The 2018 CJ Cup returns to The Club at Nine Bridges in South Korea for the third tournament of the 2018-19 PGA Tour season. The 78-man field features four players who placed among last year's FedEx Cup top 10, so look for four days of riveting golf starting Wednesday at 6:45 p.m. ET. Justin Thomas, the defending champion, is the Vegas favorite at 6-1 CJ Cup odds, followed closely by PGA Tour Player of the Year Brooks Koepka at 9-1. Before you make any 2018 CJ Cup picks or enter a daily fantasy golf tournament on DraftKings or FanDuel, you'll want to hear what the team at SportsLine has to say.
SportsLine's prediction model, which was built by DFS pro Mike McClure, has nailed four of the past eight majors entering the weekend and called Tiger Woods' deep run in the PGA Championship despite being a 25-1 long shot. The proprietary computer model has also been dead-on for this tournament as well. In fact, it correctly predicted Thomas winning last year's CJ Cup, projecting him to finish on top of the leaderboard from the start. Anyone who has followed the model is up huge.
Now that the 2018 CJ Cup field is locked, SportsLine simulated the event 10,000 times, and the results were surprising.
One huge shocker the model is calling for at the CJ Cup: Louis Oosthuizen, a 33-1 long shot, makes a serious run at the title. He's a target for anyone looking for a huge payday.
Oosthuizen earned a top-five finish in his first start of the season last week at the CIMB Classic. He was red-hot all week, firing four rounds under par on his way to a score of 20 under. And he finished last season ranked inside the top 30 on the PGA Tour in scoring average (70.157), which should allow him to shoot a low score again this week at the 2018 CJ Cup.
Another surprise: Cameron Smith, who finished in third place at this event last year, stumbles big-time this week and finishes outside the top 10.
Smith finished last season with seven top-10 finishes, which included back-to-back top-fives at the first two FedEx Cup Playoff events: the Northern Trust and Dell Technologies Championship. Despite his late surge last season, Smith was 159th on the PGA Tour in greens in regulation percentage (63.67), which will cause him major trouble this week. The bentgrass greens are small, firm and well-protected at Nine Bridges, and the course is also packed with bunkers, thick rough and water hazards. Smith is somebody to completely steer clear of this week in South Korea.
Also, the model says four additional golfers with odds of 20-1 or longer will make a strong run at title. Anyone who backs these underdogs could hit it big.
So who wins the 2018 CJ Cup? And which long shots stun the golfing world? Check out the latest 2018 CJ Cup odds below and visit SportsLine now to see the full CJ Cup projected leaderboard from the model that nailed the winners of four golf majors and called Justin Thomas' win last year.
Justin Thomas 6-1
Brooks Koepka 9-1
Jason Day 14-1
Hideki Matsuyama 14-1
Marc Leishman 14-1
Paul Casey 22-1
Tyrell Hatton 25-1
Billy Horschel 28-1
Cameron Smith 28-1
Gary Woodland 28-1
Xander Schauffele 33-1
Adam Scott 33-1
Louis Oosthuizen 33-1
Byeong Hun An 33-1
Sungjae Im 33-1
Alex Noren 40-1
Emiliano Grillo 40-1
Kyle Stanley 40-1
Ryan Moore 40-1