Biltmore Championship Asheville Betting Preview: Who to Target as Fall Season Kicks Off?

If the United States Presidents Cup team blitzes its way to another victory over the International team next week, we’ll barely remember the fact that most of the roster hadn’t played competitively since the PGA Tour playoffs.

But… if the Americans finally lose for the first time in nearly three decades, you’d better believe there will be some Monday morning quarterbacking over the decision of all but two players to skip this week’s inaugural Biltmore Championship Asheville, the first of eight Fall Series events.

Only Presidents Cup rookies Jackson Koivun and Jacob Bridgeman are competing from U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker’s roster – and to no surprise, those two have the shortest odds on the board, at +1400 and +1800, respectively.

Meanwhile, five players from Geoff Ogilvy’s squad – all captain’s picks, coincidentally – are in this week’s field (with a few others playing the BMW PGA Championship), which certainly isn’t enough to tip any scales, but might serve as an explanation if those specific players start a little stronger at Medinah next week.

First up, though, is the first-ever PGA Tour event at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, a 7,249-yard par-71 Jack Nicklaus design which opened in 2005 and features four par-5s and five par-3s on bentgrass greens at over 2,000 feet of elevation.

Those numbers alone have me looking at better ball-strikers and wedge players this week, especially those who tend to have success on Bermuda putting surfaces.

Let’s start with a player who enjoyed a way better regular season than most observers realize. As I often say, the greatest barometer of performance is SG: Total, which literally tells us how each player has performed against all of his peers.

As evidence, the top-10 on this list looks exactly as you might think: Scottie Scheffler, Matt Fitzpatrick, Rory McIlroy, Ludvig Aberg, Si Woo Kim, Tommy Fleetwood, Wyndham Clark, Chris Gotterup, Collin Morikawa and Patrick Cantlay. There isn’t a surprising name amongst them.

Right below that top-10, though, finishing at No. 12 – ahead of the likes of Sam Burns, Cameron Young, Russell Henley, Viktor Hovland and Hideki Matsuyama – was Doug Ghim (+2800), who didn’t have any top-fives, only one top-10 in an individual event and didn’t make the FedEx Cup playoffs. Even so, I can’t look past the stats of a guy who was eighth in SG: Tee to Green and whose notoriously balky putter was only a notch below the PGA Tour average this season. I think he wins somewhere in the next 12 months and against this type of field in a fall event would probably make the most sense.

Anytime we’re looking at iron play, Corey Conners (+3000) should draw some interest. His iron game was largely very good over the last two months of the season and while his win equity might not correlate to such a short outright price, I do like him for top-10 type props and matchups this week.

For an outright bet, I’d rather get an extra 10 points in that market on Jackson Suber (+4000), who was similarly proficient with his irons this season. He ranked 23rd in approach play and while there remain some consistency issues, he’s proven his ceiling can be very high when he’s got it going.

On a course which should play fairly short by PGA Tour standards, I like the idea of a Ben Kohles (+5000) investment. He’s one of the shortest off the tee, but deadly accurate and has a very strong iron game when he’s swinging it well.

Kevin Roy (+5000) is a better-than-advertised all-around player who’s finished T-3 and T-19 in his last two trips to the Carolinas. If you don’t want to get too bogged down with outrights in this mid-tier section, he’s another who might make for a better floor play than ceiling at this one.

Last year, it looked like Rico Hoey (+6000) was starting to figure some things out toward the end of the regular season, then heated up with the long putter in the fall to the tune of four top-10s and six top-25s in seven starts. I like the idea of banking on him to get hot again this fall, especially after a pair of top-25s to close his regular season.

Just a few years ago, I would’ve put Max Greyserman (+6600) in the same category as Ben Griffin, Jacob Bridgeman and Ryan Gerard – all good-but-not-great college players who worked their way through the developmental tours to reach the big leagues. While those others have maintained their upward trajectories, Greyserman suffered through a disappointing campaign, as his lone top-10 was a T-9 at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. Even so, I can’t overlook the value here on a player who certainly has the talent.

A triple-digit price on Lucas Glover (+12500) in the Carolinas against this field? That’s pretty much an auto-click at this number.

Let’s try another boom-or-bust kind of guy in Austin Smotherman (+15000), who is a very good iron player, but might need a Hoey-like resurgence with the flatstick to contend in some fall events.

There’s no telling when Davis Riley (+15000) is going to have one of his patented out-of-nowhere title contentions, but the ceiling is there if this is somehow one of those weeks.

And finally, Troy Merritt (+50000) was playing some nice golf earlier this summer and while he’s cooled off in recent Korn Ferry starts, if you’re looking for a massive triple-digit lottery ticket with just an ounce of win equity, he’d be my choice.