Horses for Courses: Look for Collin Morikawa to start quickly at East Lake

The TOUR Championship is here, which means we have reached the final leg in the race for the FedExCup.

Plenty of excitement surrounds East Lake Golf Club as a 30-man field gets set to begin play on Thursday. The FedExCup will be decided after a long and entertaining year, and this could be one of the most intriguing finishes we have seen in a while. There are several players who can win the TOUR Championship, and a few could strengthen their Player of the Year case with a victory this week.

The Playoffs field has been cut from 50 players to 30, and this group is absolutely stacked. What I like most is how fair the odds board feels. You can make a legitimate case that a golfer sitting around +6000 has a better chance than the price suggests, especially compared to some players in the +1800 range.

As bettors, that is exactly what we want. Legitimate contenders are available deeper down the board, giving us an opportunity to cash bigger tickets without losing value.

East Lake Golf Club is nothing new to us. The Donald Ross design is a long par 70 measuring approximately 7,440 yards. It is a driver-heavy golf course with Zoysia fairways and Bermuda grass rough that can reach roughly 3.5 inches, creating a pretty significant penalty for missing fairways.

We have also seen different styles of golfers succeed here. Rory McIlroy has overpowered East Lake, while more positional players have found success as well. That balance is key. I am not automatically running toward accuracy simply because the rough is thick. The course is long. A long driver with a good week off the tee is more dangerous than a positional player.

What I really love about East Lake is how much it rewards quality tee-to-green play. The greens are not massive like we saw last week, but they are not particularly small either, averaging roughly 6,200 square feet. Putting is important, as always, but I don't view this as a course where you need to be one of the best putters in the field to contend.

For me, this week starts with tee-to-green play.

I am using the last 24 rounds. You could tighten the sample to 12, but 24 feels like the sweet spot. It gives us several tournaments across different course types while remaining recent enough to identify which players are currently playing their best golf.

Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, last 24 rounds (Data via BetspertsGolf)

• 1. Scottie Scheffler
• 2. Hideki Matsuyama
• 3. Patrick Cantlay
• 4. Cameron Young
• 5. Tom Kim
• 6. Sam Burns

Patrick Cantlay: Top 10 Finish (+110) | Top 5 Finish (+300)

Are we finally getting close to another Patrick Cantlay (+1800) win?

It certainly feels like it.

Cantlay has not won on the PGA TOUR in more than four years, but East Lake has consistently brought out some of his best golf. He won the TOUR Championship in 2021 and has continued to pile up quality finishes here since.

The course makes sense for him. Cantlay is accurate without sacrificing much distance, and his numbers have historically been better on longer golf courses. He does not need to overpower East Lake, but he has enough length to make a difference.

More importantly, his recent form has been excellent. Cantlay finished T8 at the Rocket Classic, T12 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, and runner-up at the BMW Championship. His approach play has been especially strong.

The concern is the putter, but that worries me less at East Lake than it would at some other courses. I believe Cantlay can lose a little on the greens and still beat 20 players in this field, which makes the top-10 market attractive. Obviously, we need a little more cooperation from the putter to cash the top-five ticket, but I am comfortable getting exposure to Cantlay in placement markets and DFS this week.

I love using course history and comparable courses, but I rarely make either element a major part of my model without a meaningful sample.

East Lake is different.

Not only do we have years of data, but there is something unique about playing this golf course at the end of the season with the FedExCup on the line. I would rather isolate East Lake performance than lump it together with every Donald Ross design on TOUR. Playing the Rocket Classic in the middle of the summer is not the same as arriving at East Lake with an entire season riding on four rounds.

These six players listed below have gained the most strokes at East Lake over the last five years. Keep in mind that not every player has made five appearances, so the sample sizes are not identical. That I am willing to forgive. They are:

• 1. Xander Schauffele
• 2. Viktor Hovland
• 3. Russell Henley
• 4. Wyndham Clark
• 5. Tommy Fleetwood
• 6. Patrick Cantlay

Best value on the board

Collin Morikawa: First Round Leader (+2000) | First Round Top 5, ties included ( +280)

We spend a lot of time warning people against drawing major conclusions from tiny samples. Anyone who has spent enough time buried in golf data knows five rounds of something does not suddenly make it a fact.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I am absolutely going to use the sample here because it supports my Collin Morikawa (+2000) agenda.

Morikawa has been outstanding in opening rounds at East Lake. He ranks second in this field in first-round Strokes Gained: Total at the course, first in approach and second in putting. He was the first-round leader in 2023, finished T3 after the opening round last year and T2 the year before that.

The full tournament East Lake sample is encouraging, too. Morikawa has consistently gained on approach, hits plenty of fairways and owns one of the better tee-to-green data profiles at this course.

His recent form has been more of a mixed bag. He finished solo third at the Travelers Championship while gaining throughout the bag, then struggled with his driver and putter at the FedEx St. Jude Championship despite gaining on approach. The following week, he was back to gaining across the board.

That inconsistency makes me less interested in backing him over four rounds, but it also highlights why the first-round market is appealing.

Even during Morikawa's poor tournaments, he has continued to produce at least one round where he spikes. Before his injury, he was routinely one of the fastest starters on TOUR. We have not consistently seen that version of Morikawa since, but he looks healthier now and appears to be swinging without restriction.

At +2000 to lead after Round 1 and +280 to finish inside the first-round top five, I am willing to bet that one of those strong Morikawa rounds comes Thursday.

Odds sourced via DraftKings. For resources to overcome a gambling problem, call or text 1-800-MY-RESET today.