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!
Top Offers in The United States
Golf Props Today – Outright Winner & Round 2/3/4 Picks
Every week, we look at our top outright winner picks for the upcoming tournament. We’ll then examine Rounds 2, 3, 4 from a DFS and betting perspective.
PGA DFS Picks – US Open
Here is who we are eyeing for the upcoming round:
Round 2 (Friday, June 3rd)
It was a brutal first day at the US Open, as expected. The course was a challenge for most, but J.J. Spaun showed up in a big way with a -4 round to lead early.
A look at the top five leaders in strokes gained on approach from Round 1 (via DataGolf):
Si Woo Kim (+5.25)
Viktor Hovland (+4.66)
Collin Morikawa (+4.63)
Thomas Detry (+3.60)
Jordan Spieth (+3.57)
Notable poor putting/ballstriking performances:
Si Woo Kim (+7.86 Tee To Green, +5.25 Approach, -1.22 Putting)
Carlos Ortiz (+7.48 Tee To Green, +2.94 Approach, -3.85 Putting)
Collin Morikawa (+7.22 Tee To Green, +4.63 Approach, -2.58 Putting)
Viktor Hovland (+6.68 Tee To Green, +4.66 Approach, -3.04 Putting)
Here’s who we are eyeing for Friday:
Pictured: Bryson DeChambeau’s Round 2 projections on Underdog
DeChambeau did his best to survive the gauntlet on Thursday, shooting +3 while gaining 3.13 strokes tee to green and 2.29 strokes on approach. He lost 1.50 strokes putting.
The second-biggest favorite behind only Scottie Scheffler coming in, we expect DeChambeau to stay in the hunt in Round 2.
Top Pick: LOWER Than 71.5 Strokes
Round 3
Coming soon!
Check back later.
Round 4
Coming soon!
Check back later.
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Outright Winner Picks – US Open
This week the PGA Tour takes a break, and the most hated entity in pro golf, the USGA, takes over the reigns for the US Open at Oakmont.
A fabled US Open venue, Oakmont last hosted in 2016. The story is pretty much the same at all US Opens – they set the course up to be “difficult” in the most uninspired ways possible.
Unlike courses such as Sawgrass or Augusta that have plenty of teeth through genius architecture, what they basically do every year is four things: change the scorecard so two of the par 5’s are now par 4’s, move all the tees all the way back, grow the rough out, and turn the greens up as fast as they can without killing the grass.
This makes the course play way over par. Yawn! Haha. It’s still a relative competition.
The most talked about story this year is the “special” rough at Oakmont. It is long even by USGA standards, and apparently are some experimental strains to make it as thick as possible.
When the US Open was here before, which is what datagolf’s course fit metrics are based on, the course played very interestingly, fairly level between accuracy and distance. Which is kind of ideal for a US Open – give different styles of players an equal chance.
Long drivers had an advantage but lost most of it with their proportional inaccuracy, and fairway finders had an advantage that was cancelled out by their lack of distance.
This sounds rather mundane, but typically at majors or courses this long, there’s a big advantage to being long. So, compared to an average course, short/accurate guys are actually more in play, in theory, at Oakmont, than they would be at your average Tour course.
We can see that on the 2016 leaderboard, where DJ won, but guys like Jim Furyk and Kevin Na were also in the mix.
With the rough historically gnarly this year, it does seem like that will skew even slightly more towards driving accuracy. Normally, it helps to bomb it and try to gouge a wedge out, but it seems like even a wedge isn’t a great play from the rough this year.
Luckily, there are a few pretty accurate guys with some decent odds this week.
We’ll go ahead and get Daniel Berger out of the way. For anyone who follows this section … yes, keep pounding this guy. He’s still undervalued and playing great. His profile is of moderate length but good accuracy, and an all-around stat-stuffer. This is as good of an opportunity as any for him to win a major on a semi-level playing field.
As an addendum to that – it’s this portion of the season where things get slightly tedious because honestly not much has changed about our knowledge of players since the PGA Championship – there just aren’t many new data points and we have enough data to make strong plays that aren’t going to go away in a few weeks.
So with that said, Patrick Cantlay also fits the bill this week, maybe even especially so after his epic flop (and feature in this section) at the PGA. He REALLY looked like he was trending going into that and bounced back with a 12th at the Memorial, making the PGA an aberration and still looking like he is fully “back” … and as another one of the elite players who leans on driving accuracy and all-around game, he gets a pretty decent number this week coming off the PGA flop, and remains a play until the public catches on.
Keegan Bradley continues to defy odds but is actually playing his best golf since 2012/2013. He is peaking right now, coming off back-to-back top 10s at the Memorial and the PGA. Usually, Ryder Cup captains lull a little bit, but this is a fantastic setup for the ever-accurate driving machine.
Finally, perhaps the accuracy king of them all – Corey Conners. He’s definitely in play here, although it sounds slightly far-fetched that he could actually win a US Open, he too is in the midst of basically the best year of his career or tied for it, and if Oakmont really does become a fairway-finding contest, there’s nobody you’d rather have on your side.
Best Bets:
Daniel Berger +10000
Patrick Cantlay +5500
Keegan Bradley +10000
Corey Conners +6000
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.
