Andrew's Pinnacle Bank Championship (KFT) Preview

As I’m away in the leadup to this week’s events, the preview is going to be run without any review of the Utah Championship, and I’ll pick up any highlights on my return. I’ll also be late to add selections but have given some indication of the sorts of players I’ll be looking to back once the market (and previous week’s results) are available. Let’s get into it.

The Tournament

The KFT circus travels back to Omaha, to take in the Pinnacle Bank Championship at Omaha, as it has every year since 2017. Each of those events has been held at The Club at Indian Creek, which has an idiotic name and very little about it which is memorable. I didn’t cover this event last year, when Christo Lamprecht won, adding another bomber to a roll of honour that includes Kris Ventura and Alejandro Tosti, but also comparatively modest strikers like Matt McCarty and Sam Ryder. In truth, it isn’t a particularly easy list of winners to categorise, nor have they gone on to be unusually successful following these wins.

That partly reflects the course, which is certainly long at around 7,500 yards for a par-71 – this is a course where they play with tee positions, so the official yardage varies by the year, and the practical yardage by the day – but is reasonably straightforward.  If you’re not long, you’ll need to be handy with your mid-irons but granted wide fairways and relatively forgiving greens that is a viable approach. There are 27 holes on the site, all designed by Frank Hummell in the early 1990's, and this isn’t a highly regarded course if you believe the architecture nerds. Whilst there’s a couple of small lakes, water isn’t a huge factor, and this is a flat, sheltered and suburban course. 

I think that total driving (if you’re old-fashioned) and good approach play are critical here, and I’m going to be focusing on players with a good record here, experience playing in the Midwest, and those who are playing well tee to green in the build-up to the event.

The Selections

There’s an unsurprising cross-over between total driving excellence and high performance in the points list, and the likes of Blades Brown, Cole Sherwood and Carson Young who feature prominently in both lists will be high on my list. Sherwood has missed a cut here and finished 29^th, whilst Young was 19^th in 2022 on his sole appearance. They are unlikely to be missed by the bookies, and something similar can be said for my beloved PGA Tour U graduates, led by big Tommy Morrison. I’ll be keeping an eye on the Utah performance of Logan McAllister who has missed the cut twice here but was fifth before that when in better form, and he looked good for a while (5-2-21 in June) before missing three cuts. His game suits this place. 

I can’t see me concluding that there’s a likelier winner than Blades Brown but whether he’s value remains to be seen – for all his extraordinary talent he is yet (at the time of writing) to win as a professional and he’ll almost certainly be a win-only price. I’ll be back with more.

The Betting Card

(all selections placed with e/w)

• Carson Young (33/1 - Bet365)

• Alistair Doherty (50/1 - Bet365)

• Barend Botha (55/1 - Bet365)