2024 Shriners Children's Open Sleepers and Value Picks: Back Spaun, Berger in Vegas

2024 Shriners Children's Open Sleepers and Value Picks: Back Spaun, Berger in Vegas

The PGA Tour makes the short trip from Utah to Las Vegas this week, as a decent fields tee it up at TPC Summerlin in the Shriners Children's Open.

There may not be the same interest in the PGA Tour during the fall season, especially with the NFL returning, but that doesn't mean there isn't a great opportunity for us to win big, and the Shriners is the perfect platform for that.

Tom Kim returns as the favorite this week, looking to win this tournament for the third year in a row, and it's his inclusion in the field that gives us some better value further down the board.

All that is left to do is, is to look into the event and delve into the profile of a potential winner at this course. This is an easy event and one where -20 probably won't even be good enough, so one thing is for sure, we need birdie makers!

What Skill Set is Required to Win The 2024 Shriners Childen's Open?

The Shriners Children's Open is a long-running event and one that we know plenty about, so here are the key stats to consider this week.

SG Approach - Of the last five winners of this event, only one (Kevin Na 2019) has ranked outside the top 6 for SG Approach. This makes perfect sense when you consider the need to get to -20 or deeper. You cannot set up that many birdie chances without being dialed in with your irons, and that is the biggest prerequisite for a potential winner here.

Bentgrass Putting - Kevin Na got away with average irons because he led the field in putting the week he won. Of the last five winners, four of them ranked inside the top 9 for putting, with Martin Laird the exception, when ranking 20th in 2020. You might be able to be average in Approach if you make up for it by making bombs on the greens, but one thing is for sure, even if you are hitting your irons well, you will still need to convert putts, and that is what Laird did when ranking 20th for this statistic. Anything worse would likely see you falling out of contention.

Birdie Average - Some golfers can keep themselves in the mix week-to-week by limiting mistakes and making the odd birdie. That won't do here at TPC Summerlin, where you need to go beyond -20 to win. Tom Kim made 27 birdies last year when winning, and 24 the year before. In 2021, Sungjae Im made 26 on the way to victory. Clearly, you need to make plenty of birdies this week, and you need to be relentless all week, there is no time for slow rounds. Look to those who have led the field in Birdie Average in recent weeks.

Do Sleepers and Value Picks Win the Shriners Children's Open?

Below are the odds of each of the last 10 winners of this event.

2023 - Tom Kim +1200

2022 - Tom Kim +2200

2021 - Sungjae Im +3000

2020 - Martin Laird +22500

2019 - Kevin Na +7000

2018 - Bryson DeChambeau +1400

2017 - Patrick Cantlay +2000

2016 - Rod Pampling +30000

2015 - Smylie Kaufman +25000

2014 - Ben Martin +22500

When scoring is so low, there is a ton of variance, and that is why we have seen plenty of longshot winners here over the years. In the past three years however, someone from the top of the board has won, and only once in the last seven years have we seen a triple-digit odds winner. With that in mind, we should accept that anything can happen, but not get too caught up in trying to chase the Martin Laird or Rod Pampling-type winners.

Shriners Children's Open Betting Trends, Correlating Courses

Let's see what we have learned from past events here since 2014. Are there any trends that will point to a winner here at the Shriners Children's Open, or are we kept in the dark about what a potential winner might look like?

Winning Experience Important - 12 of the last 12 winners had won a tournament as a professional before winning here at the Shriners Children's Open. Ben Martin, Smylie Kaufman, and Patrick Cantlay all got their first PGA Tour win here, but they had all won at least once on the Korn Ferry Tour before winning here. 9 of the 12 winners here had 2+ professional wins before winning the Shriners.

Course Experience a Plus - Course form is a huge plus here, with 9 of the last 12 winners having played here at least once before winning. Cantlay, Kaufman, and Tom Kim all won here on debut, but the other winners had all had a previous look. Kevin Na and Martin Laird were repeat winners, as was Tom Kim in 2023. Webb Simpson had finished 4th here before winning, while Ryan Moore and Bryson DeChambeau also had top 10 finishes to their name, both finishing 7th at the course prior to their wins. Sungjae Im had finished 13th and Rod Pampling had a 16th place finish to his name here, so clearly a look, and a good one at that is quite important. Ben Martin is the only winner here over the past 12 years to win having played the course before, but not made a cut.

