After the unique format of the Zurich Classic, The PGA Tour returns to a standard event this week in the CJ CUP Byron Nelson at TPC Craig Ranch. Scottie Scheffler and Sungjae Im are the only players in the OWGR top 20 teeing it up this week at the par 71 Tom Weiskopf course. Let’s dive into the numbers for this week’s tournament with Bet The Number, the premier analytics platform for golf bettors.

The Course Blueprint 🗺️ 

TPC Craig Ranch is getting ready for a major overhaul after this event, with several changes already in place including several holes playing longer than before. Even with some added length, we still expect low scores at TPC Craig Ranch. The course gives an extra birdie per round and almost one less bogey per round than Tour average, and winners are typically reaching 20 under or better.

Let’s take a look at this week’s BTN model:

• OTT: TPC Craig Ranch has wide fairways and the rough is not very penal. At a middle of the road 5.1 on the bomber’s paradise scale, there’s nothing special about OTT play here, and the BTN Model features standard SG:OTT this week.

• APP: As one of the longer courses on tour, TPC Craig Ranch features many approach shots over 175 yards. Gaining from 175-250 yards on approach will give players plenty of birdie looks and is a key differentiator for players to climb the leaderboard.

• ATG: Top past performers tend to chip well here, especially with players hitting so many long irons into these greens. That said, the greens are pretty large, so ATG play isn’t a major differentiator. ATG play has standard weight in the BTN Model this week.

• Putting: This tournament is a birdie fest, so converting on the ample birdie opportunities is the way to win this tournament. The BTN Model features both putting from 8-15’ to highlight those that can hole out from this range, and BoB % to give extra credit to those that consistently convert their birdie looks.

This week’s BTN Model favorite is (🥁 drumroll please…) Scottie Scheffler. The world number 1 is still looking for his first victory of the 2025 season - with a fairly weak field, is this the week he returns to the winner’s circle?

Matchup of the Week (3-2-1) 🤼‍♂️ 

Ben Griffin (+100) ✅ over Byeong Hun An (-125) on DraftKings

We’re backing the recent Zurich Classic champ Ben Griffin in this week’s head-to-head matchup over Ben An. Sure, An’s ball-striking has kept him afloat lately, but his putter remains a glaring liability—ranking near the bottom of the field in strokes gained putting for most of the season. At TPC Craig Ranch, where birdies come in bunches and scoring turns into a putting contest, that’s a major red flag. Griffin, on the other hand, has quietly put together a strong run with the irons, gaining 3+ strokes ball striking in three straight events. He has also performed well on Bent greens ranking top 10 in the field in SG:Putt on Bent grass over his last 20 rounds. With the matchup tool leaning Griffin’s way and the plus-money tag, this is a sharp value spot to back the hotter, more complete player right now.

Feature Spotlight 🔦 

This week’s Feature Spotlight: Strokes Gained vs Baseline and vs Field. When using Bet The Number’s many features, you’ll see Strokes Gained numbers everywhere - sometimes vs the Baseline, and sometimes vs the Field. Today, we’re here to tell you the difference.

Strokes Gained vs Baseline

Strokes Gained vs Baseline is a stroke level metric that compares every shot taken vs the overall PGA Tour baseline for that distance and lie combination across all events and many years of data. This essentially considers all shots from that distance and lie combination as equal and provides an objective analysis of that specific stroke against all others from the same position.

The primary advantage of using SG vs Baseline is that it allows you to filter on exact distance and lie buckets since we can directly select the strokes we want to pull. SG vs Baseline data is often featured in the BTN Model because of this, and is the best way to get highly specific filtering for Custom Model columns. SG vs Baseline is also heavily used on the Player Page to show a player’s performance across distance and lie buckets in the Approach, ATG, and Putting categories.

Strokes Gained vs Field

Strokes Gained vs Field is a round level metric that adjusts each player’s strokes gained based on the overall performance of the field. This often gives a more accurate view of relative performance as it adjusts the value to that specific tournament, taking into account strength of field, difficulty of the course, and playing conditions.

SG vs Field is used in many places in BTN, including the custom model, all SG metrics on the Course page, Event History and summary SG metrics for each category on the Player page, and the Matchups tool. Since the SG vs. Field metrics are difficulty-adjusted, we tend to prefer using them when possible. However, since they are not at the stroke level, we are limited in our ability to filter them by various lies and distance buckets which is when we resort to SG vs Baseline metrics.

GS Luke’s Prop Preview ⛳️ 

GS Luke has been crushing it with the prop picks over on the BTN blog. Check out his CJ Byron Cup picks and analysis here, and stay tuned to his X for more GS Luke content.

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Best of luck this week!

Ben from Bet The Number