Sleeper Picks: Charles Schwab Challenge

NOTE: Sleeper Picks first appeared in "The Early Card" newsletter on Tuesday. To get these before everyone else, subscribe and get them straight to your inbox one day ahead. These picks did not appear in Rob’s Power Rankings, but each presents value for the bet specified.

Top 5

Mac Meissner (+1125) ... While these odds for this finish for him at the Charles Schwab Challenge objectively are fair, I was hoping that they’d be much longer, so maybe he’s not a Sleeper after all. Still, he’s worth it and the attention. The Dallas native competed collegiately locally at SMU and recorded the first of his four top-five finishes on the PGA TOUR as a rookie at Colonial Country Club in 2024. After a steady T28 last year, he arrives with a pair of top-10 finishes in his most recent three starts, so he passes the customary checkpoints. Provided that he can again manage his average game off the tee on a course that can expose his weakest link, he could have a field day on approach and on the greens, components on which he’s relied for success.

Top 10

Sam Stevens (+560) ... Because the 29-year-old has proven to be so reliable in the long term, it’s been a natural evolution for us to expect his floor to rise as he puts seasons under his belt. Now in his fourth year as a PGA TOUR member, he’s kept with his cadence of spiking occasionally amid a stable foundation that’s yielded 14 paydays in 15 starts this year. Only two are top 10s – thus these tasty odds – but the more recent was at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, his last appearance on his own ball in a tournament that wasn’t a major or a Signature Event. Sticking with that theme, every time the PGA TOUR visits the Lone Star State, we’re immediately attracted to the guys who cut their teeth in the kinds of climes that he’ll experience this week. He was born in Fort Worth, Texas, but Wichita, Kansas, is his hometown, and he played collegiately at Oklahoma State University. So, while contending at Colonial fulfills our elevated expectation, it’d be a full-circle story of sorts for him, and that can be a valuable bonus as a narrative.

Top 20

Christiaan Bezuidenhout (+265) ... The South African is a green-light special for course-history buffs. With respective finishes of T15, T21, T17 and T16 at Colonial since 2022, he’s feasted on this bubble before and after the renovation. It’s also been a site at which he’s been able to regain form, no doubt due to his experience and success on it. Upon arrival last year and after a pair of early top 20s, he was riding a 2-for-6 skid without a top-40 finish. This year’s form resembles that of his previous three visits with two top 20s in his last four starts, so the trend suggests that he’ll keep this rally rolling. His putting has remained elite, so while that’s a weapon in a shootout, it’s also clutch when par is a solid score on a track that he knows so well.

Odds were sourced at DraftKings.

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