The 3M Open Chalb Bomb 2023

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Potential weather advantage angle is in play this week on Thursday. It has been unseasonable dry in Minnesota. Thursday afternoon is going to get extremely hot and dry which should firm up the course. They are also going to be playing in some decent wind gusts in the afternoon as well.

Gary Woodland +100 ($9200) vs. JJ Spaun -120 ($8800)

I was relatively surprised to see this matchup offering posted. Gary is now actually the underdog currently after originally opening up as a -130 favorite in this matchup.Gary has been on a solid run of form, particularly from T2G where some of the statistics are staggering givin that he has only posted 1 top 25 finish in the last 8 weeks. He does however have a solid history at TPC Twin Cities finished 11th in 2021 while Spain has struggled here missing his last 2 cuts at the 3M Open.To be honest, I was pretty surprised that this matchup flipped and the sharp money came in on JJ Spaun. In terms of ownership, they appear to be pretty level this week so if you are willing to trust the matchup bettors, it may be wise to take the savings on Spaun and bank an extra $400 to use elsewhere when building your DFS lineups.

Chez Reavie -155 ($7300) vs. Peter Kuest +129 ($7400)

Chez is a favorite in the TJ Community and apparently in the matchup betting markets as well this week! Believe it or not, Kuest actually opened up as a favorite in this matchup at some books before a steady flow of dollars came strong on Reavie.Kuest has definitely been impressive, posted top 20 finishes in his last 2 starts at the John Deere Classic and Rocket Mortgage. That said, don't discount the form from Chez as he comes into this week with 4 consecutive starts finishing 35th or better.We expect the ownership to be very low on Kuest this week while Chez is potentially going to be the highest owned played in the 7 range this week. Take your stand.

Billy Horschel +105 ($7100) vs. Ben Griffin -125 ($7100)

It's kind of wild to zoom out and analyze the precipitous fall that the former Memorial and Fed Ex Cup Champion in Horschel has been on. Here he is priced at a measly $7100 in a bad field and yet still people have interest in the other players around him.In this instance that is Ben Griffin, who opened up -155 favorite. Not everyone is clearly out on a Horschel week, as matchup bettors have clearly taken a stand here and moved the line pretty substantially.Both players are going to be extremely low owned, but for what it is worth, it looks like Griffin will only be about half the ownership of Horschel here. Griffin saw a nice week at the Scottish after things got shaky in the summer and you have the chance to grab a pretty nice favorite here at around 1-2% owned this week if you like.

*DISCLAIMER: The Chalk Bomb is CHALK for a reason! This is a ballsy call. We're simply giving you 1 player projected to be highly owned that we think could warrant a fade in order to gain leverage in DFS GPP Tournaments. Sack up & fade OR Ignore the play. Well friends...maybe taking a strong stand against Rory McIlroy was not the play! It honestly felt like he was not a proper fit for the golf course and there was a moment in time on Friday that a missed cut was potentially in play. The cream rose on the weekend though. We are ready to move on this week and take a chance at finding a popular player that we believed will be trunk slamming on Friday and taking an early visit to the Mall of America in Minnesota.I'm looking to revert back to a tried and true strategy that has paid off this year by attempting to find a player under $9000 in DFS that is still projected to be one of the highest owned players of the week. This essentially comes down to finding a player where the pendulum has swung too far and is outperforming their baseline standards recently, which has inflated their ownership to the point where they become a pretty easy fade.Let's first take a look to see if any players that are projected to be highly owned have struggled at TPC Twin Cities in past performances. One player in particular has been notably awful here. He played this event in 2020 and last year in 2022, where he lost a total of 9.7 strokes over two years in route to a two missed cuts. In 2020 in particular, this player was in great form coming into this event on the schedule, much like this year. He was priced at $9,400 that year and lost strokes in every category on the board that week.I mentioned that the incoming form over the past few weeks has been solid. The extremely elevated ownership in DFS this week is a direct byproduct of this. So how has he been doing it? Well, the ballstriking numbers have great, but that is not totally abnormal for this player. In fact, he's gained strokes ballstriking in 11 of his last 12 starts. Despite the great and consistent play there, he missed 5 cuts during that span mostly due to his deficiencies around the greens and putting.It's probably no suprise that his recent spike in performance hinges much more on the putter than the ballstriking. This player has gained over 8 strokes putting in his last 3 starts. This is a particular red flag because this is nowhere in the same realm as his career and long term baseline with the putter. I'm always leery of a player who's spike is such a result of the putter when they are NOT a good putter. In his last 20 starts, he's lost strokes putting in 15/20. Red flag city!Sometimes I feel like the stars just align when choosing a player to fade. Zoom out a hair and realize the floor of a missed cut for this player happens quite often. They have played in 19 tournament in 2023 and have missed 10 of those cuts! More than half! So if you are telling me they are going to be owned by nearly 1 in every 5 lineups this week, I think it's not hard to take a stand and go full fade on this particular player. Projected at nearly 20% ownership in DFS at the 3M Open, Lucas Glover, you are the chalk bomb!

If anyone asked me to actually explain, in detail, the taste of a Coca-Cola, I think it would be impossible. Some dude actually slipped on damn banana peel. Why is pink the only color that gets to be "hot"? What if we want a hot blue? I know it was years ago but I still won't forgive the way some of y'all acted over toilet paper.Alright, that’s all I got this week! I hope you enjoy The 3M Open. Stay well, good luck with your lineups and bets, and may your screens be green! Bome!