Valspar - Recap
I am going to be short and sweet as the rest of this is quite long and I am sending this from an air plane!
We were never in this tournament but we didn’t have the worst result here. We were able to sneak a Top 10 with C Bez and a couple Top 20’s to blunt the hurt there.
We also went 2-0 in match-ups which is always great!
Texas Children’s Houston Open
The course:
The PGA Tour has finally finished up in Florida and now heads to Houston, TX to once again visit John Bredemus-designed Memorial Park Municipal Golf Course, where it has been played since 2020. This public course plays to a par 70 over a distance of ~7,400 yards.
As there seems every week now, there are some really interesting things to take note of this week:
As the name indicates, this is a municipal course, which is quite different from what the PGA Tour usually uses as this course sees over 50k rounds a year!!
The Houston Open can trace its history back to 1922, but has been played more officially since 1946 and boasts some of the best golfers of all time in their list of winners
This course underwent a huge renovation and redesign by Tom Doak (with input by Brooks Koepka) in the late 20-teens that was paid for by the Houston Astros
The course has five Par 3s and three Par 5s and is completely Bermudagrass
The last time this tournament was played was back in November 2022 when the sponsor was Cadence Bank
I know the thought that is going through your mind - this is a muni course, with pretty generous fairways, it only has 4 holes with water hazards, and has less than 20 bunkers - this is likely to get eaten up by these professionals, but since the tournament moved to this course, the cut line has been +1, +1 and +3.
That is right! This muni course has some teeth! The first thing is the fact this is pretty long with just a Par 70 which gives the golfer minimal room for error. That said, where this course gets tough is up by the holes. The green complexes are tough and contoured and many have run-offs that will give the guys that miss difficult situations to get up and down. Yes, this course has rough that is difficult as well, but as I mentioned above the fairways are pretty wide.
On top of all of this, golf in Texas is always highlighted by how the players will deal with the wind. Similar to last week, it looks like Thursday is going to be the best scoring day as there seems to be almost no wind to speak of. That all changes Friday, Saturday, and Sunday where it looks like we should have 15mph of wind throughout. While there is no rain on tap for the 4 days of golf, there is some today so expect the course to be a little soft and firm up as the days go on.
Prior results:
2022 - 3rd favorite Tony Finau (20-1) shot a tournament-low 264 strokes to card -16, cash an outright for the Substack, and beat Tyson Alexander (500-1) by 4 strokes
2021 - Jason Kokrak (60-1) shot -10 to beat 2nd favorite Scottie Scheffler (18-1) and Kevin Tway (300-1_ by 2 strokes
2020 - Carlos Ortiz (150-1) captured his lone PGA Tour title when he shot -13 and beat tournament favorite Dustin Johnson (8-1) and joint 3rd favorite Hideki Matsuyama (20-1) by 2 strokes
2019 - Lanto Griffin (40-1) won his first and only PGA Tour title when he shot -14 to beat Scott Harrington (150-1) and Mark Hubbard (100-1) by 1 stroke.
Here is Ron Klos’ course history, but note that it is only 3 year’s worth of data given that is when it moved to this course.
Last edition’s first-round leaders were Tony Finau, Alex Noren, and Aaron Wise who all shot a 65 to lead by 1 stroke on their way to winning (-16), T4 (-8), and T22 (-4) finishes, respectively.
Tony Finau will be looking to be just the 2nd player to win this tournament in back-to-back years but will have to put in some effort to match Vijay Singh who won this tournament 3 times in 4 years (2002, 2004, and 2005). The big Fijian and Curtis Strange have each won this tournament 3 times.
Thanks to Tony’s win, last year’s Houston Open saw us pick up 10.9u of profit for a 139% ROI.
The bets:
Look, Scottie at 3-1 is something to look at, but much like I do when I handicap horse races you sometimes look and see the best horse, but understand the odds provide no value and accept that it might beat you, but you are going to look further down the board and that is what I am going to do here.
After making that call, immediately jumped into the mode where I was trying to figure out who was going to be the public guys this week and the three names that popped up immediately were Sahith Theegala, Kurt Kitayama, and Joel Dahmen. I do get the Sahith love and almost went with him and Joel has been open (again) with how he likes this course. I do not get Kurt’s love, especially at this price, and he will be someone I will look to play in the missed-cut market (like I looked in vain last week for Victor Perez).
Other guys I looked closely are Wydham (too short, but I would not be shocked at all to see him in the mix again though maybe he can not have his caddy putt for him), Keith Mitchell (as I said a bunch on the discord, I really do not like him in the wind), Tony Finau (I would love to go back to back with you Tone, but you have been playing so poorly), KH Lee (only when he plays the Byron Nelson), Jake Knapp (his length could be lethal here but he is a little too public for me) and Jason Day (I am not sure why but his name just JUMPED out at me this week, but my numbers say pass).
I am going with Willy Z off the top as I love him at the Masters and I think this tune-up will show his game is in form, but I am also going DEEP down the card as this is a course that really could end up seeing a long-shot who is long and not so accurate off the tee (looking at Matt Wallace and Ryan Fox) as the rough is not that penal here.
Do not forget about the Indian Open on the DPWT (link to picks) as we get into this week’s card with about 6u of risk:
Outright:
0.8u Willy Zalatoris 20-1
0.29u Beau Hossler 55-1
0.23u Doug Ghim 70-1
0.2u Taylor Moore 80-1
0.165u Ryan Fox 100-1
0.115u Matt Wallace 150-1
0.115u Joseph Bramlett 150-1
T10 (0.25u on each):
Beau Hossler +450
Ryan Fox +750
Matt Wallace +850
T 20
1u on Willy Z -120
0.5u Beau Hossler +200
0.25u Doug Ghim +225
0.25u Joel Dahmen +300
0.25u Ryan Fox +330
0.25u Joseph Bramlett +350
Top 40 (0.25u each)
Ryan Fox +120
Joseph Bramlett +130
Matt Wallace +137
NOTE: Next week’s Valero Texas Open picks will be behind a paywall for the first 24 hours. Then they will be released for public consumption exactly 24 hours later.