Introduction
This newsletter was originally written to be part of my summer educational series, but given the uncertainty with the future of the Tour / LIV and the mechanics of how they are going to be playing, I decided to hold this until the winter break before the new PGA Tour calendar starts and DPWT starts back up. While we still do not have all the answers, 2024 seems set.
Why do this about golf betting? Well, this Substack focuses quite a bit of time and energy on golf betting (and has been very profitable) so I wanted to acknowledge that betting on golf is quite a bit different than betting on NBA totals or an NFL spread so I figured I would take some time to talk through:
How a golf tournament work
What kind of things can you bet
My approach to golf betting
Things to keep in mind when golf betting
I hope you enjoy it while having a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season. I look forward to seeing you all back soon so we can throw a few more pegs in the ground and get back to the weekly grind.
-T
How does a golf tournament work?
I know this might be remedial for many, but I want to ensure I cover this as I get MANY questions about it each week!
Let’s start with some basics:
Almost all professional golf tournaments are stroke play events1, played across 4 rounds2, and they contest it over the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the given week. This can change due to weather or specific events but this is a good rule of thumb
A “full field” golf tournament is a golf tournament with 130-160 people in it, sometimes they can have slightly more, and sometimes they can have slightly less, but generally speaking it is that range. “Limited field” or “Invitational” events tend to have far fewer, more in the 70-80 range.
The “Cut” is a moment during a golf tournament when the field of players is reduced. This moment is usually after all players complete 36 holes3 and it generally reduces the full-field event down to the top 65 (and ties) scores at that point. Anyone who misses the cut is sent home and, usually, does not make any money. If there is anything noteworthy with the cut, I normally try to call it out in my newsletter.
On the PGA Tour / DP World Tour, there are generally speaking 4 classifications of events, in descending order of importance:
Majors - The 4 Majors (Masters, PGA Championship, US Open, and The Open) are the most prestigious events on the golf calendar. These events bring together the top players from around the world and, include qualifying players from the LIV Tour. These events have 36-hole cuts.
Signature Events - To combat the LIV Tour and put more money in the pockets of its best players, the PGA Tour designated several events each year as signature events. These events come with significantly more money for the players and some will be played with limited fields and no cuts4 this year.
Normal tournaments - These are your run-of-the-mill week-in-week-out golf tournaments that have full fields and generally have 36-hole cuts.
Alternate Events - On the weeks where there are signature events and majors the tours tend to host events for the players who do not qualify for the big-money events that allow them to play, earn points and money, and possibly play their way into signature events or even majors5.
Before 2024, the PGA Tour calendar would run from late September through late August and it is what is known as the “wrap around” calendar. Starting in 2024, the PGA tour will be moving to a normal year calendar starting in January and running through the TOUR Championship in late Aug, after which some more minor events will be held as part of a fall series. Here is a link to the planned calendar for 2024.
As I mentioned above, the PGA Tour and DP World Tour are still in the process of reacting and changing to the creation of LIV and they are still reportedly in negotiations on their legal agreements so I expect some of this stuff to continue to change in 2025 and beyond.
What kind of things can you bet?
When the guys play in a golf tournament they are all obviously trying to win, but when you have a full-field event you are talking about 1 person out of 144 so we have to find other things to bet! Here is a list of the types of things you can bet:
Outright / Winner - pretty self-explanatory, but he is the guy with the big check and trophy at the end
Placement bets - these are bets that predict where a golfer will place in a tournament such as Top 10, Top 20, and Top 40.
Head-to-head Match-ups / 3-balls - These are wagers where you either have 2 or 3 golfers and you have to pick the one who will have the best score out of the bunch.
Groupings - Similar to H2H’s and 3-balls, these are different collections of players (e.g., Americans, Brits, debutants, former champions, LIV golfers) and you have to pick the guy who will shoot the best score out of that group
Make Cut/ Miss Cut - As I mentioned above, during most golf tournaments there is a set time when they will reduce the field, these are wagers on whether the golfer will make it through the cut or not
Props - as with any sport there is a myriad of prop bets one can do about special outcomes, such as “Will there be a hole-in-one at number 17 at TPC Sawgrass?”
Now, generally speaking, I bet the above for the full tournament each week, but you can bet many of these for an individual round (e.g., an outright bet for the 1st round is called a First Round Leader or FRL bet) and you can get daily round specific match-up bets or leading after that round.
As always it is VERY important to know the rules of the bets you are making and how your book handles certain things, some of which I will cover in the final section of this post.
My personal approach to golf betting
Gambling is both an art and a science and as much as I love my models, those of you who have been with me for a while know that I do not always strictly stick to my models and use my views (i.e., judgmental overlay) to guide my picks and that is definitely true in golf.
Each week I run my calculations and I use that to identify value6. For golf, my rule of thumb for risk is as follows:
under 5u of risk for alternate site events or hit and giggles (e.g., Hero), if any risk at all
5-10 units of risk for normal golf tournaments (e.g., Valspar, Valero, fall calendar, DPWT)
10-12.5 for elevated events (e.g., Bay Hill, RBC Heritage), and
12.5+ for the Majors
The reason I have staggered them like this is that the bigger and deeper the field I am usually able to find more value and often books I use have more options of things to bet on.
Then each week I build my card by allocating my units across different types of bets. For a regular tournament, I normally dedicate7:
2-2.5u for outrights
~1u for T10
2-3.5u for T20
Remainder for H2H’s, Make/Miss cuts, etc.
The above is just a general guideline that I have come up with and thus far it has worked well, but clearly, I adjust by the week and by personal feel.
One of the other things I have started doing based on an analysis of my patterns and results is that now all of my outright bets are bet to win around 18u each, and profits 15u. This means that I really only require 6-7 outright winners the whole year to guarantee a profit!
