Andrew's Price Cutter Charity Championship Preview (2025)

If you asked me at the start of the year to name as many events on the KFT as possible, I think I’d do better than most. I think I would probably remember most of them. However, as I’ve said before, some of them are utterly forgettable. After a decent event over in Colorado, the Price Cutter Charity Championship sounds cheap, has lost a bunch of stars to the opposite field event in California, and is total forgettable. Still, there’s some betting opportunities, so let’s get into it.

The Tournament

We’re in Missouri, fact fans. Specifically, Springfield, which puts us fairly close to Oklahoma and Arkansas, and at least means that the course is in the Ozarks and has some elevation changes. Robert Trent Jones Jr designed this, and as such there are plenty of bunkers and there’s a bit of water. For all that, there’s nothing much to worry about here, with straightforward greens, clear approaches, and just 7,115 yards for a regulation par 72.

The wining score has been -25 or better all but two of the last seven years (and never worse than -21) so this is your typical KFT birdie-fest. Driver, wedge, putt and minimise bogeys. There’s a bit of wind about on Sunday and possible some rain during the first couple of rounds but nothing to change the overall mission of going low. Matt McCarty won last year, following Pierceson Coody and David Kocher onto a leaderboard that shows a further problem with this tournament – it isn’t easy to identify a winner.

This is far from a bomber’s paradise though Coody shows that length can really help. Nor have the winners been unusually excellent – for all McCarty’s success, Kocher is hardly a household name and it isn’t typically the classiest leaderboard. You certainly need to be able to putt and decent recent form appears to be extremely helpful, as well as players who’ve gone well in this part of the country. It does seem to be a course where breakout performances can happen.

The Selections

To nobody’s surprise, I’m leading off my team with S.H. Kim, who joins Neal Shipley and Johnny Keefer on the very short list of players who definitely look PGA quality. He didn’t have the best week in the ISCO but he did finish 28th and he’s now back at the right level and back to the state where he won back in May. A putting machine and a classy operator, I expect him to go very close to grabbing another win and joining Austin Smotherman in making his tour card official before July is over.

I’m backing him up with emerging stars, firstly Sandy Scott. Scott was a great amateur in his native Scotland and when playing for Texas Tech (his younger brother, Callum, is one to watch too, and was also a Red Raider, alongside one Ludvig Aberg.) Sandy had a surprisingly slow start to his career, mixing tours (Americas, DPWT, Challenge) in 2023 without massive success, before parlaying a great overall performance without a tournament win on the Americas Tour last year into his KFT card. Well, he’s found his feet this season and is quietly climbing the ranks to 42nd on the order of merit, highlighted by three top 25 performances on his last three starts (third in the Memorial). He can spring a bit of a surprise this week when he, and everyone else, has their eye on Celtic golf by the sea.

Finally, Preston Summerhays is not priced like one of the best amateurs in the world, newly turned professional and ready to make some noise. He’s got the length and the class to make mincemeat of this course and grew up playing golf in hilly conditions and against opponents at a higher standard than he’ll face today. He doesn’t have the stats to qualify (not enough starts) but he’d rank fourth for putting average on the KFT, and is clearly carrying his reputation (bomb and putt machine) from college into this level. Well, what could be better at this venue?

• Seonghyeon (SH) Kim, 25/1, 2pts win only, Unibet.

• Sandy Scott, 110/1, 1pt e/w, ¼ odds 5 places, Bet365.

• Preston Summerhays, 125/1, 1pt e/w, 1/5 odds 6 places, Unibet.

https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/springfield_missouri_usa