The Northern Trust betting tips and preview
Venue: Ridgewood Country Club, Paramus, New Jersey
Date: August 23-26, 2018
Course stats: Par 71; 7,385 yards
Purse: $9 million (£7m)
Defending champion: Dustin Johnson (-13)
TV coverage
Thursday: Sky Sports Golf from 7pm
Friday: Sky Sports Golf from 7pm
Saturday: Sky Sports Golf from 6pm
Sunday: Sky Sports Golf from 5pm
The Northern Trust preview
The top 125 players on the FedEx Cup standings progress to the end-of-season Play-offs, beginning this week in New Jersey at the classical Ridgewood Country Club.
With three season wins apiece, Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas have a commanding lead at the top of the standings with Brooks Koepka trailing in third.
But as we have seen plenty of times before, if you are to mount a challenge for the $10 million prize at the end of the Tour Championship, performance prior to the Play-offs is largely irrelevant.
For the next three events, the winner will receive quadruple the amount of points as they get for regular events, and then the points are reset prior to the Tour Championship.
Tiger Woods – fresh off his runner-up finish at Bellerive – makes his first start in the Play-offs since 2013, while Rory McIlroy has decided to skip this event as will Rickie Fowler who is nursing an oblique injury.
Other than that, all of the big names are in action and we should be set for a terrific week of drama.
The Northern Trust betting tips
Few players in the game are striking the ball better than Billy Horschel (100/1, 6 places) at the moment, and so he has to be included at a triple-figure price.
The American missed the cut at the Canadian Open a few weeks ago, but other than that, he has been playing absolutely beautifully from tee-to-green in recent times.
Last week alone, Horschel ranked second in driving accuracy, sixth in greens in regulation and 10th in driving distance – an 11th place final finish probably did him a disservice.
But as we know, Horschel has good memories of this time of the year. In 2014, he won back-to-back playoff events to go on and win the FedEx Cup.
The name of Stewart Cink (100/1, 7 places) was a surprise inclusion at the PGA Championship two weeks ago, and it certainly wasn’t a fluke.
The former Claret Jug winner has, in truth, been playing some great stuff ever since finishing fourth at the FedEx St Jude Classic in June. Since then, he’s finished runner-up at the Travelers Championship, fourth at Bellerive and three other top-40 finishes.
The 45-year-old ranks sixth on tour in strokes gained: approach and that will come in handy here at Ridgewood where the greens are strongly protected by bunkers.
So you have Keel’s each-way picks, but who does he fancy to lift the trophy on Sunday? Find out his top tip on the next page…
Tom Irwin
Tom is a lifetime golfer, now over 30 years playing the game. 2023 marks 10 years in golf publishing and he is still holding down a + handicap at Alwoodley in Leeds. He has played over 600 golf courses, and has been a member of at least four including his first love Louth, in Lincolnshire. Tom likes unbranded clothing, natural fibres, and pencil bags. Seacroft in Lincolnshire is where it starts and ends.
