Harbour Town, two of his favourite courses. He's yet to win this but his results have improved markedly since it came to Craig Ranch, where his approach play has been first-class en route to ninth and second.

I'd much rather back him than Day or even Dallas resident Si Woo Kim, whose putter would have to be a worry. Ultimately, the idea that these two could share favouritism at 21.0 on the exchanges is hard to comprehend. Two starts ago I put them up at 20/1 and 70/1 respectively for the Masters; before that, Spieth was a good 10th in Texas.

On that performance, in a stronger event, Spieth would be close to a 10/1 shot here and he did show some promise early on at Harbour Town, albeit performing below expectations in the end. It wasn't necessarily the plan to select him, nor to lead this preview on Riley, but prices dictate that both make the staking plan on value grounds.

It should be noted that Spieth is dealing with an ongoing wrist problem but that it's uncomfortable rather than affecting his swing. That might've put me off, but having said rest was all he needed, I don't think he'd be here unless he felt 100%, not with two big weeks coming up. Remember, he skipped last year's renewal.

Will Zalatoris is plainly not best served by a shootout and while the weather could make this tougher, with rain and storms threatening to ruin the tournament if the worst of both does arrive, it's still going to require a lively putter. Hoping Zalatoris happens to stumble into one such week isn't a policy I could endorse around a course like this one.

I considered Min Woo Lee, who has Q-School experience here from back in 2018, but his approach play is often his weakness. Suddenly we're left with PGA Tour maiden Ben An, another who wouldn't want a shootout in Adam Scott, and weekend winner Sungjae Im, who flies in from Korea but for which he might have been interesting.

Kim suited to desert shootout

With Alex Noren short enough despite a positive course record, the other player I keep coming back to among the favourites is TOM KIM.

He was a popular bet last time out and might have landed us the place money but for a poor week with the driver around the tight, fiddly Harbour Town. It's a club that has been a problem over the past month or two, but only at courses either very long, or very tight.

This is neither, and in ranking 14th in approach play at Harbour Town, following on from second in the same category at Augusta, Kim could find that he doesn't need to be at his best off the tee to be really competitive. Certainly, if he putts as well as he did last time (fifth), he'd have every chance.

Kim has won twice in the Nevada desert at Summerlin and his form here is decent, too. First came 17th on debut, his first PGA Tour start of 2022 when still a non-member ranked 78th in the world, one who'd done as Sungjae does this week and flown in from Korea.

Last year's 34th wasn't quite so promising but did nonetheless end with a round of 65, his best yet at the course, and unlike this time his putter hadn't yet begun to warm up following a difficult run around the Masters.

It had been an undeniably quiet start to the year for a player who has three PGA Tour wins since August 2022 but Kim looks to be right back on track now. With each of those victories having come in fields of similar strength to this one, he looks to hold an outstanding chance granted a fair run at this.

SAM STEVENS could easily have been given the headline slot as I'm really quite sweet on him at around the 66-80/1 mark.

Stevens was 34th on his debut here last year but he putted horribly. It was in fact his best tee-to-green performance on the PGA Tour so far, which marks it down as something of a missed opportunity.

Tenth after round one and sixth at halfway, Stevens showed what he can do at Craig Ranch and this is almost as close to a home game as he can get, as he was born over in Fort Worth, less than an hour away. Not many can say they have two PGA Tour events virtually on their doorstep.

Stevens has stepped up in Texas, too, his best effort yet coming when runner-up to Conners over at San Antonio last spring, so I do like the fact he's heading back home with a bit of form to call upon following fourth place in New Orleans last week, as well as another top 20 in the Texas Open recently.

The absence of any kind of scoring breakdown from the Zurich Classic means we have no idea which players did the heavy lifting in their respective teams, but Stevens was playing with Paul Barjon, who had missed nine cuts in 10 starts this year prior to a timely top-five. There seems every chance Stevens was the star.

