CJ Cup Byron Nelson
TPC Craig Ranch · May 21-24, 2026
TPC Craig Ranch is a putting course, and our model knows it. With 39% of scoring variance here explained by putting — the heaviest putting weight on any card this season — this week rewards hot putters and quietly punishes ball-strikers who can't convert. Wide fairways neutralise the bombers; the flat-stick decides it. This is the kind of week our model does its best work.
TPC Craig Ranch
7,569 yards · Par 71. A Tom Weiskopf design with wide fairways, water in play on several holes, and large bentgrass greens. Driving distance barely matters here — at 17% off-the-tee weight, this is the least driver-dependent stop we model. The player who wins is almost always someone riding a hot putting week and converting a sharp iron week into birdies. Scottie Scheffler ran to 31-under to win here last year, a number that tells you how gettable a soft Craig Ranch can be. Our course-fit read is built from 1,372 rounds — one of our deeper samples. The profile points at a specific archetype: a confident putter who hits enough greens to keep giving himself looks. That is why our value board skews toward mid-priced players with putting upside rather than the household names at the top of the market.
Weather
The Headline Value Pick
Stephan Jaeger — $73
Our win%: 2.5% · Edge: +1.1pp · T10 edge: +5.4pp
Jaeger is the shortest-priced of our genuine value plays, and that matters: it means we can size it like a real position rather than a lottery ticket. His profile fits Craig Ranch cleanly — steady iron play paired with a putter that has trended up — and on a 39%-putting course that combination is exactly what the model is paid to find. At $73 the market is treating him as a body in the field; we have him at roughly double that implied chance, with a +5.4pp edge to crack the top ten.
Weather: A Wet Thursday
Round 1 is the swing factor: an 80% chance of rain Thursday means soft, receptive greens and a course playing without its teeth. Soft conditions amplify the putting premium that already drives our model here — hold a green, roll the right line, and birdies come in bunches. That is good news for putting-led value plays like Jaeger and Mark Hubbard. If the storms hold off until late afternoon (typical for Texas spring), the Thursday morning wave gets the cleanest greens before the field tramples them; the afternoon draw inherits Friday's 20mph gusts on top. One honest caveat: our model does not yet ingest tee-time wave splits, so we treat the draw as a manual overlay rather than a hard input — flag it, don't bet it blind.
The Fades
Scottie Scheffler — $2.85 (35.1% implied)
Our model has Scheffler at 24.7% — a 10.4pp gap to his implied price. He is the rightful favourite: he defends, and he went deep here last year. But 35% to win in a 147-player field is steep pricing for anyone, and it leans on a known blind spot of ours rather than a hard read — our model tends to under-rate elite favourites, especially at the very top of the board. We are not hammering the fade. We are simply pointing the bankroll down-board, where the edges are real.
Jordan Spieth — A Cleaner Fade
Jordan Spieth — $19 (5.1% implied)
This one we are comfortable fading. The market prices Spieth at 5.1%; our model has him at 1.5% — a 3.4x gap built on name recognition more than current form. A course that demands you convert chances is an unforgiving place to back a player whose ball-striking has been streaky. Pass.
Three more names the market likes far more than we do — contender-and-cut-line fades where our model sits well below the board: Sungjae Im (market 1.5%, our 0.6%), Wyndham Clark (1.6%, 0.6%), and Tony Finau (0.8%, 0.3%).
Top H2H Matchup Plays
Christiaan Bezuidenhout over Sungjae Im — +48% EV, our top matchup edge on the card. Our model: Bezuidenhout 70.3%, offered 2.10 (47.6% implied). EV = 0.703 × 2.10 − 1 = +48%. Davis Thompson over Michael Thorbjornsen — +21.8% EV. Our model: Thompson 59.4%, offered 2.05 (48.8% implied). Kevin Roy over Michael Brennan — +21.5% EV. Our model: Roy 62.5%, offered 1.94 (51.5% implied).
Where We Could Be Wrong
We publish the honest version. Our model under-rates elite favourites — Scheffler this week is the textbook case — and at signature events the very top of the board is often sharper than we are. We trust this card more than most because the course-fit sample is deep (1,372 rounds at Craig Ranch) and putting-heavy weeks suit how we estimate skill. Treat the favourites with respect; trust the model most in the mid-priced tier.
The Value Board — The Full 15
Carson Young is back on the board at $301 — he missed at Myrtle Beach but the underlying numbers still flag the edge, and his +7.9pp top-ten edge is the strongest on the card. The pattern across the list is consistent: mid-priced putters the market has rounded down to field-filler. On a track this putting-heavy, that is precisely where the value pools.
Value Picks
| Player | Our Win% | Market $ | Edge | T10 Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mark Hubbard | 1.9% | 196.00 | +1.40pp | +7.70pp |
| Carson Young | 1.6% | 301.00 | +1.30pp | +7.90pp |
| Stephan Jaeger | 2.5% | 73.00 | +1.10pp | +5.40pp |
| Jackson Suber | 1.3% | 326.00 | +0.90pp | +5.00pp |
| Kevin Roy | 1.5% | 151.00 | +0.90pp | +3.80pp |
| David Skinns | 0.9% | 501.00 | +0.70pp | +5.80pp |
| Takumi Kanaya | 1.0% | 351.00 | +0.70pp | +3.70pp |
| Cameron Champ | 1.0% | 276.00 | +0.70pp | +4.80pp |
| Thorbjorn Olesen | 1.4% | 127.00 | +0.60pp | +2.50pp |
| Ben Kohles | 1.1% | 227.00 | +0.60pp | +6.10pp |
| Martin Laird | 0.7% | 1501.00 | +0.60pp | +5.90pp |
| Paul Peterson | 0.7% | 551.00 | +0.50pp | +7.60pp |
| Kevin Yu | 1.1% | 162.00 | +0.50pp | +2.10pp |
| Justin Lower | 0.6% | 751.00 | +0.50pp | +4.10pp |
| Doug Ghim | 1.5% | 102.00 | +0.50pp | +1.80pp |
Methodology: Monte Carlo simulation of the field over 10,000 trials, weighting strokes-gained skill estimates, course-fit, and recent form. Edge = our win% − market-implied%.
SavvyPlays · Built different. Bet smarter. · Model powered by 265,000+ rounds · Not financial advice. Bet responsibly.
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Stats sourced from official league data & partner APIs · Generated 21 May
For informational purposes only · Not gambling advice