2025 Zurich Classic – Noonan’s Outright Picks and Preview

Breaking up the regular season grind, the Tour heads to Louisiana this week for the Zurich Classic. This will be year six of The Zurich Classic as a team event. We’ll begin with 80 teams of two playing a best ball round on Thursday, followed by a round of alternate shot play on Friday before the field is cut to the top 33 duos and ties for the weekend.

Cut makers will go back to best ball on Saturday before the event finishes with a final round of alternate shot on Sunday. This is back-to-back Pete Dye courses, the third in the past six weeks, so there’s some continuity around profiling the style of golfer that’s likely to find success this week. Unfortunately, the format makes it a tricky week to handicap things.

I’m all for wrinkles in the schedule to break up the monotonous stroke-play format we’re accustomed to. However, the combination of a Pete Dye track, notorious for leveling the playing field, no shotlink data, and two rounds of alternate shot makes this a better watch than a betting event, so I’ll have a light card this week.

For more course details, check out Ron’s course preview. It’s the best in the business, bar none. Also, don’t forget to check out our new research tools, the TPC Louisiana stats page, along with the Tournament Cheat Sheet.

Podcast: Apple | Spotify

YouTube: Betsperts Golf

Key Rabbit Hole Stats This Week:

• SG: APP (Short-term form + Baseline form)
• SG: Ball-striking (Less than driver)
• Birdie or Better%
• Par-5 Scoring

There are millions of ways to bet on this beautiful game, and my goal with this piece is to touch on the golfers I’m targeting in the outright market this week. Remember to check out the Rabbit Hole, our customizable stat database that can help you pare down your player pool each week.

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 lines are accurate at the time of publication in Discord.

Noonan’s Zurich Classic Outright Target

Billy Horschel and Tom Hoge (28/1)

I’m leaning heavily on recent form, especially recent approach form, and this duo is the right mix when you consider their price at 28/1. Billy Horschel is a notoriously streaky player, but he’s gained an average of 0.58 strokes on approach and 0.87 strokes ball striking per round over his past 12 rounds played. He struggled on and around the greens at the Masters, leading to a missed cut, but that’s not something that I’m holding against him. The green complexes at TPC Louisiana will not be confused with those at Augusta National.

Horschel has won here twice, once as a solo in 2013 when the event was still a standard stroke play format, and again in 2018 with Scott Piercy as his teammate in the format we’ll see this week. Horschel’s teammate this week is Tom Hoge, who enters play in even better form than Horschel. Hoge’s finished T3, T5, T14, and T18 in his past four starts, and his recent approach form is as good as anyone in the world. He’s also putting it really well right now, and that’s encouraging because the winning team will need to convert their scoring chances at a high rate this week.