2022 Wells Fargo Championship Betting Card Preview
Ryan Noonan
4 years ago
This week’s field is significantly stronger than last week in Mexico with the PGA Championship at Southern Hills just two weeks away. The fine folks at Quail Hollow are preparing the venue for September’s President’s Cup, so this year’s Wells Fargo Championship is pivoting and heads to the Beltway. This week’s field is teeing it up in Maryland at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, former host of the Quicken Loans National.
Per Ron Klos’s course preview, TPC Potomac is a punishing Par-70 track, stretching out to 7,160 yards from the tips. Total Driving, with a lean toward accuracy, is critical this week. We need fairway finders with plus distance, and as always, steady approach play, particularly in the 175-yard and beyond range, is crucial. Sounds like a U.S. Open to me.
I’m going to switch up the format here a bit. My goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting this week. There are also a million ways to bet on this beautiful game so I’ll share my opinion on the best way to bet on each golfer in my player pool at this week’s event. When pricing out finishing position bets, I’ll often lean towards BetMGM even if there’s a better number elsewhere because of MGM’s advantageous dead-heat rules.
Please take advantage of the Discord feature and community. It’s the best way to get up-to-the-minute lines and advice, and if you need help getting started, please reach out. That’s where my full card will be posted, along with any live in-tournament bets. Betting markets are fluid, but I’ll note the best number available at the time of this writing.
*Betting lines accurate at the time of publication.
Noonan’s Wells Fargo Championship Targets
Corey Conners
I fired at Corey Conners at 22/1 on BetMGM as soon as I woke up on Monday morning, and that number dwindled quickly. As is, +2200 is short for Conners in any event, but I’m trying to evolve my process, having left multiple eventual winners off of my card this year because I balked at the price on Monday. Now I’m in a spot where I’m backing the absolute chalk. Of course, this matters less in outright betting than in DFS but based solely on the number of website cover images I’ve seen featuring Conners’ mug in the past 12 hours, this is shaping up as quite the community win.
Conners has enough distance off the tee to compete anywhere, but he paints fairways when dialed in. He ranks fifth in this field and 13th on Tour this season in Total Driving, buoyed primarily by his high accuracy ranking. He’s finished inside the top 12 in four of his previous six starts and ranks third in this field in strokes-gained ball-striking (SG: BS) over his past 50 rounds. This is down to 16/1 at some books, which is hard to stomach, but he’s my preferred pick to win this week.
Matthew Fitzpatrick
Outside of an outlier putting performance at Harbour Town, Matthew Fitzpatrick has been tremendous in 2022, and his game is designed for a course layout like TPC Potomac. He’s probably a safer bet as a T20 since he’s finished inside the top 18 in seven of his nine 2022 starts, but aren’t they all. Fitzpatrick doesn’t have any holes in his game right now. He’s the only golfer in the field that ranks inside the top 20 in SG: BS while also ranking inside the top ten in both strokes gained putting (SG: P) and around the green (SG: ARG).
Tony Finau
The putter has been the demise of Tony Finau this season and he failed him again last week in Mexico, losing 0.58 strokes per round on his way to a second-place finish. Nevertheless, I’m willing to ring the bell here again on Finau because his tee-to-green game was spectacular in Mexico, and he seems to have found something off the tee after spraying it around for the season’s first three months. This play is made on the back of Finau’s approach numbers. He ranks second in Klos’s pre-tournament approach model and fifth in this week’s field in the coveted 175-200 yard approach range.
Abraham Ancer
We haven’t seen great form from Abraham Ancer of late, and I think it’s clear that he’s been less than 100% at times over the past month. However, on Tuesday’s betting show, Geoff Fienberg made a great point that any health concerns with Ancer should be a thing of the past; with the PGA Championship just two weeks out, it doesn’t make sense for him to travel to Maryland and tee it up for the second straight week if his back was still an issue.
Ancer has been a mess around the greens of late, hemorrhaging strokes every time out, but Ancer has the perfect game for what I think it takes to be successful here. His long irons are a strength, ranking 11th in this week’s focal range of 175-200 yards, and he’s going to paint the fairways off the tee. His baseline talent is much closer to Matthew Fitzpatrick and Corey Conners than the current betting markets indicate.
Max Homa
Max Homa continues to make incremental gains across the board and ranks ninth in this field in SG: BS over the past 50 rounds. His driver is a weapon. He ranks 25th in Total Driving on the year, with solid performances in both distance and accuracy. He’s gained strokes on approach in seven consecutive measured rounds and has played well over the past two seasons on demanding tracks like TPC Potomac is setting up to show us this weekend.
Brian Harman
I keep coming back to Pete Dye’s designs and Larry Packard’s Copperhead for the Valspar when looking for a corollary course this week. Dye’s courses often feature tricky first shots due to sightlines or narrow fairways. Valspar has rough that’ll punish you if you miss the shortgrass, and these are places where Brian Harman has historically fared well. I’m also placing a premium on Par-4 scoring this week, where Harman ranks 11th on Tour entering the week. His lack of distance off the tee won’t matter as much on the Par-5’s here since they’re three-shot holes for everyone.
David Lipsky
David Lipsky was throwing yard darts in Mexico, gaining nearly 10 strokes on approach on his way to a T6 finish, his third T7 or better over his past four starts. He’s shown the ability to gain strokes off the tee despite his lack of distance, a skill set I’m looking for this week. I’m willing to pay the price to see if he’ll continue his recent run of form, and this place suits his game way more than last week’s track in Puerto Vallarta. I’m conservative, so I’m not chasing another top-10 finish, but some weekend golf is undoubtedly in the cards.
Martin Laird
Accurate off the tee with the ability to gain strokes despite a lack of distance and strong iron play. These are the core tenants for golfers in my player pool this week, making TPC Potomac a Martin Laird special. He can sometimes be an unmitigated disaster on the greens, but if he can not lose two strokes per round on these bentgrass greens, Laird will be playing on the weekend.
- T40: +175 PointsBet
FanDuel Finishing Position Parlay
Seamus Power/Cam Young – Top 40 Parlay (+224)
This is a new entry to the space thanks to our friends at FanDuel. Unlike most other books I’m familiar with, FanDuel allows you to parlay finishing position bets. Now, the very premise of the bet is flawed because the expected value is negative since players are competing for the same finishing positions. If the bet is two T40s like this one is, when one leg of your parlay finishes above the threshold, there’s now one less spot available in that range for the other leg(s) to also come in. I know the math is terrible. Spare me. But let’s be honest. Some bets are just fun, and these are fun for me.
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Featured Image Credit: Cliff Hawkins – Getty Images