In this weekly feature, we will take a closer look at the upcoming PGA Tour event to see what the best outright winner values are on the board and also analyze some of our other favorite golf props and DFS PGA picks for Rounds 2-4.
Early in the week, our top winner plays and analysis will be posted, and we’ll then check in with our favorite selections for Round 2, Round 3 and Round 4. Let’s see if we can pick some winners!
Golf Props Today – Outright Winner & Round 2/3/4 Picks
Every week, we look at our top outright winner picks for the upcoming tournament.
Outright Winner Picks – Truist Championship
This week’s PGA Tour stop is at a brand new course in Philadelphia.
The host this week is the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon course. The layout is an uber-classic turn-of-the-century A.W. Tillinghast remodel job that has hosted some big senior events in modern times.
This is an absolute classic old-world track that is hosting the event as a one-off replacement for Quail Hollow, which has the PGA Championship next week.
What does all this mean for handicapping purposes? Well the truth is, it’s hard to say. We don’t have any hard data on the course, and datagolf isn’t making and adjustments based on course fit or history, which are so reliable that it feels like cheating.
We can, however, make some very educated guesses.
The course plays quite short for such a powerful field – 7100 and change … and combine that with the fact that the redesign has opened it up quite a bit with large fairways and the greens are actually a little above average size.
The main defense, however, are nasty nasty bentgrass greens that will be rolling like glass.
A lot of prognosticators seem to think this will lend itself to strong putters, but actually extremely difficult putting scenarios – as well as greens where placement on the correct tier is paramount – still lends itself to not necessarily the best putters but “the best putter amongst the best ball strikers” …
Overall in this situation, we have to lean on overall value. My final take is that in looking at the actual layout, there’s a chance for a significant advantage for anyone who can carry ALL the fairway bunkering at 300+ yards which is an extremely short list. And on the flip side it’s an opportunity for even the shortest hitters to still have a lot of scoring clubs in at 7100 yards.
At the end of the day, it looks like a great course that will allow multiple styles to contend, but Rory McIlroy definitely has a chance to gain a huge advantage here and run away with it.
That said, his number is just too small and it’s an easy fade based on the odds, especially since so many of the shorter hitters are not “eliminated” by the length of the course.
That makes the “alt-chalk” Colin Morikawa who is clearly the second best player in this field, and is generally lined as such at around 14-1, but he’s clearly head and shoulders above the pack of guys near him at 16-1.
Colin has struggled lately with his short game, and missed the cut at the team event (which is kind of a joke event) … meanwhile he is putting the ball from tee to green as well as he ever has. This makes an ideal situation for value, since short game always waxes and wanes and when the long game is firing on all cylinders that is when it is time to strike. A few relatively meaningless recent results take the edge off his prospects, and FOR THE MONEY he’s a better play than McIlroy at 14-1.
Aaron Rai continues to be featured here, and while his prowess as an accuracy-king off the tee doesn’t appear to be super beneficial here, it’s still an opportunity for him to keep his emergent form at a place where he can still score when he’s the shortest guy in the group.
He’s just an overall value play at 65-1 on FanDuel as this line is lagging behind the rest of the market, and he’s just not appreciated for his breakout enough by Vegas and the public.
The last is another old standby in Gary Woodland. I’m not afraid to say “a poor man’s McIlroy” in this situation. As he’s got me of the other small handful of guys in the field who could make a dent by really overpowering this course in some spots. The difference is he’s coming in at an astonishing 200-1 which is pretty juicy for a guy with four straight made cuts including a 2nd place recently.
Woodland is still struggling with his chipping post-surgery, but you won’t find more upside in anyone anywhere near those odds. His stats are ranked by one bad performance as he’s steadily been gaining over a stroke per round in approach+driving combined, and mixing in some really impactful putting performances, which is a great recipe for a dark horse here.
Best Bets:
Collin Morikawa +1400
Aaron Rai +6500
Gary Woodland +20000
PGA DFS Picks – Truist Championship
Each week we take a look at our favorite individual round DFS PGA picks and golf props for Rounds 2, 3 and 4 on sites like Underdog and Sleeper.
Coming soon!
Check back later.
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How To Bet On PGA – Golf Props & DFS Tips
Betting on golf is in many ways a completely different animal than normal head-to-head sports betting. However, fundamentally it is the same baseline proposition: can we find expected value against the value offered by the marketplace?
The situation is skewed however because in golf win betting we are often dealing with tournament results and not head-to-head results, which give us tantalizing payouts and maddening near-misses on odds that are dozens to hundreds of times the multipliers of most other sports.
Something to keep in mind: just like in real tournament golf, patience and discipline and belief in your process are key, and one big event can change your entire season.
So, how do we find expected value in golf?
The Importance Of Data
Really simply, we want to find golfers who have a chance of playing better than it seems they are playing. Datagolf.com is by far the pre-eminent resource for this in the industry, but the fact is their numbers are completely public and the Vegas lines immediately tail them. Buying a Data Golf subscription alone and just playing their numbers alone will NOT make you profitable. The advanced analytics are available to everyone, including oddsmakers.
The key is learning to understand why the DG numbers are what they are, and how we can dig into the details to find trends that are actionable. DG uses a strict formula to combine past results and recent results to create a projection, and it is the best overall formula anyone has ever made, but what we want to look for are golfers who can make a case that they don’t fit the exact model, and have value that isn’t being captured by the Data Golf projections.
So in layman’s terms, here are some really great ways you can find potential value in a golf tournament field:
Recent Form
Golfers who have a track record of playing very well, but have had some bad results lately that we expect them to bounce back from (if recent poor results are just due to poor putting alone, this is ideal, as putting is by far the most variable category in golf)
Young golfers whose true value is still increasing every week and hasn’t been captured properly by the modeling timelines that are used by Vegas and Datagolf, as well as being slow to catch the public’s eye
Golfers who have been playing extraordinarily well lately, but historically aren’t that good, are not well captured by Vegas models. For example a golfer having a “breakout” year can be slow to pop in the industry models. This is an especially good situation if we can tie this performance increase to something tangible, such as a swing coach change, an offseason increase in driving distance, or another technique change or injury comeback situation.
In these cases, we want to put particular emphasis on driving and iron play, as these are less likely to be the result of random fluctuations in performance.
Course Fit
The last angle that can sometimes be used to get an edge is extreme course-fit outlier situations. The thing about mathematical models is that they can be weak in truly capturing extreme outliers.
On the PGA Tour, course fit week-to-week is much talked about and a very entertaining aspect of the game for fans and commentators, but it is generally very well accounted for by Vegas, and most tend to over-value these adjustments.
OVERALL FORM AND RATING IS ALWAYS MORE IMPORTANT THAN COURSE-FIT — a good fit for the course should always just be the icing on the cake for a good play.
One thing to look out for is the really extreme length outliers – the very longest and very shortest few courses each season, that truly limit a portion of the field from competing with their best weapons.
This happens in just a few events per year, but it does happen, and there you can find value in a true “specialist” in the field, such as guys who make their career through putting and putting alone, or an absolutely wild bomber who doesn’t gain many strokes through the rest of the bag.