CareerBuilder Challenge Tips

Following quickly on from the Hawaiin swing, the PGA Tour heads back to mainland California this week for the CareerBuilder Challenge - a low scoring Pro-Am event.

The course is always set up to play nice and easy - probably to ensure the amatuer's look at least half decent - but it ensures that the overall winner will post something like 25-under across the four days.

It's played on three separate courses, so bear that in mind if you are betting in play - they don't all run as easily as each other, with about two strokes splitting the easiest course from the toughest.

So what are we looking for here? Typically the sort of player who finishes top of the leaderboard will have posted a huge number of birdies - especially on the par fours. That gives us a couple of stats to aim at, and that's the Strokes gained putting and the Par Four Scoring. With the course set up nice and easy, making Greens in Regulation should be possible a high % of the time for most the field, so it ends up failing to determine the winners. It's those who hole the most putts who come away victorious here.

So we're going to pick one from each list from the 2017 stats tables.

From the Strokes Gained Putting, Brian Harman finished an excellent fifth on the PGA last season - and those who finished 1st-4th aren't even in the field this week. Harman is second favourite, but he comes here in hot form having finished 4th at the Sony Open, 3rd at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and 4th in the RSM Classic. That makes him a solid each way bet at 14/1 with any of the big firms paying seven places (Sky Bet, Betfair, PaddyPower or Coral). He also finished 3rd here last season and 11th the year before.

From the Par Four Scoring, we are taking a punt on Chez Reavie, who has already twice posted top 20 finishes here and looks nicely poised to go well again. He finished off 2017 in nice form and has begun 2018 well as well - an 18th place at the Sony added to previous results of T14, T24, T15, T17, T13, so he's knocking on the door and is now 13th in the FedEx Cup. He finished 2017 in 6th on Par Four Scoring. He's 40/1 with seven places paying, and we'll add some insurance by backing Betfair's 23/10 about him finishing in the Top 20.

Chez is also currently 8th in Strokes Gained Putting in 2017/18 as well, although its clearly early in the season.

1pt e/w Brian Harman at 14/1 (1/5 odds 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

1pt e/w Chez Reavie at 40/1 (1/5 odds 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)

2pts Chez Reavie to finish in Top 20 at 23/10 (Betfair)

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