FedEx St. Jude Championship 2024: Course Preview & Rithmm Best Bets

We have reached the 2024 FedEx Cup Playoffs!

First up is the FedEx St. Jude Chamionship, hosted at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee. As it's the first round of the playoffs, this week's event will be a 70-person, no cut event.

Let's dive into my 2024 St. Jude Championship course preview and of course, the best predictions according to my Rithmm model that we'll be following this week.

TPC Southwind CC Course Preview

First things first: Hit the ball in the fairway at TPC Southwind. At just over 7,200 yards, this course doesn't appear overly long from the outsides, but if you miss that fairway, things get plenty longer for you.

TPC Southwind has only been around for 35 years, but it's a classic-looking Ron Prichard design. A tree-lined course that features plenty of water danger, you need to strategize your way around.

Players who tend to fare better in the South are going to have easier times here, as they'll be plenty used to the tiny but speedy Bermudagrass greens and the penal rough.

Since 2003, TPC Southwind has seen 6,166 water balls, the largest number on the PGA Tour. Players are going to have to focus on avoiding compounding mistakes into bigger mistakes, making this a full-strength test for a golfer.

Rithmm Models used for 2024 St. Jude Championship Course Preview

In every Course Preview, we’ll be diving into Rithmm’s proprietary model to help you build the best betting model for that week’s course! Rithmm has its own AI model that it generates based on thousands of sims, but you also might want to build your own model, so that’s what this section is for.

When we get into Rithmm’s modeling aspect, it has five customizable sliders that you can mess around with: Recent Performance, Par 5 Performance, Par 4 Performance, Par 3 Performance, and Course Fit. You can adjust these to your heart’s content, and make it reflect the way you see the important stats.

My model for the 2024 St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind is below:

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Diving into TPC Southwind, and the first thing most people notice is that this is a Par 70 golf course. Naturally, that means that there's only two Par 5s, which vastly decreases their importance in our model.

With that lesser importance on Par 5s, Par 4 scoring comes into play as probably the most important factor we can input into this model. Due to the nature of the course to play more difficult as water and the unpredictable rough comes into play, scrambling for pars is imperative on these holes.

Due to all of the factors that drive up that difficulty factor, players with the best course fit are going to see continued success. That includes players who play well on Bermuda greens with the bouncy Zoysia fairways.

The Par 3s on this course aren't very notable. They're all between 162 and 205 yards, and while the 205-yard 14th hole has consistently played as one of the harder holes on the course, the other three play consistently under par and give up a decent amount of birdies. Most players will try to attack the pin locations and then play to the middle of the green on 14.

Best Betting Predictions for the St. Jude Championship 2024

It’s time to build our Rithmm betting card for this week. We’re going to go into each of my predictions that are based on my custom Rithmm model, and whether I agree or disagree with it.

Top 20: Sahith Theegala +140 (51.3% Rithmm Win Probability)

Theegala has two straight T13 finishes at TPC Southwind, and I do think that he can fit this course, but the driver needs to be working for him, and he has had some struggles with it this summer. He's only had three weeks gaining on the field in driving accuracy in his last eight events, and I'm a bit concerned by his Approach numbers in the last few events as well.

All in all though, +140 is a solid number to give in a field of only 70. Theegala putts well on Bermuda, so let's run with this play.

Top 10: HIDDEN

To view this pick, check out our Rithmm app and input my model!

Top 5: HIDDEN

To view this pick, check out our Rithmm app and input my model!

Outright Winner Predictions for the St. Jude Championship: Ludvig Aberg +2000 (6.2%)

Time for Aberg to finally win on this side of the calendar.

Everything has been lining up for the young Swede to get things done, and we've seen multiple times this season him falter on the weekend with a lead. However, TPC Southwind is not a penal course if you can find the fairway off of the tee, and Aberg ranks near the top in driving accuracy this season. He also ranks first in Total Driving, which can be a cheat code in shortening some of these longer holes.

Aberg is a player that is not going to make a ton of mistakes either around the green, and that has led him to be third in this field in Bogey Avoidance over the last 18 months. With more than half the course sporting bogey rates over 15%, Aberg's ability to navigate under pressure will bea massive asset for him.

It's time for Aberg to win, and I think he gets it done this weekend.

AI Caddie Predictions for Round 1

The AI Caddie is an awesome Rithmm tool that allows you to go hole by hole with any player you choose and it will show you a chart of how likely that player is versus the field to get any score on a hole.

Closing Remarks on 2024 St. Jude Championship Course Preview

With all of the major championships finished, we now move on to the FedEx Cup Playoffs! TPC Southwind has been a perfect spot to begin the FedEx Cup Playoffs each year. I hope that my best bets & course preview gives you all the insights and predictions needed to make informed wagers.

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