My Golf Experiment
I have mentioned that I have been running an experiment each week and posting them to the Gamblers Paradise Discord. What this experiment entails is using other sports bets that I like and parlaying them with golf bets I wish I could have at a bit higher odds.
Credit where credit is due, I first heard of this from Brad Thomas (check him out on Twitter) and it is super fun. I have been using it for the last few weeks to take some of the favorites in these golf tournaments when their odds would normally not be bettable or would be barely bettable based on my calculations.
I am very much into transparency so want to tell you how it has been going:
Masters - I made 3 experimental bets for a total of 1.2u risked and it returned 9u so a total of 7.8u of profit
RBC Heritage - I made 3 experimental bets for a total of 0.75u risked and we lost all of them (thanks a lot Patrick Cantlay)
Mexico Open - I made 3 experimental bets for a total of 0.75u risk and we lost all of them, but one of the guys in my discord made BANK
Wells Fargo Championship - I made 4 experimental bets for a total of 1u risk and we lost all of them
Byron Nelson - I made 2 experimental bets for a total of 0.5u risk and we lost all of them.
In total, I did not do a great job with these so I will keep plugging away and posting below the guys I am looking to include.
Gamblers Paradise Discord
Once again, I highly recommend going to this discord as we have some lively discussions and you can even get some of my picks early (like when I sent out Patrick Cantlay bets a few hours ago) or see when I post about tee times! Seriously, come join the community.
Recap - AT&T Byron Nelson
Good process will eventually lead to good results and it was sooooo nice to see Jason Day get back to the winners’ circle and even nicer to cash our 20-1 ticket on him doing so! The other great thing about last week was that we crushed our T20 tickets to give us a profit even had we hadn’t had the outright winner.
Two things to note with the reporting above:
I went through one of my normal audits and found that there was a 0.5u winner from earlier this season that was still showing as “pending” that has been updated to “loss” so that is now updated
This is now our second go around with these tournaments so you will notice that the bottom two tables of the reporting have changed:
The 2nd to the bottom (says “AT&T Byron Nelson - All Time”) will show our performance all-time at a specific tournament
The bottom (says “AT&T Byron Nelson”) will show our performance for the prior week. I have now also changed the right hand most column to ROI from Pending as the Pending column was always zero so it no longer provided value
The PGA Championship
Unlike the Masters, the other 3 majors are not contested at the same location every year, and this year The PGA Championship returns for a 4th time to Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, NY (there is tons going on there right now). This championship course has hosted 6 majors (3 US Opens, 3 PGA Championships), 2 US Amateurs, 3 senior tour majors, and a Ryder Cup on its Donald Ross-designed East Course, which plays to a par 70 across 7,360 yards. Now this course has undergone a massive renovation since it was last used and there is a fantastic video I implore you to watch about those changes.
One thing we have seen over the last 5 - 10 years is that the PGA Championship has started to look a lot more like the US Open and when you look at that list of championships contested at this venue it is not hard to see that this week is going to be TOUGH. I expect this course to play longer than the stated yardage and I expect the rough to be, well, rough.
Now, as always I have to maintain my ideal of #Transparency so I must be honest. I am VERY biased as I have a deep connection to Rochester (I am not the only one1) as I used to call the “flower city” home, so this tournament is going to give me lots of feelings and you better believe I will be celebrating Sunday with a Tahou's style garbage plate2.
The 104th playing of the PGA Championship saw Justin Thomas (at 16-1) win his 2nd PGA Championship, and 2nd major, when he shot -5 and came back from 7 back in the final round to beat Will Zalatoris in a playoff at Souther Hills3. The 2021 edition saw Phil Mickelson (-6) become the oldest major winner ever when he captured his 6th major title at 250-1 odds when he topped now-LIV counterparts Brooks Koekpa and Louis Oosthuizen by 2 strokes on South Carolina's Kiawah Island, and 2020 saw Colin Morikawa (30-1 odds) capture his 2nd major title in 2 years when he shot -13 to beat Paul Casey and Dustin Johnson by 2 strokes at TPC Harding Park.
Since the tournament switched from match play to stroke play in 1958, the event’s 72-hole to-par record is -20 shot by Jason Day in 2015 at Whistling Straits, while Brooks Koepka holds the 72-hole scoring record at 264, which he shot in 2018 at Bellerive.
The last time the PGA Championship was contested at Oak Hill, was in 2013 when Jason Dufner4 came back in the 4th round to capture his only major championship (at 30-1 odds) when shot -10 to beat Jim Furyk by 2 strokes.
Some things to keep in mind this week:
This will be the 2nd time this season that we see the LIV tour members playing against their PGA Tour brethren. When we last saw this group together, we saw many of the LIV players play quite well, so we should be careful in just writing them off. That said, my metrics that I use are based on Shots Gained and LIV doesn’t keep those metrics so I am guessing a bit on their form.
