Recap - Scottish Open
Man, woke up and our guy Hatton was on the lead, but that was given back pretty quickly and then he really struggled down the stretch of that course basically every day and yesterday was no different. We did
Other than outrights we had a nice week. T10 and T20’s were profitable with really the only real blemish being Xander Top 20, but I was deciding between him and Cantlay and Patrick didn’t even make the cut so at least we had a sweat.
It is nice to see the placements having a positive result this week even if head-to-head continues to struggle.
The 151st Open Championship
The PGA Tour completes its calendar of majors for the 2023 calendar year with The Open Championship1. This year the Champion Golfer of the Year will be crowned at the links course at Royal Liverpool for the 13th time, the first time since 2014 (here is another great hole-by-hole flyover by Golf Digest).
This 154-year-old course plays to a par 71 across ~7,380 yards and has a long storied history, including being the store of the 2nd leg of Bobby Jones’ 1930 grand slam, but it should be noted that the course has gone through a number of updates since its last playing 9 years ago. Ron Klos has a great breakdown of the details of the course for those interested.
Some things to note this week:
Prior to this playing of the Open, this course played to a Par 72 as the 10th hole had been a Par 5
The cut line for this week is top 70 and ties
Per Patrick McDonald, since 2013, Zach Johnson is the only Open champion to have not won prior to the open that calendar year
Per Nuclr Golf Stats, each of the last 10 winners all had at least one T-15 finish in one of their prior 3 starts
My model is based on shots gained so it likely under values the LIV guys as their tournaments don’t have those stats
The 150th Open saw Cam Smith (20-1) capture his first major when he came from behind on Sunday to overcome both Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland to ultimately shoot a -20 to beat playing partner Cam Young (100-1) by 1 stroke on the Old Course at St Andrews. Cam Smith will be looking to be the first back-to-back Champion Golfer of the Year since Padraig Harrington did it in 2007 and 2008 at Carnoustie and Royal Birkdale.
The 149th Open, which was delayed a year due to the COVID pandemic, saw Collin Morikawa (-15) capture his 2nd major victory, this time at 30-1 odds, when he beat Jordan Spieth (18-1) by 2 strokes at Royal St. George’s. The 148th Open Championship, played at Royal Portrush, was claimed by Shane Lowry (-15) at 80-1 odds when he ran away with the tournament as he won by 6 strokes over Tommy Fleetwood (25-1). The last time the Open was held at Royal Liverpool, the 143rd playing of the Open, was won by Rory McIlroy who went wire-to-wire to capture his 4th and most recent major by topping Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia by 2 strokes.
The event’s 72-hole to-par record is -20 was shot by Henrik Stenson in 2016 at Royal Troon and in 2022 by Cam Smith, while Stenson's aggregate 72-hole record of 264 was set in 2016. The event’s 72-hole to-par record for Royal Liverpool of -18 was shot by Tiger Woods in 2006 who famously used his driver only once during that tournament.
I am taking 14.1u of risk this week. This is a little less than I normally do for a Major, but I went a little overboard with parlays (see footnotes) and there is an alternate event this week and I wanted to save some dry powder for that too. The post for the Barracuda has been published.
2u Scottie Scheffler +800 (released earlier today on Discord)
0.75u Tyrrell Hatton +2800
0.5u on Viktor Hovland +2800 (From April 10)
0.25u on Tom Kim +6000
0.25u on Hideki Matsuyama +8000
0.25u on Corey Conners +9000
0.25u on Jason Day +125000
T10:
1.35u on Scottie Scheffler -135
0.25u on Viktor Hovland +250
0.25u on Jason Day +650
T20:
1.10u on Patrick Cantlay -110
1u on Viktor Hovland +105
0.5u on Tyrrell Hatton +100
0.5u on Tom Kim +200
0.25u on Dustin Johnson +150
0.25u on Jason Day +275
0.25u on Matthew Jordan +600
0.25u on Andrew Putnam +700
T40
0.5u on Jason Day +110
0.25u on Brain Harman +125
0.25u on Matthew Jordan +175
0.25u on Yannik Paul +250
Matchups
0.705u on Patrick Cantlay over Jordan Spieth -141
0.695u on Xander Schauffele over Shane Lowry -139
0.675u on Gary Woodland over Sepp Straka -135
0.3225u on Yannik Paul over Matt Wallace -129
0.255u on Alex Fitzpatrick over Ernie Els -102
Make / Miss cut action
There is currently no market on my books for this so these will be posted to the Gamblers Paradise Discord
As always, I am using BetOnline and Bovada to pull these odds.
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.
Last week my picks were mediocre at best
Hovland 10,000
Hatton 9,400
Finau 8,200
Day 7,800
Conners 7,700
Putnam 6,500
Good luck with all your action!
You may know this tournament as “the British Open” or just as “the Open”
Normally I tell you here about the parlays I am looking to do but because this is a major I have actually been popping shots at parlays for quite a while. I have the following live:
0.25u Rory +1550
0.25u Rory +3003
0.25u Speith +3040
0.15u Speith +3148
0.125u Hatton +6357
0.25u Hatton +4100
0.25u Hovland +2933
0.25u Scottie +3275
0.25u Scottie +2350
0.25u Xander +4761
0.125u Cam Smith +5842
0.125u Cam Smith +4065
0.125u Homa +6000
0.125u Hideki +11115
My model is also showing value on Cantlay, Xander and Finau at their current numbers, but honestly I have enough action, don’t trust any of them in this big of a spot and if one of those guys beat me, so be it