Golf
Wells Fargo Championship preview: Don’t Knapp on Jake at Quail Hollow
After a couple of weeks of weakened fields and slightly less competitive golf being played, the PGA Tour is back to its best this week with one of its Signature Events, the Wells Fargo Championship.
Played at Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina, the Wells Fargo Championship is one of the biggest tournaments in the PGA Tour calendar and offers a $20,000,000 purse.
Despite Scottie Scheffler once again missing out on the action, this looks a much stronger field than previous weeks featuring 16 of the OWGR top 20, but we’re looking outside of those to find some value.
Find our selections for the Wells Fargo Championship below.
Tony Finau 33/1
Tony Finau hits one of the longest balls on the Tour and that will certainly come in handy around Quail Hollow, a course which rewards distance far more than it does accuracy and Finau has it in abundance.
Ranking 17th on the Tour when it comes to distance with the driver, Finau is a danger off-the-tee, an area in which he gains strokes on the rest of the Tour. Couple that with his elite iron and wedge game, which sees him rank fifth overall for approach play, and you get the player ranking fifth overall for strokes gained from tee-to-green.
The stats line up a tad more than the form does, but Finau is heading back in the right direction. Having kicked off the season with four T25 finishes in six starts, he went slightly off the boil at The Players and Valspar but has since recovered that blip with a T2 finish at the Houston Open and a T12 in his last appearance at the RBC Heritage.
This is a slightly more stacked field, but Finau is right up there with the best and is good enough to finish clear of almost anyone on the Tour, as he has proven six times in his career, but not yet this season.
Now at 33/1, Finau’s price seems to get more attractive by the week and we think this could be the time to snap him up, with the course seemingly playing into his hands. That price also means he would return nicely enough should he finish in the 6 places available with William Hill.
Jake Knapp 125/1
At a much bigger price of 125/1 we find the rising star making waves on the PGA Tour this season, Jake Knapp. The 29-year-old is playing his debut season on the Tour and has shown no signs of nerves, probably helped by the fact that he broke his maiden in just his fifth start of the season at the Mexico Open.
That was by no means a fluke as he had recorded a T3 finish at the Farmers Insurance Open just one month earlier and has since gone on to record a T4 at the Cognizant Classic and an eighth-place finish at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson last week.
Not only is Knapp one of the most in-form players on the PGA Tour this year, but Quail Hollow could get even more out of his long driving game. Ranking 29th for distance, he is no slouch with the big stick, but his accuracy is what sees him lose strokes on the rest of the field off-the-tee. As previously mentioned, accuracy is not the key here and that should play right into his hands.
He also has the approach game to back up those long drives, ranking 11th on the Tour for strokes gained approaching the green, whilst also gaining strokes with the putter.
At 125/1 it is hard to ignore a man who has already recorded a win and four top 10 finishes this term, which also makes him an eye-catching candidate to finish in the 6 places available with William Hill.