When I bet I am betting prepared for a total loss. Yes, I LOVE to win and hope to win, but expectations should always be a loss and if you are uncomfortable with a bet, you should not make it. While everything is tracked and reported, you should also know, I do not look at anything between a 5u profit or loss as notable. That is right, I bet with the expectation that I am going to lose!
You might ask why….. well, let’s get into that in the 2nd to last bullet below!
Things to keep in mind when golf betting
This is just a running list of things I think are super important when betting golf and they are in no real particular order:
Betting, especially golf, is NOT for everyone - It is REALLY hard to pick who is going to win a golf tournament. If you are going to bet golf you have to be ready to have LOTS of losing or grinding smaller profits/losses until you hit an outright. If you are going to get frustrated or struggle with 3-4 months of losses you should not bet golf. For example, look at my performance in the last 15 months. Hot start, flat for 4-5 months, then hot again, then flat, then wins, then a bunch of losses into the end of the year.8
Realistic expectations and approach - Gambling is not a get-rich-quick scheme and betting on golf is no different. The goal should be long-term profits. What I try to do is grind enough from all my non-outright bets to finance the outright bets or mitigate their losses. The reason for this is easy to explain…we are trying to make enough to keep ourselves afloat so when we hit an outright, the winnings are big profits! You may ask where I came up with such a brilliant idea and the answer is easy → The professional gamblers I know approach it exactly this way!
Golf betting results are correlated - If you bet the Bulls tonight -5 that result has zero impact on the Timberwolves/Lakers game, but in golf, if you bet Patrick Cantlay Top 10 and win that bet, well that makes it less likely your Akshay Bhatia Top 10 ticket can win as there is one less top 10 place to get. This is one thing I spend a lot of time on each week so make sure when betting golf your risk-adjusted returns make sense across your card. Similarly, you have to think about golfers’ styles as well. If you load your card with ball strikers and it turns out you handicapped it wrong and you needed strong / longer drivers, your whole card could be screwed from the jump so it is important to have balance.
Bankroll Management - Given that you likely won’t be hitting outright that frequently betting golf will absolutely test your resolve and discipline when it comes to bankroll management. If you have poor bankroll management skills you might as well save your money and not bet golf. The reason I say that is that given you can go long stretches losing, you need to need that discipline to weather the storm.
Have multiple outs (aka books) - Shopping lines in sports gambling is paramount and lines can vary wildly in golf. Two other things that can vary wildly are the markets that are offered (e.g., match-ups offered vary wildly by book), and the rules by which they grade bets, none more than……
“Dead heat” rules - If you are going to bet placement bets, 3 balls, FRL or any of the other bet types above that could end in a tie you MUST know how your book handles ties as it could greatly reduce your returns and even have you losing money on a bet you win! The ActionNetwork has a great explainer of these rules.
Have an emotional relationship with gambling - Golf losses can be BRUTAL. There is nothing worse than mentally spending your winnings only to watch your golfer melt on the back 9 in the final round. For example, watching Jordan Smith walk off the 2nd green with a 6-stroke lead, only to lose the tournament by 2 strokes was a kick right to the nuts. It is awful when that happens, but you need to be able to let it go quickly (unless it is Mito Pereira at the PGA Championship who finally made me dead inside). As The Sharp Plays put in his June 6th post “if you are getting emotional for any reason in betting…there is likely a problem within your betting that is worth you stepping back and reviewing. Sure you might get emotional after a bad beat or tough loss. However, if that doesn’t go away within 5 minutes, then it means you should spend the next 5 minutes assessing why.” My note: it can be longer than 5 minutes, but if you are getting upset you should first look at the amount of risk you are taking. You likely have too much money at risk for your comfort level. Then, if you are still getting upset, you might want to consider either not betting on that sport or maybe stopping altogether.
Looking at your losses as bad beats - Look there are DEFINITELY bad beats, but we as bettors can be wayyyyy too quick to chalk up a loss as a bad beat. An easy example was last year when Doug Ghim shot a +7 in the final round of the 3M Open, including a double bogey on the final hole to screw up my +800 T10 ticket. Yes, that hurt, but let’s remember that Doug Ghim is 193rd in the world (as of 7/31/22) for a reason. His scoring poorly is very much in the realm of realistic possibilities and one of the main reasons we were getting the odds we got. Another example was back at the RSM back in November when Matthew Nesmith had a poor 4th round to fall out of the Top 10. He was 137 OWGR going into the tournament and once it became he wasn’t going to win on Sunday the tournament didn’t matter as he was well within the 125 fedex cup points to keep his card, but was not going to challenge the next 10 for the elevated events.
I hope you enjoyed this post! Please feel free to reach out with any questions you have!
This means they count the number of swings a player makes and the one with the lowest amount wins.
Obviously this is different for LIV which plays 54-hole tournaments and have no cut
Some tournaments are played on 3 courses so they have the cut after 54 holes so that every golfer can play 18 holes on each course. Sometimes, due to weather, some guys won’t be able to finish their 36 holds until Saturday.
The majors, The Players, Genesis (Tiger’s tournament), the Memorial (Jack’s tournament) and the Arnold Palmer Invitational will all have cuts.
Do not sleep on these tournaments as we hit Akshay Bhatia at 33-1 at the Barracuda last campaign!
Most weeks I might see a maximum of 6 to 8 golfers that have outright value, but as you have seen I normally dedicate about 1u of risk to the outrights so I sift through those to identify those I personally like. Then, I also use that information, as well as the calcs for T10 and T20 to build my betting card for the week.
Obviously, these numbers go up the more I am risking for something like a Major
I know it sounds funny for me to say this given I put out picks on this topic, but it is far more important to me that folks are betting responsibly and that is financial and emotional. Gambling losses can damage you and your loved ones.