Recap - Phoenix Open
What an absolute shit show from me. There is nothing else to say when you swing and miss as badly as I did this week. Unlike some other handicappers, I do not hide from my losses, but that does not make them any more fun to endure.
Yes, I could absolutely point to the bad weather and how choppy the timing of their golf was how these guys are big-time creatures of habit, and how this disrupted all of that, but that would be disingenuous of me. I just handicapped that tournament poorly.
The really discouraging thing wasn’t losing our bets, that happens, but the fact that most of them were not particularly close. Sure, Billy Horschel had a great 3rd round to get himself into the Top 10, only to have a disaster in the 4th round to cost us. Yes, Corey Conners had a great 4th round going until he put his drive in the water on 17 and that cost us, but my picks were just not good.
I did say to someone on Wednesday that I regretted not betting on Sam Burns and while my ROI would have been better, had I been sitting with 15u profit riding on him has he continued to miss under 10’ putts I would have lost my mind.
Note that Lucas Glover withdrew from the tournament before teeing off on Thursday because he didn’t read his text right and missed his tee time so that bet voids.
The Genesis Invitational
The course:
The PGA Tour completes its West Coast swing1 in Southern California with the Genesis Invitational. This is one of the signature events for this year, but what makes this a bit different is that this event is hosted by Tiger Woods2 and will have a cut (more on this in a minute)!!
This tournament is once again being contested at The Riviera Country Club, which is the 18th-best golf course in the US. This George C. Thomas Jr. and William Bell designed course plays to a par 71 across 7,322 yards inside a canyon. This championship course has hosted the 1948 US Open, 1983 and 1995 PGA Championships, 1998 Senior US Open, and the 2017 US Amateur and will host the 2031 PGA Championship and be the venue for the 2028 Olympic golf event.
Let’s talk about the cut as it is a bit different this week. Given this is one of the four signature events with a cut we have to figure out how to do that with only 703 men in the field so for this event the cut will be the top 50, including ties, AND every player within 10 strokes of the 36-hole lead.
Now to the course - This course was built almost 100 years ago and, if you are a golf nerd, it is about as close to perfect as you can get (just watch this video). It can be TOUGH and the cut is often right around par4 as it has several defenses that can cause issues for the competitors and, frankly, Tiger likes it set up to be difficult.
The first of defense is the extremely narrow fairways that progressively get narrower the closer to the green that you get. In addition to the narrow fairways, the course also has a ton of tight doglegs that will challenge these golfers. If you miss the small greens or narrow fairways the players will have to contend with lush unpredictable Kikuyu rough, which can get sticky and make around the green challenging, and, if you can get to the green, you have to contend with Poa greens with almost unperceivable undulations. For such a tough course the really interesting thing is the quotes you hear from the players and how much they love it. There is no water or holes they consider unfair, it is just a straightforward challenging 18 holes of golf.
Another thing to keep in mind is that this course will likely be pretty soft and pretty wet. This course pretty much sits in the bowl of a ravine, and remember that horrible weather that plagued Pebble Beach? Well after it was done ruining the Farmers, it made its way to LA and drenched that part of California. Add that on top of the rain they have had all of January and I think we will see a pretty soft course, though it should dry out as the week goes on as the weather looks quite good this week.
Given how hard this course can be, this is generally viewed as a ball striker's paradise, but the other fun thing to keep in mind this week is how correlated this course is with Augusta National. They both present a grueling walk and premium on ball striking. Keep an eye out on who does well this week, and let’s pocket that for when we drive down to Georgia drive in a few months.
Prior results:
The history of this tournament stretches back to 1926 and the Los Angeles Open, which it was called until 1995 when it became the Nissan Open. Riviera has hosted this tournament 59 times in its history, 2nd most is Racho Park Golf Course at 17.
2023 - pre-tournament favorite Jon Rahm (8-1) continued his blazing hot start to 2023 by shooting -17 to top Max Homa (25-1) by 2 strokes
2022 - Joaquin Niemann (50-1) shot -19 to top Collin Morikawa (20-1) and Cam Young (200-1) by 2 strokes
2021 - Max Homa (60-1) won his 2nd professional title when he beat Tony Finau (25-1) in a playoff after both shot -12
2020 - Adam Scott (33-1) won his 2nd edition of this tournament when he shot -11 to beat Scott Brown (500-1), SH Kang (200-1), and Matt Kuchar (60-1) by 2 strokes.
Ron Klos, as always, has his coverage of all the winners going back to 2010.
The 72-hole record is held by Lanny Wadkins who shot -20 (246 strokes) in 1985 on his way to his second LA Open title, this one by 7 stokes over Hal Sutton.
The first-round leaders last year were Max Homa and Keith Mitchell, who each shot 64, on their way to 2nd place and 5th place finishes, respectively. The eventual winner Jon Rahm sat 1 back after the first round. Here is something worth pointing out - if you look back at the top of the leaderboard for the first round each year, you will find a lot of correlation to being at/near the top after Day 1 and still being there come Sunday afternoon so if you are someone who likes to take a punt on live bets, keep an eye on the leaderboard Thursday night.