Per Patrick McDonald, the last 10 winners of the PGA Championship averaged +1.60 strokes gained per round in the three months prior. Currently, there are 17 players who fit that model.
Weather this time of year in Western NY can be VERY unpredictable and variable so it is absolutely something to keep an eye on this week
There are 156 men in the tournament this week and the cut after round 2 will be Top 70 and ties.
Per Ron Klos, the average past 13 winners have shot -11 and had an average of 64-1 odds, but the interesting thing is that it has been 6 favorites, 4 mids and 3 LONG shots.
Because this is a Major the menu of bets that we have available to us is a bit bigger than normal and, as I described in my Masters newsletter, I tend to extend my bankroll a bit further than normal. If you are NOT comfortable with extra risk, please DO NOT bet as much as I am.
NOTE: This is a LOT of risk and I am betting this absolutely prepared for this to be a total loss and I do not consider anything between 5u of profit or loss to be notable.
Okay, I have gone on long enough, let’s get to this week’s card (17.15u of risk):
Outright5:
0.75u on Patrick Cantlay +2200
0.5u on Dustin Johnson +2800
0.5u on Sungjae Im +4000
0.5u on Cam Young +4000 (placed July 19 and was available on Mar 27th)6
0.25u on Rickie Fowler +6600
0.25u on Russell Henley +125000
T10 (0.25u on each):
Patrick Cantlay +150
Tony Finau +185
Sungjae Im +275
T20:
1.2u on Tony Finau -120
1u on Cam Young +135
0.5u on Tyrrell Hatton +160
0.5u on Russell Henley +250
0.25u on Keegan Bradley +300
0.25u on Gary Woodland +350
0.25u on Mito Pereira +385
0.25u on Stephan Jaeger +425
T40:
1.1u on Rickie Fowler -110
0.5u on Keegan Bradley +100
0.25u on Kurt Kityama +185
Cut bets7
0.5u on Bryson DeChambaeu to Miss the Cut +110
1u on Phil Mickelson to Miss the cut -170
0.25u on Max Homa to miss the cut +210
Matchups
1.5u on Tony Finau over Matthew Fitzpatrick -150
1.42u on Collin Morikawa over Max Homa -142
1.05u on Adam Scott over Patrick Reed -105
0.69u on Christiaan Bezuidenhout over Billy Horschel -138
0.635u on Taylor Moore over Tom Hoge -127
0.575u on Jimmy Walker over Phil Mickelson -115
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds.
Futures Bets
I love to jump in ahead of time on future majors so here is what I am placing/thinking:
US Open at LACC - I am going to grab Tony Finau of 0.5u at +2500 → I am doing this as I love how his game has been rounding into form, how he won down in Mexico when staring down Rahm and he has had good experiences at Augusta National and I expect that this course’s terrain will evoke memories of Georgia
The Open at Royal Liverpool - We already have a bet on Hovland at +2800 so I was debating whether to add another for Jordan Spieth but what is holding me back is that I was hoping he’d be 20-1 or over (he is only 16-1) and that wrist injury that kept him out of the Byron Nelson last week scares me so I am going to hold off……for now.
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 skipped last week, but two weeks ago I had a monster with $45 invested that returned $166 in total - it helps when you have Wyndham Clark who won.
Going with about 0.5u worth of risk:
Cantlay 9,700
Im 9,000
Hatton 8,500
Niemann 7,900
Fowler 7,600
Henley 7,300
Good luck with all your action!
Not only is his wife from there, but Rory also hold a membership at Oak Hill
If you are not familiar with a garbage plate, it is AMAZING! It is traditionally served in a styrofoam container. The bottom level is half macaroni salad and half home fries. That is then topped with 2 cheeseburgers or 2 white hots. Then on top of that is ladled a generous helping of “hot sauce” (a spicy, beanless, meat chili sauce), raw onions, and mustard. You add your own ketchup and Frank’s red hot to it per your personal preference and you MUST sop up the remaining greasy liquid with the roll they provide. It is phenomenal.
I apologize if what I am about to say gives you PTSD, but last year we had Mito Periera at 175-1 leading in the final group, heading to the final hole, needing only a par to win the major. He proceeded to hit a drive like I would (NOT a good thing) which duck hooked about 150 yards into the water to double-bogey and miss the playoff. I am still mad at him and I felt personally attacked when they kept talking about it during Full Swing.
Because I always love this type of context when watching the tournament live - Dufner was 3 back after the first round, had a 2-shot lead after the 2nd round after shooting a course record 63, and was 1 stroke back of Jim Furyk after the 3rd round before coming back to win.
Guys I will look to get odds on through parlays with be Rahm, Finau and Hatton.
If you did not bet this back then DO NOT bet this now. The odds are far below what my calculations say they should be to bet
Edit Note - as stated in my original post I was waiting for official lines for Homa and Phil to miss the cut - as of 8:45am ET 5/16 these have been updated