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. We’ll then examine Rounds 2, 3, and 4 from a DFS and betting perspective.
Genesis Scottish Open Best Bets
This week, the PGA TOUR joins the DP World Tour for their warmup event to The Open Championship – the Genesis Scottish Open.
The annual change of scenery marks the entry point to the last major of the season, even though it feels like it’s only midsummer. The PGA TOUR actually only has a handful of regular-season events left before their version of the playoffs, so everybody is trying to peak for their last-ditch effort before a much-needed break.
The Genesis Scottish Open presents a very different look for the TOUR, not just with the field consisting of a lot of European Tour players, but the golf course and setting itself.
The interesting and unique thing about this course is that it actually doesn’t reward driving accuracy at all. That is by far the main difference (analytically speaking) from a baseline PGA TOUR course. It’s a unique setup because most places will either play tight and short or long and open (or long and tight for a major).
This course moderately rewards length, and really doesn’t punish you at all for being wild. Guys like Aaron Rai (who we have featured recently as an accuracy specialist) are at a significant disadvantage.
But at the end of the day, it’s about a quarter of a stroke. It’s something that can be overcome with putting, and still gets a guy like that into contention, but in this game, we are always working off of cumulative small edges.
Rasmus Hojgaard
With that, we will revisit our old friend Rasmus Hojgaard, who just came off a great season on the DP World Tour last year.
Rasmus is a specialist – a true bomber – with the unique combo of also traditionally being a near-elite putter. His M.O. has been streakiness and boom-or-bust potential, which has made him a great pick to highlight at times this season when the courses and fields are in his favor.
It’s one way we can get an edge when focusing on win-bets – by finding players that have more variance in their performance. That’s especially true when there are good reasons for that, and capitalizing on the margin between their average performance (which dictates the Vegas odds more than anything) and their outlier performance (which is all that matters when chasing a win-bet anyway).
Simply, Rasmus hasn’t had a good putting performance in a few months. However, he put up great putting statistics for long stretches across his career and already has a 2nd place on the PGA TOUR this year. He also won on DP last year, along with collecting a bunch of top-5 finishes.
He’s still developing and breaking out as a player, and there’s no indication that his putting slump should continue forever. His model fits this course perfectly, as one of the longest and wildest guys on TOUR. If he can get back in form on the greens, he’s a huge value here.
Maverick McNealy
The next play is another familiar face, Maverick McNealy.
Maverick was long highlighted as a putting specialist, but he’s a play here just based on overall form and line value. He’s one of the technically brightest players on TOUR and consistently gains strokes putting every year.
The difference this year is that he’s hitting the ball like a top-20 player and gaining strokes on approach and off the tee in equal amounts. A top-20 ballstriker, who is also consistently one of the best putters? His three top 5s in the past 9 events are no accident.
This is a breakout year for McNealy, and it’s the first time he’s ever really made an impact with his approach game. This pick has nothing to do with the course or the situation; it’s just a good line on an undervalued player who hasn’t been recognized for his improvement by the masses, yet.
Jesper Svensson
The last play is an unheralded 29-year-old bomber named Jesper Svensson.
He floated around the Challenge Tour (European Korn Ferry) for years until getting one shot on the DP World Tour last year and parlaying that into a PGA TOUR card immediately. In 18 starts this year, he has almost nothing to show for it finish-wise, hence his long odds.
But there’s an interesting statistical signal here. The guy crushes the ball off the tee. In about half of his rounds, he is one of the most dominant putters you’ll see, but in the other half, he’s horrible. To be fair, more of the horrible rounds have been in the past couple of months, but there’s a big upside here for a guy who hits it about as far as anyone.
Svensson’s putting statistics of around 0.0 strokes gained for the season don’t tell the whole story. All that aside, he projects as a pretty average player, but it’s a pretty hefty line for a run-of-the-mill performer on TOUR, especially one who can make big dents in the two most important statistical categories this week. We’ll take a run at him back on his home European soil, where he won and finished second three times just a season ago.
Best Bets:
- Rasmsus Hojgaard +9000
- Maverick McNealy +8000
- Jesper Svennson +15000
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 subscription alone and just playing the numbers 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.
