Golf picks: The Tour Championship predictions & best bets from Diane Knox Balas

Diane Knox Balas

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Diane Knox Balas loves golf (she’s Scottish, so of course she does) but let’s just say she’s much better at analyzing golf than playing! The same cannot be said for her brother, Russell Knox, who’s a 2-time winner on the PGA Tour and fueled Diane’s initial passion for the sport. A seasoned TV and radio host, Diane has given out 8 outright winners since joining the Pickswise team in April 2022. Her general rule is she has to have three stand-out reasons for each pick and spends her time studying stats, playing form and little nuggets of information from golfers’ lives on Tour. Diane lives in Jacksonville, Florida with her husband Garrett, son Greyson and two English Bulldogs Bowser & Barkley. You can follow her antics on Twitter @KnoxyDiane and Instagram @dianeknoxbalas. For Diane Knox Balas media enquiries, please email contact@pickswise.com.

@KnoxyDiane

East Lake Country Club: What you need to know

East Lake is no walk in the park, that’s for sure. It’s a par-70 that measures just shy of 7,350 yards, so it’s definitely not a short course. Plus, we only have 2 par 5s this week.

Distance off the tee is a bonus around here, the fairways are tricky to hit and ball-striking is key. Picking your place on the green is key to scoring on these Donald Ross greens, and approach play historically is an important stat to look at.

The thing is, however, we have the 30 best players from the season competing so they’re all playing good golf. In that sense, the stats go out the window a little. Plus we have to add in Ryder Cup motivation considering a lot of guys (especially the Americans) are vying for a place on that team.

Having said that, experience around East Lake counts for a lot, and we obviously have to take the starting scores into consideration.

Scheffler’s odds opened at +150, with McIlroy at +350 and Rahm at +850. It’s tricky not to pick Scheffler as the outright favorite, but at +150 I’m going to see how the first round plays out, follow his odds and maybe bet him live.

Knox’s Knockout Tour Championship picks

Viktor Hovland (+550 at PointsBet)

Sitting at No.2 in the standings and starting on 8-under par is last week’s winner of the BMW Championship, Viktor Hovland. With Scheffler and McIlroy ahead of him on the odds board, I’ll add Hovland after some extremely impressive play last week. In fact, Hovland has truly leveled up this season and boasts 2 victories with an additional 6 top-10s. The Norwegian’s off-the-tee stats have been excellent and he’s only been in the negative once this entire season; that came 2 weeks ago in Memphis and he still finished T13. Hovland finished top-20 in all 4 majors, in fact he was 2nd at the PGA Championship, and T3 at The Players. When you add up the aggregate score in all the majors this year, Hovland is second lowest to Scheffler. Hovland could close that 2-stroke gap pretty quickly at East Lake, where he finished 5th in 2021.

Xander Schauffele (+3500 at PointsBet)

It always feels like an oversight to look past Schauffele at East Lake. Need proof? Last year he finished 4th, and shot a 63 in the second round to close the gap at the top. In ’21, he finished 5th and gained almost 3.5 strokes total on the field. In 2020, he shot -15 for the week and shot the lowest score without the handicap system. He finished T2 in the end, but if it had been a normal stroke play event without the staggered scoring, he’d have won by 3 shots. He also finished runner-up here in 2019, and won the Tour Championship in 2017 – however that was before the handicap system came into play, and Justin Thomas was the overall winner of the FedExCup. Anyway, safe to say there’s something about this course that really suits Schauffele’s game. Combine that with his recent form — 11 top-20 finishes in his last 14 starts — and that 7-stroke deficit behind Scheffler seems a little bit smaller.

Keegan Bradley (+17500 at PointsBet)

I’m looking at the Ryder Cup standings for my next pick. Six guys are already locked in, and an additional six will be picked by captain Zach Johnson next week. He has a tough job, because when I look at the standings, it’s difficult to separate at least eight Americans, nine if you want to throw Justin Thomas into the mix. One guy who needs to stand out and put on a strong performance this week is Keegan Bradley. He starts his round on Thursday at -3 so has a huge amount of ground to make up, but has openly said he thinks about making the team every moment he’s awake. It’s all or nothing for Keegan out there, who won the Travelers back in June.

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Tour Championship Prop Bets

Max Homa top-5 (+300 at PointsBet)

I picked Homa as an outright for the BMW last week and he finished T5. I talked about the fact he was trending in the right direction having finished T21-T12-T10-T6 and now T5. He also finished T5 at the Tour Championship last year in his debut appearance at East Lake. Nice odds for continued good play from Homa.

Xander Schauffele top American (+1200 at Bet365)

Let’s say Scheffler’s putter lets him down this week and either McIlroy, Rahm or Hovland lift the FedExCup — who will be top American? I laid out my argument for Schauffele as an outright pick this week, and with his tremendous course history at East Lake, and odds of 12/1, I’ll take this bet all day.

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