Bob Weeks Picks Six: Dell Technologies Match Play

TSN Senior Reporter

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It’s match play time, that one occasion during the PGA Tour calendar when things shift away from counting strokes to taking on your opponent, mano a mano. The players are seeded and placed into brackets, so you’d think it would be easy to make picks. However, the favourites haven’t got a great track record at this tournament, at least not lately. Billy Horschel was ranked 32nd last year and went on to win. In 2019, Kevin Kisner started as the 48th seed and captured the title. That’s what match play can do and upsets happen more often than not. Here’s how things work this week: There are 64 players, slotted into 16 pods with four players in each. There’s a round-robin in each pod with the top player advancing to the single-knockout portion, leading to a champion. Here are some selections that may end up being the king of the match.

Justin Thomas +1200

Thomas doesn’t necessarily have the best record here. He made it to the semifinals in 2018 before losing to Bubba Watson and failed to make it out of group play on his four other appearances. But he has been playing very well of late with eight of his last nine starts inside the top 20. He was third at Valspar last week and good play translates no matter what the format. He’s due to win sooner or later.  Group: Kevin Kisner, Marc Leishman, Luke List

Dustin Johnson +2000

Johnson won this event in 2017 but has been rather flat since then. So far this year, he’s only played four times on the PGA Tour, so it seems like he’s just getting warmed up. At the Players Championship, he found something in his game in the last round with the course-record-tying 63. And let’s not forget his record in match play, at least in the Ryder Cup. Last fall he