Young Man's Course? - 9 of the last 12 winners of this event were aged 30 or younger when winning the tournament. That is Tom Kim twice and Sungae Im once. Smylie Kaufman was 23, Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay were both 25, and Ryan Moore, Webb Simpson, and Ben Martin were still under 30. Rod Pampling was 47, to give an example from the other extreme, while Kevin Na and Martin Laird were in their late 30s. Recent history suggests the younger players are more likely to win here, so it is worth keeping that in mind.

Winners Can Overcome Middling Current Form - You do not need to be in the form of your life coming into this event to win. Ben Martin and Kevin Na won here after missing the cut in their previous start, while four of the other winners in this 12-year span had finished T28 or worse the week before. Ryan Moore, Webb Simpson, Smylie Kaufman, and Tom Kim (2023) were all coming in with top 10s on their last start, but it is far from essential.

Correlating Courses: TPC Tracks Worth Closer Inspection

Normally I would break down one course here and give all of the crossover I have seen in recent years, but due to the low-scoring nature of this course, which offers generous fairways and easy putting conditions, there looks to be a whole host of course comps. With that in mind, I think it is better to highlight each course, with one or two clear examples at each.

TPC River Highlands - Travelers Championship

First up is TPC River Highlands, home of the Travelers Championship:

• Tom Kim has two wins at the Shriners and should have won the Travelers this year, losing in a playoff to Scottie Scheffler
• Ryan Moore has won this event and finished 2nd twice at TPC River Highlands
• Kevin Streelman has won the Travelers and also has a runner-up finish at both courses

Bobby Weed redesigned TPC River Highlands seven years after Pete Dye in 1989, and he was also responsible for this week's course in Las Vegas.

TPC Twin Cities - 3M Open

TPC Twin Cities is relatively new to the PGA Tour, but already we have seen it offer clues to this event.

• Two-time course winner and runner-up Martin Laird has also finished 2nd at TPC Twin Cities, albeit a distant 7 strokes behind Lee Hodges
• Matthew Wolff is a highly talented player but is inconsistent. His sole PGA Tour win came in his debut season, at the 3M Open, and he lost out in a play-off here to none other than Martin Laird in 2020. That was the first of two runner-up finishes for Wolff at this course, showing an affinity for this type of layout in a short space of time. He also beat former Shriners Open winner, Bryson DeChambeau to win that 3M Open.

TPC Deere Run - John Deere Classic

TPC Deere Run is another low-scoring event where players do not need to hit it a country mile to compete and should find themselves in the fairway often, or if not, in far-from-challenging rough.

• Ryan Moore has won both events
• Two-time course winner Kevin Na has a runner-up finish at the John Deere as well as here
• Ben Martin has two top-2 finishes on the PGA Tour, a win here and a 2nd at the John Deere
• Meenwhee Kim never won on the PGA Tour, but finished 2nd here and 3rd at the John Deere. He also had another top 20 at TPC Deere Run to add to the 3rd.

Sedgefield Country Club - Wyndham Championship

Finally, we have a non-TPC course, where there has been plenty of crossover. A lot of it has come in recent years, so there is every reason to look at recent season's results at the Wyndham Championship, for clues here.

• Tom Kim has won both events
• Ryan Moore has won both events
• Sungjae Im won this event and finished 2nd to Tom Kim at the Wyndham
• Kevin Na and Martin Laird are two-time course winners here and have top-4 finishes at the Wyndham, with Na a playoff loser there in 2021.
• JT Poston has two top 4 finishes here and has won the Wyndham

Sleepers and Value Picks for the 2024 Shriners Children's Open

Here are my picks at +4000 and bigger for the 2024 Shriners Children's Open.

J.J Spaun +4500 (FanDuel)

J.J. Spaun has featured a decent amount in this column, and I am going to give him another run out this week after he impressed finishing T25 last week, one week after withdrawing from the Sanderson Farms.

That T25-place finish last week was his fourth top 25 in his last nine starts, with his best two starts in that span coming when 3rd at the Wyndham Championship, and 9th at the 3M Open. Both of these courses have been flagged as correlating courses above, and that's a hugely positive sign for me.

It shows that Spaun is showing up on the courses best suited to his skillset, and this is another one, having finished inside the top 15 in three of his seven starts here. That doesn't tell the whole story though, as he led after rounds 2 and 3 on his second start here before fading on Sunday, and he's shot multiple low rounds here since.

Spaun ended the 2024 season with a five-event stretch where he ranked 12 or better in SG Approach, and in his two made cuts since he has ranked 27th and 25th in that category, so he's hitting his irons well. A blip at the Sanderson Farms is not enough to put me off Spaun, who looks good value in this field.

