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Remind me next time

It wasn’t to be for us unfortunately last week in the RBC Heritage. 2 out of the 4 tips made the cut (Im and Noren) and they both were very stop, start over the weekend with them both showing glimpses of a push towards the top but then drop shots were their enemies. Both finished in a tie for 19th.

Looking at the tips tracker for the year, out of the 16 previews I have written, the RBC Heritage was only our 5th blank week. Not too bad I say!

Zurich Classic 2022

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The tour travels to the state of Louisiana, where they will compete for the Zurich Classic title at TPC Louisiana, just outside of New Orleans in the town of Avondale.

A bit of a change this week compared to the usual week on tour, the guys will pair up this week to play a team event, the second team event on the calendar to go with the unofficial QBE Shootout held in December which if you remember correctly, we found the winner of the shootout with Jason Kokrak and Kevin Na,  so let’s hope for more of the same this week!

The event offers good prize money and a ticket into some big tournaments for those that haven’t qualified for them already, like the PGA Championship and the Players Championship. So the event always tends to attract a strong field year on year.

160 guys enter the field this week, which equivalates to 80 teams in total, the top 33 and ties of these 80 teams will advance thru the 36 hole cut mark.

TPC Louisiana

  • Par 72
  • 4 x Par 3s, 10 x Par 4s, 4 x Par 5s
  • 7400 yards
  • Bermuda Greens
  • Pete Dye design
  • 4/4 Par 3s all over 207 yards
  • 6/10 par 4s under 450 yards, 4/10 are over this
  • All Par 5s under 580 yards, all reachable for players in 2 shots

We are faced again this week with a typical Pete Dye course, players will face; tricky bunkering around the greens, tree lined fairways but with short un-penal rough and water hazards aplenty surrounding greens, especially on the tough set of Par 3s here.

The course is long and the wet conditions that are forecast will make this week play even longer…

The Format

Thursday – Best Ball
Friday - Alternate Shot
CUT
Saturday – Best Ball
Sunday – Alternate Shot

We see these formats every 2 years in the Ryder Cup but here’s a little insight into how they both will play;

Best Ball (Four Ball)
In this format, each person in the group will play their own ball until the hole is complete. The player with the lowest score out of the pair will use their score on the scorecard.

Alternate Shot (Foursomes)
This format is literally what it is called. Each player will take it in turns in the pair to hit different shots with the one ball. For example, the first player will tee off, the second player will then hit the second shot and then this will carry on until the hole is complete.

The best ball format on Thursday and Saturday is where players need to make birdies/eagles as much as possible. The guys have 2 chances in their pairs to do this so the odds are always good that players will go low on these days.

Whereas on Friday and Sunday, each player in the group will need to be on their game with them both carrying a huge responsibility for the team. Players will need to grind on these days in they are to win the Zurich Classic.

Previous winners/Stats for this week

The Zurich Classic has been a pairs/team event the last 4 times it has been here, these are the pairs that have succeeded here;

2021 – Cam Smith/ Leishman -20 (Playoff win over Oosthuizen/Schwartzel)
2020 – Cancelled due to COVID
2019 – Rahm/Palmer -26
2018 – Horschel/Piercy -22
2017 – Cam Smith/Blixt -27 (Playoff win over Kisner/Brown)

Going further back, the below guys are the winners of the Zurich Classic when it was a standard stroke play event;

2016 – Brian Stuard -15 (Playoff win over Lovemark and An)
2015 – Justin Rose -22
2014 – Seung-yul Noh -19
2013 – Bill Horschel -20
2012 – Jason Dufner -19 (Playoff win over Ernie Els)

AVERAGE SCORE: -21

Even when the event was a standard one, the scoring was still seriously low with birdies aplenty. Expect it to be the exact same this week with some heavy weights in the current game in the field here.

The Field

As stated above, 160 players line up this week, making up 80 pairs.

3 of the top 5 golfers in the OWGR tee it up this week with World Number 1 Scottie Scheffler on show who has shown some exhilarating form of late.

Bookies are paying anything between 5 and 10 places this week, so for the purpose of consistency the below odds I mention in this section will all be pairs taken at 7 places.

Tied at the top of the market at joint favourites are the teams of; Patrick Cantlay/Xander Schauffele and Viktor Hovland/Collin Morikawa at 8/1.

Cantlay and Xander do not intrigue me this week at these odds, I can not see enough birdies coming out of this group in the Best Ball format.

Hovland and Morikawa however are the deserved favourites here for me, the old college friends will be more than comfortable teeing it up together this week. Their long games are two of the best of tour and they are serial birdie makers, the only concern I would say is both of their putters are known to misbehave, so on the Alternate shot days this could be a worry.

Between these guys and 20/1 we have 6 pairings; defending champs Leishman/Smith, Burns/Horschel, Palmer/Scheffler, Fleetwood/Garcia, Lowry/Poulter and fellow countrymen Niemann/Pereira.

4 of these I can discount straight away just based on their odds, Leishman/Smith at 9/1, Fleetwood/Garcia at 14/1, Lowry/Poulter at 16/1 and the much fancied on Twitter Niemann/Pereira at 18/1.

The two of this bracket to look closer at is Burns/Horschel and Scheffler/Palmer at 12/1.

Both teams include a previous winner at this event whether it was in the team competition or not does not matter in my eyes, and their partners are playing some great stuff in this current season. I will be tipping one of these pairs come later on.

Best of the rest and ones that came very close to being backed this week are as follows; Gooch/Homa, An/Im and Bramlett/McNealy were of interest.

Zurich Classic Selections

Again, 1pt each way on all tips. The headline tip of the week is the first one followed by 2 more selections I have chosen with no justification, partly because they aren’t stat driven picks, they are just pairs I think will catch fire here and have good experience here.

Sam Burns/Billy Horschel 12/1 (5 places)
Course Form -
- T4 playing together in 2021
- Horschel T13 2019
- Horschel winner in 2018 as a pair and in standard stroke play in 2013
Recent Form -
- Burns – MC-1-T26-T9
- Horschel – T21-40-T9-T2
Key Stats -
- Burns

- Played golf at Louisiana State University and lives in Louisiana
- Twice winner this year
- 12th T2G, 10th Approach, 13th GIR, 8th Putting Average, 7th for Total Birdies
- Horschel
- Top 30 for OTT, T2G, GIR, Around the green and Putting
- Form here is superb
- 12th Scoring Average on tour

Keith Mitchell/Brandt Snedeker 40/1 (8 Places)

Justin Rose/Henrik Stenson 40/1 (8 Places)

Hayden Buckley/Alex Smalley 70/1 (10 Places)

Sam Horsfield/Matt Wallace TOP 20 finish 4/1