Open de Espana - Recap
What a tournament?!?!? It is hard to put into words how great it is to hit our longest shot ever at 90-1. It is even greater to see him do it wire-to-wire AND for him to come out on Sunday and really put his boot on the throat of the field to cruise to victory.
If you did hit the 90-1 ticket with me this week, I do ask that you please consider helping to provide financial support to this substack or provide a tip (this can be done on Twitter). If you have questions on what that looks like, I put together an easy explainer here!
Other than the win, we hit Pavon’s Top 20, but nothing else - Valimaki didn’t get Top 20 after a rough round 4. All in all, ee had 9+ units of profit because of the lost hedge. I will happily take that every week!
One thing I want to cover is the hedge we took. I got asked after the tournament (by my wife funny enough) “do you regret the hedge?” and I thought it was a great topic to cover here.
Short answer - No
Longer answer - Yes, Pavon was looking really strong all week and he did not waver at all in round 4, but this is a person who has been on the DP World Tour for 7 years and has never won before this. Further, he had only been on the 54-hole lead once before and he put 3 balls in the water that day. He is someone who played very well around the greens, but that is usually a big hole in his game. I did all the analysis and made what I believed to be the right call at the time AND I have found zero new info that would have made me make a different call.1
Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucia Masters
The DP World Tour stays in Spain and travels down to the Costa Del Sol for the Andalucia Masters. Those who are staying in Spain to play in this tournament are going to get a new challenge this year as this tournament moves from Valderrama to the Real Club de Golf Sotogrande (#2 ranked golf course in Spain) which plays to a par 72 across 7,200 yards.
The 2022 Masters was won by Spaniard Adrian Otaegui (50-1 odds) when he shot -19 to run away with the tournament as Joakim Lagergren came in 2nd and still trailed by 6 strokes. The 2021 edition saw second favorite Matt Fitzpatrick (16-1 odds) shoot -6 to top Min Woo Lee (60-1) and Sebastian Soderberg by 3 strokes, and the 2020 edition saw American 1001- long shot John Catlin (+2) win by beating co-favorite Martin Kaymer (14-1) by 1 stroke.
Obviously, we have the Zozo in Japan on the PGA Tour this week (link to picks) so with that, the move to a new course causing course fit to be a bit of a guess, and we have seen some longer shots win this bad boy so I am taking it lighter this week with 4.55u of risk:
Outright
0.65u Joost Luiten 28-1
0.45u Nathan Kimsey 40-1
0.33u Daniel Hillier 55-1
0.28u Calum Hill 65-1
0.17u Francesco Molinari 100-1
0.17u Paul Waring 100-1
Top 10 (0.25u each)
Joost Luiten +330
Nathan Kimsey +450
Daniel Hillier +550
Top 20
0.5u Joost Luiten +140
0.5u Nathan Kimsey +185
0.25u Daniel Hillier +240
0.25u Calum Hill +250
0.25u Julien Brun +300
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds.
Good luck with all your action!
Funny enough, all the additional info I have seen since actually would have made me MORE likely to do the hedge. For example, I did not know that his grandfather was born in Madrid and he has been open about how emotional the weekend was and was even quoted about how he was holding back tears all weekend thinking about his grandfather.