Recap - Arnold Palmer Invitational
Last week I was saying I was disappointed we didn’t get a sweat well holy smokes. Before we get to that WILD finish, let’s rewind to late Friday afternoon where we lost our 3 longer shots for T20 and had lost 3 Head-2-heads (including 2 1+u ones) and things looked BLEAK. I was honestly thinking we were going to lose the full 10.9u.
Then we get through Saturday and Scottie gives us some hope as he closes with 3 straight birdies to get to the next-to-last group and we take the lead in 3 of the 4 matchups and things start to feel like they might break our way.
Going into Sunday, I did not think Kitayama was going to hang on and I generally do not believe in Hovland on any course that puts a premium on being able to play around the green so I felt pretty good about Scheffler…….. Well, we got good to great rounds out of Bradley and Cantlay to get firmly inside the Top 20 and Mitchell fought valiantly, but missed T20 by a couple of strokes.
Scheffler ended up faltering before making a charge mid-round and faltering again late1, but it did not matter as Kurt got it done for his first win and major credit to the folks that bet him!
From a match-up perspective, we got lucky (Rickie with 3 late birdies) and unlucky (Spieth was NBA Jam flames coming from his butt hot) but we ended up okay on Sunday. All in all 2.7u loss is not good, but FAR from the disaster I thought we were headed for.
THE PLAYERS Championship
The PGA Tour now heads from the Orlando area up the coast to the Jacksonville 2metro area to contest what is commonly referred to as the 5th major!
This 144-person tournament takes place at TPC Sawgrass's Stadium Course, where it has been contested since 198. The course plays to a par 72 across ~7,190 yards and boasts one of the most famous wholes in the world of golf with its island green on 17. That can give professionals nightmares in normal circumstances, but if the wind is blowing WATCH OUT!
The 2022 edition saw Cam Smith start his outstanding season by shooting -13 and beating Anirban Lahiri by 1 stroke. The 2021 edition was won by Justin Thomas (-14) who beat Lee Westwood by 1 stroke and in 2019 Rory McIlroy (-16) beat Jim Furyk by 1 stroke3.
The event 72-hole record is -24 (264) which was shot by LIV CEO Greg Norman in 1994. The record for wins in this event is held by Jack Nicklaus who won 3 times.
This has traditionally been a strong field and this year is no different with X number of the top 50 players in the world. Let’s get to this week’s card (about 10.1u of risk):
Outright:
0.5u Patrick Cantlay +1800
0.25u on Collin Morikawa +2800
0.25u on Sungjae Im +4000
0.25u on Si Woo Kim +6600
0.25u on Russell Henley +12500
T10 (0.25u each)
Jason Day +300
Si Woo Kim +500
Russell Henley +650
T20
1u on Patrick Cantlay +105
0.5u on Collin Morkinawa +130
0.5u on Jason Day +140
0.5u on Si Woo Kim +250
0.25u on Russell Henley +300
0.25u on Chris Kirk +300
0.25u on Matt Kuchar +350
0.25u on Alex Noren +400
Matchups
1.38u on Keith Mitchell over Shane Lowry -138
1.32u on Corey Conners over Rickie Fowler -132
0.75u on Viktor Hovland over Jordan Spieth -150
0.6u on Jason Day over Matthew Fitzpatrick -120
0.55u on Scottie Scheffler over Jon Rahm -110
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.
Last week I personally wagered $21 and returned $32 (52% ROI) so I am more than happy to try again this week! Let’s take another small (~$40 of risk) swag at this:
Cantlay 9,700
Morikawa 9,500
Tom Kim 8,100
Kirk 7,900
Si Woo 7,600
Kuchar 7,200
Good luck with all your action!
Though it seemed like if he could have made a freaking putt he would have won. How many edges did he burn? Seemed like 3 or 4!
If you happen to be in the Jacksonville area, I highly recommend checking out both Gilbert Social as well as 4River Smokehouse (they have other locations but I have only been to the Jacksonville one). Both of them are absolutely delicious and you will not be disappointed!
The 2020 edition was canceled after the first round due to the outbreak of COVID 19