Our expert likes Daniel Berger's chances this week.
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Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting. You can follow on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the Black Desert Championship, which gets underway Thursday in Ivins, Utah. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data from Chirp Golf, a mobile app that features both Free-To-Play and Daily Fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.
The PGA Tour returns to the state of Utah for a full-field championship for the first time since 1963. The Black Desert Championship at the Black Desert Resort in Ivins, Utah, is making its debut on Tour and its first of four scheduled annual appearances during the FedEx Cup Fall swing.
The golf course has been open for less than two years. It is a Tom Weiskopf design and was his final piece of work before his passing in 2022. It is a resort course with wide fairways and large greens. It is located in southern Utah, only a two-hour drive northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The course sits at roughly 3,100 feet above sea level and is spectacular visually, as the bentgrass fairways and greens weave their way around outcroppings of black lava rock, all surrounded by a red-orange, mountainous desert backdrop.
The course will play as a par 71 at just under 7,400 yards. It will play shorter than this number, however, with the elevation. It is the second straight week on Tour in which we are seeing very little star-power in the field, but you can figure it will be another week featuring a great deal of birdies. A short, resort-style course with wide fairways ought not to be too much of a test for any Tour pro. It is likely that Weiskopf made these fairways wide and these greens large because of the high winds that can often blow through this area. But the forecast this week is not calling for anything over 15 mph currently, and three of the four days are topping out at 10 mph.
Obviously, we have not seen this golf course before on Tour, so our knowledge of how it will play is limited versus a regular Tour stop. With the wide fairways and elevation, I believe driving distance and Strokes Gained: Off the Tee will be an advantage. I looked at Strokes Gained: Approach as iron play may be the most important statistic this week. Finding these large greens in regulation should not be too difficult but getting it close to the hole and making birdies will likely set the pace. I have personally played another nearby resort course in this southern Utah area with similarly large greens, and that led me to also considering 3-putt avoidance this week.
As far as correlated courses, I don’t believe there are excellent matches but I used other Weiskopf designs that we see that do have some crossover-characteristics: Torrey Pines (North Course), TPC Scottsdale, and TPC Craig Ranch. I also used Vidanta Vallarta in Mexico due to the fact that, like Black Desert, it features very wide fairways and larger than average greens.
Now let’s see if we can make it two weeks in a row in the outright winner category.
Daniel Berger (40-1)
Berger has been a specialist throughout his career on Bermudagrass greens and we saw that surface last week at the Country Club of Jackson, where he finished seventh. He’s also fared quite well throughout his career at TPC Scottsdale with finishes of 10th, 11th, seventh and ninth over the years. Berger has also finished third and 13th at Weiskopf’s TPC Craig Ranch, home to the Byron Nelson since 2021. We are on bentgrass this week but I am going to lean a bit on the Weiskopf connection and trust that his current form holds for at least another week. For a guy that was once one of the very best in the world before taking nearly two years off due to injury, I have been wanting to land on him correctly when that elite level of play finally resurfaces. Over the last 36 rounds, Berger ranks 11th in this field for SG: Off the Tee and is 20th for Birdies or Better Gained.
Andrew Novak (40-1)
Novak took eighth last year at TPC Scottsdale and has finished eighth and 15th at the Mexico Open at Vidanta. He hasn’t missed a cut in nearly five months and comes in off of a top-25 finish last week. He is one of the very best in this field in all the stats I considered this week. Most notably, he ranks 13th in this field for SG: Approach, ninth for Birdies or Better Gained, and 12th for SG: Putting (Bentgrass).
Justin Lower plays a shot from the sixth tee during the third round of the 2023 World Wide Technology Championship.Getty Images
Justin Lower (55-1)
Lower is coming off a top-30 finish last week and a top-10 finish prior to that in Napa at the Procore Championship. He was third earlier this year at the Mexico Open at Vidanta and recorded a top-25 finish at the Byron Nelson. He is a birdie machine, ranking fifth in this field for Birdies or Better Gained over the last 36 rounds. He is also seventh for SG: Par 4s measuring 400-450 yards. Interesting to note, there are two drivable Par 4s on this course but the other nine average roughly 470 yards in length. However, when you factor in the elevation, these ought to play more like 400-450 yard Par 4s. Finally, Lower is one of the very best putters in this field, ranking fifth for SG: Putting (Bentgrass) over the last 36 rounds.
Harry Hall (55-1)
The Las Vegas resident and former UNLV Rebel golfer ought to be very familiar with the area and the type of conditions he’ll experience in not too far away, Ivins, Utah. Hall ranks very high in this field for SG: Approach and on the Par 4s measuring 400-450 yards — but he’s elite as far as Birdies or Better Gained and putting. He comes off his first Tour win three months ago, winning the ISCO Championship in Kentucky and recorded a top-10 finish last year at Vidanta Vallarta.
Who Chirp Golf players are picking this week
Top 3 Chirp Golf player picks for the Black Desert Championship.Chirp
