Nedbank Golf Challenge - Recap
What a tournament by Max Homa. Max was quoted after his round on Thursday saying he hadn’t played in a month and was hoping to just hit it straight. Well, he did that and quite a bit more as he ran away from the field late in the round Sunday. Not bad for the 2nd favorite (8-1).
As for my picks, we unfortunately did not really ever have anyone in contention so it was more or less just a watch further down the leaderboard to see if we could capture some magic and lessen the blow…….
The headline number is a small 1.4u loss which is not bad at all. We had a nice little Top 10 profit thanks to Ryo Hisatsune (+400) and our Top 20 bets came out with a decent profit thanks to Rai (-130), Norrman (+105), and Hisatsune (+130).
Heck, even our Head-to-Heads brought home a MIGHTY profit!!! Okay, I know $1.25 won’t even get you on the NYC subway, but after so many struggles with that part of the picks for so long it is just nice to see a positive number.
DP World Tour Championship
This week the DP World Tour concludes its playing calendar and its “Race to Dubai” with the DP World Championship.
The 15th edition of this tournament will be once again played on the Greg Norman-designed Earth Course of the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai, UAE. This course plays to a par of 72 and a length of ~7,700 yards.
Similar to the FedEx Cup and TOUR Championship on the PGA Tour, this is a limited-field event with only 50 players, who are playing for an increased prize pool and has no cut.
The 14th edition of the championship and $3 million dollar check was won by 2nd favorite Jon Rahm (9-2 odds), who captured his 3rd DP World Tour title when he shot -20 to beat Tyrrell Hatton (18-1) and Alex Noren (30-1) by 2 strokes; though Rory took him the Race to Dubai title. The 13th edition saw 2nd favorite Collin Morikawa (9-1 odds) take home the big prize and the Race to Dubai title when he shot -17 to beat Alexander Bjork (100-1) and 3rd favorite Matt Fitzpatrick (16-1) by 3 strokes, and in the 12th edition, saw Matt Fitzpatrick (16-1) capture his 2nd DP World Title by shooting -15 to beat Lee Westwood (40-1) by 1 stroke, though Westwood did take home the Race to Dubai championship that year.
The record for low-to-par score and aggregate score was achieved by Henrik Stenson in 2013 when he shot -25 (263 total strokes). The single-round record for this course was shot by Justin Rose in 2012 when he shot a 10 under 62 on his way to a solo second1.
This is a very limited field so we have far fewer options than normal (i.e., no T20s) and we have 3 absurdly short-priced favorites here in Rory, Rham, and Hovland. While I do show value on Rory at this number, I can’t in good conscience bet someone at 5-1 odds especially after he already clinched the season-long Race to Dubai title2, so I am going with a high-risk strategy of taking shots to beat the favorites3.
All that said, we also need some bankroll for the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic (Link to those picks), so I am going with just under 6u of risk:
Outright4
0.72u Nicolai Hojgaard 25-1
0.65u Adrian Meronk 28-1
0.45u Vincent Norrman 40-1
0.45u Thorbjorn Olesen 40-1
0.09u Daniel Hillier 200-1
Top 105
0.5u Nicolai Hojgaard +175
0.5u Adrian Meronk +175
0.25u Ryo Hisatsune +300
0.15u Sami Valimako +450
0.15u Matthieu Pavon +450
Matchups
0.7u Matthieu Pavon over Sebastian Soderberg -140
0.675u Tom McKibbin over Julien Brun -135
0.35u Joost Luiten over Romain Langasque -140
0.325u Lucas Herbert over Robert MacIntyre -130
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds.
Good luck with all your action!
Rory won that tournament by 2 strokes.
He did that by not playing last week, but having the results clinch it for him
When I say this, that means you should be VERY prepared to lose all 2.36u of the outright bets.
I took a really long and hard look at Min Woo Lee. He could absolutely win this deal, but I think we will be a big twitter pick so I am staying away from him.
Again, I am taking some deeper shots in this, especially with the bottom 3. I am hoping to hit at least 1 of those 3 and that pays for the majority of the T20 action.