Each week, we will be analyzing our favorite PGA Tour props and picks for the upcoming golf tournament, focusing on who we think will be first round leader of the event.
The first round leader sweat in golf is a fun one, so join us as we try to make some winning golf picks!
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PGA Tour First Round Leader – Props, Picks & Predictions
Below, we take a look at the most intriguing first round leader picks and bets for the upcoming PGA Tour tournament.
Travelers Championship First Round Leader Picks
The Travelers Championship hosts the post-US-Open party spot on the schedule, and the prize is beefed up for the third year in a row by the tournament’s elevated event status.
All of the top names will be here, but there are a lot of doubts as to who will be out in full force. Many of the best players historically skipped this event before it became mandatory and a guaranteed payday.
The course is a fan-fest, not super long, very scoreable, and plays as a tight parklands, with a good amount of water in play.
As always, there’s plenty of opportunity for bombers to flex here, but according to the data, there is a very strong advantage for accuracy off the tee. The longest players don’t get to use their best weapon as much as a standard Tour setup.
Placement is a priority, and everyone’s on a level playing field here, with the biggest technical advantages going to the players who excel in driving accuracy, according to Datagolf’s metrics.
This makes it a slightly tricky scout for a FRL market. Typically, short-hitting, steady players are not as easy to rely on for a big splash early compared to a guy who plays bomb-and-gouge or a guy who just goes insane with the putter.
But when looking for expected value, we need to lean on overall value rather than taking stabs and guesses, even in a volatile market like FRL.
And this week, those leans are clearly toward guys who are very accurate from tee-to-green, with little regard for length, and just hope to get a hot putting performance out of them. You’ve got to get in position from tee-to-green first and take your chances from there; there’s not a lot of room for great recovery shots and scrambles on a lot of this course.
Out of everyone who is piping the ball from tee-to-green lately, Sepp Straka is the one we can lean on for a FRL spot because he’s ALSO been draining a bunch of putts.
Traditionally, Straka has been streaky and could throw out a low one, but he’s really come into his own this year and established himself as a near-premier player. The only disadvantage in his game is that he doesn’t quite hit it as far as a lot of the top five or 10 guys in the world, but that’s not a huge issue this week.
The other two guys to lean on in the FRL market are repeat plays from the best bets (Daniel Berger and Aaron Rai), but we just can’t argue with the overall value. The markets are obviously very linked, and these two guys just have better odds in the FRL market than reaching for another player who is -EV-based on hoping for an outlier in a stat category like driving or putting, which just isn’t as feasible this week.
Both are playing great and take advantage of fairways and greens. Berger is the better putter and better overall player, but Rai is just far beyond anybody when it comes to driving accuracy.
On a course where a lot of guys are playing from similar positions in the fairways, the scoring tends to be tight. It’s hard to get an outlier performance from a low-odds player like Scottie Scheffler or Colin Morikawa, which makes these longer-shot guys much more attractive.
First Round Leader Best Bets:
Sepp Straka +3500
Daniel Berger +5000 (BetMGM)
Aaron Rai +5000 (BetMGM)
Editor’s Note: Looking for more golf props content? Be sure to check out our outright winner and Round 2/3/4 picks for this week’s event!
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US Open First Round Leader Picks
The US Open is hosted this year by Oakmont Country Club, a notorious setting in golf lore. Known for an uber-hard layout featuring a plethora of bunkers, lightning bent grass greens, and a ton of length, the USGA is doing its damndest to push the scores even more over par with basically the worst rough we have seen yet.
In 2016, the last time the USGA set this place up, it played quite balanced for both accurate and long hitters, both trading relatively equal advantages and disadvantages and canceling each other out.
As we noted in the outright winner article, this actually plays relatively into the favor of the short, accurate hitters, since on most golf courses length is an advantage.
This year, with the rough even more penal, it sort of remains to be seen but accuracy might be at even more of a premium, although the USGA has probably run a lot of math on this and wants to have another contest where a disparate field of players can be in contention.
For the win-bet section we brought a lot of accurate drivers into play, but in a one-round contest like the First Round Leader markets, we can rely a little more on variance and outlier performances.
This means it’s more likely for a bomber to have a hot day and make an impact, before the rough catches up to them over 72 holes.
Our favorite FRL bomber Rasmus Hojgaard is in great shape this week, and not to sound redundant but the theory behind his play is a strong one, as he has one of the best combos of being: long, a good putter, and relatively under the radar.
Part of the reason he has been under the radar is his flat stick has been average this year, but we know he can make big performances happen there based on his Euro Tour stats. He also hit a little bit of a lull but he has been mashing his driver for three tournaments in a row now. This guy has Tour winner written all over him, it’s just a matter of when, but until then this is a great spot for him to sneak in a “low” one (by USGA standards, anyway).
In a somewhat similar vein is Taylor Pendrith. The combo is the same as far as being long and also a very streaky-hot putter, as he rode a putting heater to victory and a breakout season last year. However, this season he’s remained quite steady by having a breakout year with the driver, gaining 2-3x what he did in the past two seasons, and flashing a few extra yards off the tee – albeit not as ultra-long as he was when he first got on tour.
He’s under the radar because the short game hasn’t cooperated this season … yet. For these FRLs we can be a little more aggressive chasing guys who are “one category away” and throw some darts chasing a big payout by getting ahead of a breakout performance where he puts it all together.
Finally, Carlos Ortiz makes an interesting play as a “darkhorse” LIV candidate. This play is mostly interesting based on an outlier number alone, Ortiz is about as well-rounded and steady-eddy as you can get.
Aside from what looks like basically a vacation year after joining LIV and getting a couple of high finishes out the gate there, Ortiz just stuffs the stat sheet week in and week out. He’s simply undervalued in this market, there isn’t a particular niche or statistical lean here.
First Round Leader Best Bets:
Carlos Ortiz +10000
Rasmus Hojgaard +12500
Taylor Pendrith +9000