Regardless, he's been showing some signs of encouragement. For four weeks running prior to the Corales Puntacana, his strokes-gained approach numbers improved. That event doesn't provide SG data, but he certainly hit a lot of greens so his iron play looks to have come on quite a bit lately.

With the putter also getting better throughout those four starts before the Dominican Republic, Stevens, who has plenty in the locker off the tee, might be ready to put everything together at a course he knows, one at which he produced a promising display a year ago.

Get back on the Lash

Repeating selections from a low-grade event like the Corales Puntacana isn't necessarily something you'd plan to do either, but NATE LASHLEY has to be worth another chance despite having been a major disappointment there.

Lashley was among my selections at 33/1 owing to a fine course record together with a solid run of form which had seen him finish 13th at Sawgrass, 21st in Houston and 39th in San Antonio, two of those being clear personal bests at the course in question, the other (San Antonio) a result he'd bettered only once before.

This had all been the product of quality tee-to-green work and this former winner of the Rocket Mortgage Classic always has the potential to light up the greens, which is what he did when a close-up third at Torrey Pines.

It's been a year of promise and some substance for the veteran, who lives in the Arizona desert and has been third at Scottsdale, and that continued last week when he played with a weak partner at the Zurich Classic.

Lashley certainly played well with his own ball and now returns to a course where he's been 17th and 23rd over the past two years, closing with rounds of 64 each time to show the damage he can do. Last year he ranked fourth in strokes-gained approach, too.

Tenth at a wide-open, low-scoring resort course in Mexico towards the end of last year, Lashley has big upside for all that he can be volatile. I'll take that as he definitely has the tools to go close under these conditions and, like Riley, has been shunted further down the pecking order than he should have been.

Mackenzie Hughes and Seamus Power are two priced in the 50/1 range who made some appeal, the latter in particular, but I'll add one more outsider in an event which lends itself to upsets before we even think about the weather forecast.

That outsider is CT PAN, who closed with a round of 62 last year to finish in fourth, having gone MC-MC-MC beforehand as he worked his way back to full fitness.

Also third at Colonial, Dallas has been kind to the former amateur star and this course might fit more than you'd expect it to given that he's generally known for the kind of accuracy which saw him win at Harbour Town once.

Third in Mexico when shooting 65 on Sunday helps make that point and driver is his only weakness, one that can certainly be overcome at a place like Craig Ranch if the other parts of his game fire together.

We'll see if they do but he's climbed to 62nd in the approach-play stats having been 140th after a couple of events this year, and away from the statistics the simple fact is that he's been close to the lead on a regular basis of late, including alongside Kevin Yu in New Orleans last week.

Pan was sixth at halfway in the Cognizant, 17th at Bay Hill and 10th at Sawgrass, all high-class events, and while down the field in the Texas Open he's got an abysmal record over in San Antonio, where driving is much more demanding.

Here in the Nelson he's produced top-10 tee-to-green displays both at Trinity Forest and Craig Ranch, each of them wide open, and I wonder if there's a Dallas connection I can't find proof of as he said he had friends and family out following him last year.

Whatever the case, Pan is playing well and having no doubt been frustrated not to be invited back to the RBC Heritage given that he's a past champion, he can perhaps make up for it here.

David Skinns has some correlating form, was a decent 38th in this two years ago and knows Craig Ranch from Q-School. It's no wonder he's been nibbled at while I did also consider Lanto Griffin, who is nearing the end of his medical extension, has won in Texas, and has been catching the eye. Unfortunately, his putter looks a real weakness at the moment and that won't do here.

Chan Kim is starting to show just how much ability he has and I feel sure he can win on the PGA Tour in the coming years, having spent so many trying to get there. He's another about whom there would have to be one or two putting concerns, but he's a powerhouse who is playing well, loves a shootout, and has plenty of form in the desert.

But providing the rain doesn't ruin things, there are two players who would represent dream winners for the sponsors as they begin their new venture. Spieth and Kim both have a heck of a lot in their favour – if they can get the better of Riley, of course.

Posted at 1030 BST on 30/04/24

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