The PLAYERS Championship - Recap
Now THAT was some unbelievable golf. We saw 3 major champions and the reigning Olympic champion put on a show yesterday that ended with the world number 1 becoming the first player EVER to go back-to-back at the PLAYERS by going -8 in the final round to become the first person since 2001 to win in back-to-back weeks. My only point of contention is that they made the course too easy.
So obviously we did not hit an outright bet, but the disappointing thing was the rest of the card and how it turned out. Do you want a microcosm of how this week went? In the final round, Corey Conners went to the easiest hole on the course (the par 5 16th) needing a birdie to get inside the top 10. Instead, he bogeys the hole.
That continued up and down the card too. Going into the final round both Austin Eckroat and Emiliano Grillo were at -8 and tied for 21st…..They shot +4 and +5, respectively, in the final round to fall out of the top 40. If that wasn’t bad enough, Eckroat made a long putt and got penalized over it!!
The only highlight was that our tournament match-ups went 3-0 and continued their hot start to 2024.
Valspar Championship
The course:
The PGA Tour wraps up its Florida swing as it heads to the west coast of Florida to the Tampa Bay suburbs to visit Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club in Palm Harbor. The resort has 4 courses, but this tournament uses the Larry Packard-designed Copperhead Course plays to a par 71 across ~7,340 yards. Golf Stays and Plays did an 8-minute video that is a flyover of the course while The No Laying Up crew did a video a couple of years ago after they played it.
This is an interesting tournament this week for several reasons:
The reason it is a par 71 is that it has an extra Par 3 and one less Par 4 which is pretty rare.
This course is more of a parkland-style course with heavily tree-lined fairways and doglegs which makes it play longer than you might think and puts a premium on ball-striking and guys will be asked to show their short game on these Bermuda (poa overseed) greens.
Similar to Quail Hollow, this course has a very difficult closing 3 holes called “The Snake Pit” that would give any player holding a small lead on Sunday a real scare.
The cut tends to be right around par; in the last 5 years, it has been +2, -3, -1, +1, and +3.
Given how many high-ranked golfers are playing in the “lower” tournaments this year the PGA Tour has expanded this tournament from 144 golfers to 156. They will not be replacing WD’s until the field drops below 144. In this field, we only have 2 of the top 10 golfers by OWGR, but we do have 16 of the top 50 and we also have former champs Sam Burns (2021 and 2022), Jordan Speith (2015), Gary Woodland (2011), Adam Hadwin (2017), and Kevin Streelman (2013).
We have seen the Florida courses have been playing pretty soft given all the rain they have gotten and that should continue this week, but that is not the end of the weather concerns we will have this week. As of the writing of this, Friday looks like it will be very windy and could have a real storm. The weekend looks like it should be dry (though it is Florida so storms are always possible), but there should be decent wind over the weekend that could cause carnage.
As you can likely surmise from the above, this course should be a real test for the men competing, but as we have seen the last few weeks, the PGA Tour might take some of the teeth out of this course. Due to the tight terrain off the tee, usage of water hazards, and changes in elevations this course seems like it belongs more in North Carolina, South Carolina, or Northern Georgia rather than in Florida!
Prior results:
2023 - Taylor Moore (50-1) won his first PGA Tour title when he shot -10 to beat Adam Schenk (125-1) by 1 stroke
2022 - Sam Burns (20-1) defended his title when he shot -17 and beat Davis Riley (250-1) in a playoff
2021 - Sam Burns (70-1) shot -17 to capture his first PGA tour title when he topped Keegan Bradley (60-1) by 3 strokes1
2019 - Paul Casey (25-1) shot -8 to capture his 2nd Valspar title in a row when he beat Jason Kokrak (40-1) and Louis Oosthuizen (30-1) by 1 stroke
Ron Klos (the MVP of my newsletter links) has the winners going back to 2010 and their odds.
Last year’s first-round leaders were Adam Schenk, Stephen Jaeger, and Ryan Brehm who all shot a 66 to lead by 1 stroke on their way to 2nd (-9), T27 (E), and T65 (+7) finishes, respectively. The eventual winner, Taylor Moore, was tied for 31st after shooting a 71 in round 1.
The event’s 72-hole record is -18 (266) which was shot by Vijay Singh in 2004. Four players have won this tournament twice2 including KJ Choi, Retief Goosen, Paul Casey, and Sam Burns; both Casey and Burns won in back-to-back years.
Last year’s Valspar saw us pick up 2.5u for a 31% ROI.
Two notes
Before I get to my picks for this week I wanted to cover two very important items:
I am placing a PGA Championship Futures wager - 0.86u Viktor Hovland 21-1…. In my 10 bold predictions for the year, I said I wanted to do this but the number was 12-1 and I figured it would not get any shorter. This could go higher if he continues to struggle, but one good tournament and this goes right back to 14-1 or 12-1 so I am grabbing him here as that course is what I would personally design for him and his game.
I am running a FREE-to-enter NCAA Tournament bracket challenge that comes with $400 in prizes that I am personally funding! To enter please click here!
The bets:
Each week I give you a view of the guys I am looking at as well as what I believe to be the public plays and last week was a great example of how that is not the be-all-end-all as Brian Harman opened at 120-1 and was bet down to 50-1 and he was right there on Sunday. The guys this week I fully expect to be super public are Victor Perez, Joel Dahmen, Doug Ghim, and Sam Burns. I get the Sam Burns love given his history here, but I am pretty out on Sam. I also get the love for Ghim, but I am REALLY confounded by Victor Perez being bet like this at such long odds.
I also took hard looks at Brian Harman (it came down to him vs the shortest guy3 on my card - I will look to get him with a parlay), Keegan Bradley (I wanted to bet him but I just do not like what I have seen from him), Doug Ghim (I get his love, especially after last week), Sepp Straka (I came THIS close it including him but I am seeing him a lot on Twitter), Mackenzie Hughes (love the CLT resident, but he is being tipped all over the place), Adam Hadwin (maybe if this was a club throwing competition), and Carson Young (I thought about going after him at 200-1).
We have the DPWT in Singapore (link to picks) this week so we have devoted some of our powder to that, but do not fret as we still have about 7.15u of risk here4:
Outright:
0.6u Sungjae Im 27-1
0.3u Christiaan Bezuidenhout 55-1
0.27u Aaron Rai 60-1
0.22u Adam Schenk 75-1
0.21u Lucas Glover 80-1
0.18u Andrew Putnam 90-1
Top 10 (0.25u on each):
Sungjae Im +250
Brain Harman +275
Christiaan Bezuidenhout +400
Adam Schenk +550
Top 20
1u Sungjae Im +100
0.5u Christiaan Bezuidenhout +165
0.25u Lucas Glover +220
0.25u Andrew Putnam +220
0.25u Adam Schenk +225
0.25u Carson Young +350
Top 40 (0.25u each)
Christiaan Bezuidenhout -115
Andrew Putnam +115
Carson Young +160
Matchups
0.75u Joel Dahmen over Taylor Pendrith -150
0.3825u Carson Young over Sam Stevens -153
Good luck with all your action!
2020 was canceled due to COVID
EDIT NOTE 3/19/24 10:37am: this word was missing
I mean odds wise…..no one is shorter than Harman.
There is a miss-the-cut bet I want to make and once it becomes available I will post to the Gamblers Paradise Discord.