Sentry Tournament of Champions - Recap
Well, that was a hell of a tournament to kick off the 2024 campaign! I am personally really happy for Chris Kirk to have cashed that big check given everything he has been through. Yes, I would have loved to win, but if we are going to lose, I am okay with it being to that guy.
If you had told me last Monday that we would wake up Sunday morning with An and Xander Tied for 3rd and 2 strokes back of Kirk and 1 back from Akshay, I would have absolutely taken it. Unfortunately, it didn’t play out as well as it could have for us.
I am disappointed with how Xander played in the final round, but his struggles there were the same as he had all week as he really couldn’t get an eagle putt to fall until his final hole. Hatton was also a huge disappointment to me. Sure, he was never going to follow that Friday round with another -11, but he really shouldn’t have cratered as much as he did.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh look who went 2-0 on match-ups! I might just stop here so that we stay 100% for the year!
Masters Futures
In case you missed it, last week I grabbed a new future for the masters
0.5u on Max Homa 35-1
Sony Open in Hawaii
The course:
The PGA Tour continues in Hawaii with a trip over to Honolulu and the Waialae Country Club for its first full-field event of the calendar year. This course plays to a par 70 across a stunning ~7,000 yards.
This is the first full-field event of 144 golfers, so that means after the 2nd round is complete the top 65 and ties will advance to the weekend.
This event can trace its history back to 1965 when it was held in the fall and called the Hawaiian Open, and ever since it has been hosted at the Waialae Country Club. While this event may not always have the strength of the fields as the two events that sandwich it, the list of winners has been impressive, and this year’s field is as strong as I can remember with 33 of the top 65 players in the world.
This is known as a shot-makers course as it has some severe doglegs, firm greens, tight fairways, and tough Bermuda rough. As Ron Klos wrote in his great write-up, “Coming off four rounds at the Plantation Course at Kapalua, this week will present quite the contrast with the completely divergent Waialae CC”.
Prior results:
2023 - Si Woo Kim (40-1) shot -18 to beat Hayden Buckley (80-1) by 1 stroke
2022 - Hideki Matsuyama (18-1) won in a playoff over Russell Henley (35-1) when both shot -23
2021 - Kevin Na (60-1) shot -21 to beat Chris Kirk (150-1) and Joaquin Niemann (20-1) by 1 stroke
2020 saw Cam Smith (40-1) win a playoff over Brendan Steele (250-1) as both shot -11
The course record of 253 was shot by JT back in 2017 when he won the tournament by 7 strokes over Justin Rose.
Per Kenny Kim, there are some really interesting trends to take into account for the Sony Open:
Only 5 golfers in their 20s have won this event since 2000, including last year
17 of the last 25 winners played the ToC the week before
12 of the last 13 winners had at least one Top 15 in their prior 3 events leading into the Sony win
We had a pretty successful Sony Open last year with 2.6u of profit (33.6% ROI), driven by success in the T10 and T20 markets.
The bets:
We have to keep in mind this week we have the Dubai Invitational on the DP World Tour (those picks are here), but I am going to open it up a bit this week with about ~7u of risk as I am seeing value all up and down the odds board:
Outright1:
0.75u Russell Henley 20-1
0.6u Corey Conners 25-1
0.3u Adam Svensson 50-1
0.28u Andrew Putnam 55-1
0.25u Keegan Bradley 60-1
0.16u Nick Taylor 100-1
Top 10 (0.25u on each):
Russell Henley +200
Corey Conners +275
JT Poston +325
Nick Taylor +825
Top 20
1u Russell Henley +110
0.5u Corey Conners +135
0.25u Adam Svensson +200
0.25u Keegan Bradlet +225
0.25u Nick Taylor +350
0.25u Matthieu Pavon +550
Matchups
0.75u JJ Spaun over Keith Mitchell -150
0.3925u Aaron Rai over Ben Griffin -157
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds. I bet them as I write this so they are live within the 30 min or so of publication.
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 to allocate 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 usually only do this for full-field events so let’s take a swag
Conners 9,800
Henley 9,600
Bradley 8,000
Svensson 7,700
Spaun 7,600
Dumont De Chassart 7,300
Good luck with all your action!
Other names I liked this week were: Matt Kuchar and JT Poston but were both guys who I wanted to bet but their odds were far off from where I would want to bet them; Tyrrell Hatton but what I saw on the weekend was really problematic last week; Lucas Glover as his game is made for this course, but his putting scares me; Harris English had a fair bit of value in my numbers but I am not a fan of him or his game so he will probably win lol (EDIT NOTE 9:30PM ET - This originally incorrectly said Andrew Putnam, who I clearly had bet on)