Photo: Louisianagolf.com
The annual team event on tour is here in the form of The 2023 Zurich Classic at TPC Louisiana. The players will play a best ball format on Thursday and Saturday, with alternate shot taking place on Friday and Sunday. The course itself is a Pete Dye design that is playing at around 7,400 yards in length. Even with it being a longer venue, it has been a birdie fest in recent years. Since moving to a team format in 2017 the winning team has had at least one player that is a top tier tour player. With that in mind, the event this year is headlined by some high end pairings. Teams like Xander and Cantlay, Homa and Morikawa, Sungjae and Keith Mitchell are among the favorites teeing it up this week. This year the event has some questionable depth to round out the field. It seems incredibly unlikely that anyone from the bottom half of the field has any chance to be in real contention this week. With that in mind, we are going to follow our usual format of three picks from the top, middle, and bottom of the odds board, but with a little looser definitions than normal.
Taylor Montgomery and Kurt Kitayama
These two former UNLV Rebels are pairing up this week at The Zurich. They have complementary skill sets that make them a real threat to win this week. Both of them are long off the tee. Kurt is a quality approach player with his irons. Taylor is great around the greens and perhaps the best putter on tour. The only thing that could hold this group back is a lack of accuracy off the tee. Montgomery is 5th on tour in birdie percentage and Kitayama is 71st. Both good numbers which is crucial in the best ball format of the competition in which making birdies in the name of the game. Montgomery and Kitayama have also had great individual seasons so far. Kitayama has the win at API, a runner up at The CJ Cup, and a T5 at match play. Montgomery has four top 10 finishes and rarely has recorded a finish outside of the top 25 in an event. Put all of these things together and we think Montgomery and Kitayama are a great pick to win The Zurich Classic.
Hayden Buckley and JJ Spaun
Buckley and Spaun are an intriguing duo for us this week. The main factor in this is the awesome form Hayden Buckley is in. He grabbed a T5 last week at RBC Heritage and finished T10 in his prior start at The Valero Texas Open. The shared quality trait between these two players is driving accuracy. Both are well above tour average in driving accuracy, meaning they will likely rarely be out of position this week regardless of format. With both players sharing a similar statistical profile of being slightly above average approach players and average players on and around the greens, it is likely their week will boil down to one thing… How hot can their putters get? If the putters heat up a little bit for them, they are a real threat to contend this week. We are projecting a top five finish for the team of Buckley and Spaun this week.
Eric Cole and Sam Saunders
Sam Saunders is quietly putting together a good season on The Korn Ferry Tour. He is currently 14th on the points list after finishing 5th in the KFT event last week. He hasn’t finished worse than T10 in a KFT event that he has made the cut in this year. Now Eric Cole has had an up and down season this year. However, we know he can have great spike weeks after his solo 2nd at The Honda Classic, which had a stronger field than this week’s event. One of the main reasons for this selection is honestly the chemistry between the two players. They met when they were kids and played a ton of golf together at Bay Hill, many years alternating who was the club champion there. The comfort they have with one another is probably only rivaled by that of Xander and Cantlay in the field this week. That will provide a boost to their game and help them to a top 10 finish in The Zurich Classic this week.
