Find Me a 100 Winner: Past champ worth chancing at the Texas Open

Steven Rawlings
28 March 2023
4 min read

Kevin Chappell - fancied to contend again in Texas

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With the US Masters a little over a week away, our man's picked out a trio of outsiders to trade at the Valero Texas Open...

Steve has three long-shots from the Betfair Exchange
Hot-putting Englishman one of three picks
Read my Valero Texas Open preview here

As attention starts to turn towards Augusta, to the first major of the year - the US Masters - and with no DP World Tour action, we have only one event to concentrate on this week - the Valero Texas Open.

As highlighted in the preview, outsiders have a decent record, with two of the last three winners being matched at odds in excess of 400.0399/1 before the off, so it's a great tournament to get stuck into and the first of my two picks is a very obvious one...

Course correlations point to Patton

Form at Waialae, the home of the Sony Open, and at Mayakoba, the home of the now defunct World Wide Technology Championship, correlates very nicely with this week's venue - the Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio - so Patton Kizzire makes for a very straightforward selection given that's where he's picked up his two PGA Tour wins to date.

Another course that appears to correlate somewhat is Silverado - the venue for the Fortinet Championship.

San Antonio winners, Brendon Steele and Jimmy Walker have won at both venues, the 2018 Fortinet winner, Kevin Tway, has finished third here, and the 2014 Valero Texas Open champ, Steven Bowditch, finishing runner-up at Silverado in the same year.

Kizzire led the 2016 edition of the Fortinet with a round to before finishing runner-up to Steele so with all that correlating course form, it's hardly surprising that he finished ninth here on debut two years ago.

Patton Kizzire at the Byron Nelson.jpg

Having arrived in only modest form 12 months ago, with 2022 figures reading 42-22-MC-10-61-32-22-33, Kizzire missed the cut and that was the start of a poor run that only stopped when he got back to Mexico and finished 10th in the World Wide Technology Championship, so I'm happy to give him a go again this year given he appears in better form.

He finished down the field at the Players Championship before finishing 10th in the Valspar Championship last time out but he's putted nicely on both occasions, ranking 12th and 16th for Strokes Gained Putting.

He's far from a consistent performer but the venue suits and I was happy to take 130.0129/1

Back 2u Patton Kizzire @ 130.0129/1
Place order to lay 10u @ 10.09/1 & 10u @ 2.01/1

Past champ worth chancing

After a stellar year in 2016, when he finished second at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship, and third in the WGC Bridgestone Invitational, before losing a playoff at the Tour Championship, Kevin Chappell won his one and only PGA Tour title here in 2017 - birdying the 72nd hole to beat Brooks Koepka by a stroke.

That looked like being a springboard for better things to come but after a sixth placed finish at the Open Championship in 2018, he suffered a back injury that required surgery and he's not really sparked since.

It looked like he was going to pick up from where he left off when he fired a 59 in round two of the Greenbrier Classic soon after returning to action in 2019 but he went on to finish 47th and his 13th place finish at the Honda Classic last year his highest finish since.

It's been a tough road back for Chappell but he may just be getting there given he's made his last three cuts - finishing 29th at the Honda Classic, 15th in the Puerto Rico Open and 16th in the Corales Puntacana Championship last week. Prior to that, he'd missed nine of his last ten cuts so there are definitely signs of improvement.

In addition to his victory here in 2017, Chappell finished second here to Steele in 2011 and fourth in 2016. And he even finished 18th 12 months ago so if he's ever going to return to the winner's circle, this is the most likely place.

I've taken a small chance at 240.0239/1 and I was happy to chance him at 14/1 for a top-ten finish with the Sportsbook.

Back 1u Kevin Chappell @ 240.0239/1
Place order to lay 10u @ 10.09/1 & 10u @ 2.01/1
Back 1u Kevin Chappell Top-10 @ 14/1 (Betfair Sportsbook)

Trust Taylor to contend again

My third and final pick is 30-year-old Englishman, Ben Taylor, who graduated from the Korn Ferry Tour last year.

Ben Taylor at the Valspar.jpg

Taylor hit the ground running with a third place finish in the Houston Open back in November and he's added two more top-fives since - at the aforementioned Sony Open and the Honda Classic.

The last three winners of this event have topped the Putting Average stats for the week so the fact that Taylor currently ranks sixth for Strokes Gained Putting and 11th for Total Putting on the PGA Tour bodes well.

He missed the cut here on the Korn Ferry Tour back in 2020 but he was in very poor form at the time.

Back 1u Ben Taylor @ 250.0249/1
Place order to lay 10u @ 10.09/1 & 10u @ 2.01/1
Back 1u Ben Taylor Top-10 @ 14.013/1

*You can follow me on Twitter @SteveThePunter