Hope everyone had a nice week off and enjoyed the hit and giggle that is the Zurich Open in New Orleans. I LOVE New Orleans, it is truly one of my favorite places in the entire US and it sucks they do not have a real tournament.
Recap - RBC Heritage
Round 1 Recap1 - Other than Aaron Rai playing like Tiger Woods and Matt Wallace playing like me not a ton went right, but interestingly not a ton went terribly wrong either - it was really just a blah day for us. Hopefully, the rain at night softened the greens and one of our guys can go low tomorrow. I expect the cut line to be -2 so we might need some magic to get everyone to the weekend.
Round 2 Recap - As mehhhh Round 1 was, Round 2 gave us all the fireworks we could have asked for, including a Catlay ace!! We are set up for what could be an exciting weekend, but we should temper our excitement as we are only halfway done and there is all to play for.
Round 3 Recap - That was not great for our placement bets, but we do have Scottie in a decent position to try and get this done for us!
RBC Heritage Recap - Wooooooo what a fun ending to that tournament. Fitzpatrick is like a freaking machine. Sadly we were not able to get Scottie across the line and many of our placement bets went begging, but we had another really strong head-to-head matchup week to FINALLY get our wrap-around season (3rd table above) into profitable territory.
We had another down week, which sucks, but 1.8u is hardly notable.
Mexico Open
The PGA Tour now heads from New Orleans’ team event south of the border to Villa Hidalgo, Mexico for the Mexico Open, which dates back all the way to 1944!
This 144-person tournament takes place at Vidanta Vallarta’s Greg Norman-designed course, where it was contested last year when it became an official PGA Tour event for the first time. The course plays to a par 71 across 7,456 yards.
The 2022 edition saw betting favorite (9/22) Jon Rahm win by shooting -17 and beating Tony Finau, Kurt Kitayama, and Brandon Wu by 1 stroke. The 2021 edition was won by Alvaro Ortiz (-23) who beat Drew Nesbitt by 3 strokes and in 2019 Drew Nesbitt (-17) beat Andreas Halvorsen and Gustavo Silva by 2 strokes3.
The event's 72-hole record is -23 was shot by Justin Heuber (2021) and Alvaro Ortiz (2021), while the lowest aggregate score was shot by Austin Smotherman (262) in 2018.
Look this field sucks as it only has 8 of the world’s top 100 golfers in it as most of the good guys gear up for Charlotte, but this field does include the number 1 golfer in the world who happens to be defending champ, a crazy short price. I am going to try to beat him, but this is a HIGH-risk strategy as there is often a good reason these guys are lower ranked and it is because they are so inconsistent or have a huge hole in their game so keep that in mind when we bet.
Obviously, given this is only the 2nd year of this being a PGA Tour event I do not have a TON to go on here so we are going to keep the risk light this week with only about 7.7u of risk:
Outright (0.25u each)4:
Benny An +3500
Stepah Jaeger +5000
Joseph Bramlett +6600
Luke List +6600
T10 (0.25u each) - None5
T20
1u on Gary Woodland +120
0.5u on Benny An +125
0.5u on Stephan Jaeger +130
0.25u on Lee Hodges +200
0.25u on Akshay Bhatia +330
0.25u on Scott Piercy +400
Matchups6
0.785u on Stephan Jaeger over Andrew Putnam -157
0.72u on Gary Woodland over Maverick McNealy -144
0.72u on Luke List over Lanto Griffin -144
0.72u on Akshay Bhatia over Chez Reavie -144
0.345u on Charley Hoffman over EVR -138
0.335u on Matt Wallace over David Lipsky -134
0.3175u on Beau Hossler over Aaron Rai -127
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds.
Make sure you are coming over to the Gamblers Paradise Discord where we are chatting all things sports and better. The Discord is entirely free and there are a ton of folks on there talking about the bets they like, the games they are watching, and you can even get some of my picks early (like this week!)
Daily Fantasy
For those unfamiliar with Daily Fantasy, this is a game you can play (I use Draft Kings) where they give you a budget and use allocate that budget to golfers and use their scoring criteria to try and win money. The dollar values you see below are the “salaries” for each golfer I select. You can mirror what I do, do your own thing, or do some combo and as always I am just showing what I am doing, and is good for me.
I am taking a pass.
Good luck with all your action!
I am writing this Thursday evening. While not EVERYONE is done with the first round there are very few holes left to play.
I am going to start to include the betting odds for the winners of these tournaments
The 2020 edition was canceled after the first round due to the outbreak of COVID 19
The fact that Jon Rahm is now under 3-1 is crazy. He is obviously the best golfer in a shitty field but I am going to try to beat him as the favorite with some longer shots. I am also going to try to get Gary Woodland (above 30-1) and Tony Finau (above 12-1) via my experiment
For those who want extra options to bet here is what I would do if I were betting this Gary Woodland +250; Benny An +300; Lee Hodges +500
If you wanted to do more risk, I would double the bets on Gary Woodland, Akshay Bhatia, and Charley Hoffman matchups