00:00Welcome back to Newswire. The memorial has teed off, so we're going to get the very latest on the leaderboard there and talk about the odds this weekend. Very big golf tournament on the PGA Tour. Let's bring in Brady Cannon for the latest there. And, you know, Brady, we're going to take a look at all of the favorites potentially to win. But I got to say, for those people who are watching golf live or going to be tuning in, like this guy, Ben Griffin, is on fire. What the heck? Ben Griffin wins last week. He's winning again?
00:26I mean, this is sort of unprecedented to have somebody come out of nowhere last week and win and then now is leading the field at the memorial, too. And by the way, I don't really know a lot about Ben Griffin. I better start preparing to bet him.
00:39Yeah, it feels like we've let the animal out of the cage. You know, that's a second win for Ben Griffin in the last couple of months. Last week at Colonial, we were actually on him correctly at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the team event, when he and Andrew Novak paired up to each earn their first PGA Tour victory.
01:00That was back in April. And I felt that, you know, once those guys were able to do that, having kind of a wingman, you know, beside them to lean on, that that was going to help them quite a bit when they were, you know, back to the traditional format of playing as a solo entity and getting across the finish line.
01:19And sure enough, that's exactly what Ben Griffin did last week in Fort Worth, Texas, and off to a tremendous start here. Five under par through nine holes, five under through his first nine, setting the course on fire right now.
01:32Now, I don't expect it to hold. He's a very good player, but this is a signature event, Craig. You know, you've got 72 players in the field, the best players in the PGA Tour, and, you know, Scotty Scheffler, Victor Hovland, Colin Morikawa, all these guys are here. Griffin just apparently riding a wave of momentum right now.
01:53Yeah, serious one, too. One of the favorites to win the Memorial right now. He's 11-1 on FanDuel out of nowhere again, two weeks in a row. So these odds have certainly shifted. I'm going to try to update them as we go here.
02:06So this was before tee time at the Memorial, our graphic that we're going to show you here. So Scotty Scheffler was plus 280 to begin, and Xander was 16-1. He's moved up, cut that in half now to 8-1. He's off to a good start.
02:21Colin Morikawa at 16, you see on the board. He's currently at 14. Justin Thomas was 18-1 at tee-off. He's moved back to 22. There's Cantlay at 22, about the same. Fleetwood at 25, about the same there.
02:37So that's kind of where we stand here. I mean, these are all Scotty Scheffler's tournaments to lose at this point, but Xander off to a good start here, so we've got to cut that odds down in half from 16-8.
02:46Yeah, just absolutely amazing. And I almost went to Scotty Scheffler this week, but you look at that price, and he's like, you know, six or seven times Scotty's price is where you have the next guy landing in Xander and Morikawa.
03:02You know, one guy at basically plus 250, plus 280, and then all the way to 16, 17, 18-1. An incredible gap there, and I felt, you know, I can take three guys like a Morikawa and a Fleetwood and a Shane Lowry.
03:15Shane Lowry was 40-1. And is Scotty really, does he really have that much of an advantage?
03:22Now, he's the defending champ, too. Morikawa finishing runner-up to Scheffler last year. So I did not land on Scheffler. Tried to swerve the favorite this week. We'll see how that works out. May not end well.
03:35But I did land on Morikawa, who was basically the second or third choice. Justin Thomas, who's one of the hottest players in the world right now, has finished runner-up a couple times recently, as well as winning at the RBC Heritage the week after the Masters.
03:49And then I took Shane Lowry, as I mentioned, at 40-1, who's off to a great start. He's in second place behind red-hot Ben Griffin right now.
03:59Yeah, Lowry threw nine holes, a few strokes under. Let's get to some of your head-to-head matchups that you like, Brady, for this tournament.
04:06Yeah, you know, we talked about it off-air before we came on. Ricky Fowler off to a great start. And currently, the last time I looked, he was beating Wyndham Clark by six shots.
04:16So I'm liking the way that matchup is unfolding currently. I took Ricky Fowler at minus 115 to beat Wyndham Clark. Fowler's been playing really well as of late and just hasn't been the case for Wyndham Clark.
04:29He's really been struggling for what seems like, you know, maybe a year and a half or so now. And Fowler really starting to find a groove.
04:37This is a course where Fowler's had a lot of success in the past. And I thought it was telling that the oddsmakers were making Ricky Fowler a favorite over Wyndham Clark, a slight favorite, albeit, but I thought that was telling me something.
04:50So I played that one. The other matchup I took was Mackenzie Hughes as a decent-sized underdog to Christian Bezadenhut.
04:59Mackenzie Hughes at plus 115 to Bezadenhut. And I feel that both of those players, very good players, tremendous short games for each of them.
05:07I felt they were basically equal. And if you were going to give me plus 15 with one of them, or plus 115 with one of them, I felt that was a good play.
05:15So those were the two head-to-heads for this week.
05:18All right. So the Memorial this week and, you know, U.S. Open coming up next in a couple of weeks.
05:23But I'm going to end with you, Brady, with something that we have not mentioned in four months.
05:29Football season, Brady. Football season is coming here. We are almost there.
05:34I mean, believe it or not, we're closing in on the preseason. College football starts before you know it.
05:38But, I mean, I think you and I, the last time we discussed any of the contests may have been January.
05:45And so here we are almost in June, starting next week.
05:48So I'm expecting, Brady, for us to having these conversations about your contest shows.
05:54I know that that's coming back. I know Circa made the announcement last week.
05:57There's going to be a bigger prize pool as well for a lot of their contests coming up this year.
06:02Yeah. The contests were really just announced in the last month or so.
06:07The Westgate Superbook made their announcement.
06:10They're introducing a college football contest, which is very exciting,
06:14something this town has not had on a big level that I can ever remember.
06:19$500 entry at the Westgate Superbook.
06:21Picks seven college football games against the spread every week.
06:25They are also introducing a survivor contest, $5,000 entry fee into the Westgate Superbook survivor contest.
06:35And then, of course, Circa.
06:36They come back with more ammo as well.
06:39Over $20 million in guaranteed prizes.
06:42You've got the Circa Million, of course.
06:44You've got Circa Survivor, where I believe they're guaranteeing about $15 million, if I recall.
06:50And then the Grandissimo.
06:52That is what Derek Stephens and crew introduced for this year, a wild survivor contest where they're guaranteeing $1.5 million.
07:01And the entry fee, Craig, I imagine you're going to go for the max two entries, $100,000 per entry to get in for the Circa Grandissimo Survivor Contest.
07:12Exciting football coming up.
07:14I did not know about the college contest.
07:16Yes.
07:17$500, that's it?
07:19Yeah.
07:20I'm feeling like I'm jumping in.
07:22I'm jumping.
07:23Let's do it.
07:24Great to see you.
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