Matti Schmid +5000 (BetMGM)

12th and 20th at the 3M Open and 22nd at the Wyndham Championship, Germany's, Matti Schmid has shown an ability to challenge at these low-scoring events, and he looks to be coming into some good form at the right time for this event.

Schmid has made 12 of his last 13 cuts, dating back to the KLM Open on the DP World Tour, back in June. In that time, he has finished T15 at the KLM, T12 at the 3M Open, 17th at the Omega European Masters, and in back-to-back weeks on the PGA Tour has finished T16 at the Sanderson Farms and 5th at the Black Desert Championship.

As an emerging talent, this sort of form should not be overlooked as Schmid looks to fill an enormous amount of potential, with a win here in Las Vegas.

He ended last week with a 62 and now makes the short trip to a course he finished 26th at on debut last year, as he opened with a 65 and closed with a 63. Clearly, he enjoyed his first time here in 2023, and now that he arrives in superior form, he can play well all week, not just for two rounds this time.

Schmid ranks 30th in Birdie Average over the past three months, averaging 4.68 birdies per round in that time. He will need to make more this week, but no one has played more rounds than him during this span and made more birdies. His 135 birdies over the past three months are 7 more than Rico Hoey, his next nearest challenger. He also averages a score of 69.00 despite playing the most rounds over the past three months.

He's scoring well, has played well on similar tests, and will enjoy the extra room off the tee this week. Schmid makes a lot of sense here in Vegas, where he's the right age and profile to break through.

Patton Kizzire +6600 (bet365)

Full transparency, this is a bet placed out of fear, as I don't know quite what I would do if he won this week and I wasn't on.

For the past two weeks, I have talked up Patton Kizzire's chances of winning soon after his Procore Championship win, because that is simply what he does. Since his win at the Procore, he has finished 11th at the Sanderson Farms and 43rd last week, but shooting two rounds of 66 in the process.

The reasoning is the same again this week, as it has been the past two times I have put him up. When he won on the Korn Ferry Tour for the first time in 2015, he played two more events and won again. In 2017, he picked up his first PGA Tour win, and three starts later he won again, this time with a larger gap, due to the December break.

That means he has twice in four starts on two separate occasions, and if that trend is going to continue, it will happen this week. Sure, trends are nonsense, but he's playing well enough to justify the selection anyway, and his course form appeals as well.

Kizzire finished 2nd here on debut and backed that up with a 4th place finish two years later, with a missed cut in between. He opened with a 65 and closed with a 63 to finish 2nd on debut, and two years later it was rounds of 66 and 64 that led to a strong finish. Since then, his best finish is a T24, but his form and that bonkers trend is too much for me to ignore at +6600.

I wonder if Patton Kizzire even knows he's meant to win this week... Hopefully, fate slaps him in the face and reminds him.

Daniel Berger +8000 (FanDuel)

Daniel Berger is either a super high-end talent, who is at the start of his journey back to golf stardom, or at the very least, he's a player who has reached #12 in the World Rankings, won 4 times on the PGA Tour, and has a top-12 finish in every major.

Sure, his best might be behind him already, at just 31 years of age, but it's easy to forget just how long Berger was out of the game with back injuries, so I am going to cut him some slack.

Berger missed 19 months of golf, with a T39 finish at the American Express this year, his first start since missing the cut at the 2022 U.S. Open. That is a long time to be out of golf, and he had plenty of rust to shrug off, but it looks like he might be doing that gradually.

This year, Berger has already finished T28 at the WM Phoenix Open, T13 at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, and perhaps most impressively T21 in his major start for two years. It is his last two efforts though that have caught the eye, as he finished 7th at the Sanderson Farms Championship, where he led the field in SG Off the Tee, and 35th last week, where he shot back-to-back rounds of 65 on Friday and Saturday.

Berger struck it really nicely on Friday and Saturday last week, ranking 9th and 14th for SG Tee to Green respectively, and the former Rookie of the Year can complete his return from victory with a win here this week. Ranking 20th in Birdie Average over the past three months, it is clear Berger has found his scoring touch again and that's a huge sign.

Sure, he might still have time to go in this recovery, and perhaps he will never get back to the player he once was, such are his injuries, and the advancement in the game in his absence, but at +8000, double the price he was last week, I think he is worth chancing.

In his most recent start here, Berger finished 18th and was better placed after the opening two rounds.