We did not bet on this tournament last year.
Gamblers Paradise - FREE Discord
If you enjoy the analysis in these substack newsletters and want even more of it, I suggest coming to the Gamblers Paradise Discord! It is a community of gamblers who watch sporting events and share their betting viewpoints all FOR FREE! For example, if you want to get a deep dive into why I did or did not pick a specific golfer that week, come to Discord and ask!
I also post plays in the discord, like LIV coverage where last week we had Bryson (16-1) and Kokrak (50-1) who were both very much in contention late into the LIV Las Vegas tournament.
Baseball season is JUST around the corner and we have an individual who is great with the MLB, but is a freaking wizard with the KBO. He has already shared some of his favorite futures!
Really, you are missing a ton of fun!
The bets:
Obviously, with him going to LIV, we will not have Rahm defending his title this year and yes, we have seen the triple-digit streak extend to the 6th straight tournament I do not think we see it here. As I described above, this course is very tight so you will see many guys in the rough all week, as such, you will see power likely overcome those who are accurate. That said, being a ball striker’s paradise you might want to keep an eye on guys who are good from 150+ yards out.
Another thing with this course is that you have to make hay on the Par 5’s so one thing you should be looking at is the Par 5 scoring average with our golfers.
I think Ludvig Aberg, Wyndham Clark, and Sahith Theegala will all be big public plays this week so while I think they all could set up well here, I am going to take a pass on two of them5.
Some other guys I thought long and hard about for outright bets were Justin Thomas (He was hard to leave off for me, but 20-1 he is JUST under where I need him to qualify as bettable6), Sam Burns (I couldn’t get past his missed putts inside 10’ last week), Hovland (has a good course history, but looked bad the last few times out), Nicolai Hojgaard (his game should fit this course, but I didn’t like his ability to control his driver at Pebble and his ARG game was poor and this course demands that), JT Poston (I really did not like how he has played recently but my numbers show value at 60-1), and Beau Hossler (I see value at 90-1 but the human boat shoe disappointed me with how he finished Pebble and he looked very ordinary last week).
All in all, I expect a return to some normality with the winner coming closer to the top end of the market this week, as such I took some bigger swings and am going with 8.8u of risk this week:
Outright:
Top 10:
0.35u Patrick Cantlay +180
0.35u Adam Scott +250
0.25u Keegan Bradley +400
0.25u Kurt Kitayama +600
T20
1u Patrick Cantlay -150
0.75u Ludvig Aberg -110
0.5u Keegan Bradley +175
0.25u Beau Hossler +200
0.25u Kurt Kitayama +200
0.25u Harris English +230
Matchups
0.815u Luke List over Rickie Fowler -163
0.38u Kevin Yu over JJ Spaun -138
0.3225u Si Woo Kim over Will Zalatoris -129
Something that will be a bit different this week is I am working on a collaboration with another handicapper on Twitter/X. That will be an official pick so once that is up I will add it here as well, but make sure you follow me on Twitter to see it immediately.
0.5u Adam Scott top Aussie +120
I am using BetOnline, DraftKings, and Bovada to pull these odds.
Good luck with all your action!
The PGA tour starts its main calendar with a West Coast swing (2 in Hawaii, 4 in Cali, 1 in Arizona), then it heads to Mexico for the Mexico Open before it heads to the Florida swing.
If you find it odd that this is Tiger’s event, it is the event at which he made his professional debut back in 1992. Though, the really interesting thing is that he’s never actually won there!
Matthieu Pavon and Justin Rose are the only 2 to qualify who have chosen to not play this week. The
Per Josh Culp, the last 5 cuts have been Even, -2, -1, +1, and -1.
My take on each: Wyndham - He just won at Pebble and that skill set could translate here. Now his win at Pebble gets an asterisk as he was amazing on Saturday, but pretty avg Thursday and Friday and got kind of lucky with the 54-hole stoppage. At the current price of 33-1, I think we are WAY off his number should be closer to 60. For Sahith, he keeps looking really good at TPC Scottsdale, just up to the point where it is nut-cutting time and then he falls apart. That worries me, as does, the fact that if he gets a little loose here, he could end up in big trouble from a site line perspective and his putting yesterday was awful. Currently at 35-1 in the market and I would need to see 50-1 to be interested.
He will be the one golfer I look to add via parlay. If you want to see that parlay, come to the Gamblers Paradise discord link above!
I always get a bit weary about taking a guy, especially at shorter odds, when it is their first time at a tournament, but Adam Scott won this tournament his first time out in 2005 and we have seen guys contend recently their first times (Scam Young in 2022 comes to mind). On top of that, Ludvig’s performances at Torrey and Pebble have me believing this could be his real coming-out party. Yes, I do have a fear that he could be the public pick of the week.