By Chris Dell
@MaddJournalist
UPDATE: I've added one additional data point for determining our buys/fades, which is strokes gained off the tee (OTT), a key statistic on this week's TOUR Championship course at East Lake. Top matchup bets and overall rankings have been updated at the bottom of this article to reflect the latest changes.
We talked earlier this week about using strokes gained data, specifically the stats from strokes gained approach and strokes gained tee to green, to help identify our strongest buys and fades AFTER ROUND 1 of any given PGA tournament. Well, yesterday I stepped outside of that framework and attempted to use Round 4 data from the BMW Championship to help pick Round 1 matchup bets this week.
Those results didn't show well on Friday, as we went 2-4 overall. John Rahm (-5) proved to be a solid buy and crushed Bryson (+2) in their head-to-head matchup, albeit with some juice laid on the money line. On the flip side, Patrick Reed (+1) proved to be a solid fade in Round 1 as Xander Schauffele (-3) beat him by four strokes. Those were our two wins. In hindsight, I shouldn't have dismissed Cameron Champ and Marc Leishman from my previous article breakdown. They're putting numbers actually DID positively regress from last Sunday to today despite their average strokes gained approach numbers and average strokes gained tee to green numbers. Taking the full model into account, we actually would've went 4-4 overall today without dismissing the numbers on Leishman and Champ, losing only a little juice in the process. Today was a learning day, and one that will personally help me get better targeting stronger matchups.
I assumed that the data on strokes gained statistics and putting regression would correlate from Round 4 on a Sunday to Round 1 on the following Thursday/Friday, but that assumption simply didn't work. There were too many variables at play, too many days off in between the BMW Championship and the TOUR Championship, and too many differences from golf course to golf course. Instead, we must stick to our guns and from now on focus on making our plays after each round of data is recorded, just as I hypothesized from the start. I got a little action-hungry and tried out something new. It was worth a shot to test the waters though, and in my opinion sometimes it's simply best to learn how to lose when it comes to sports betting, more than winning itself. Read that again. It's the truth. Learning what doesn't work will keep us sharper in the future, and it will also keep our overall betting edges stronger.
Without further adieu, let's jump into the Round 1 data from the TOUR Championship on Friday and determine which golfers we are looking to either buy or fade on Saturday at East Lake. We will again be using strokes gained approach and strokes gained tee to green numbers for our two sets of data. We will subtract a golfers strokes gained putting numbers for each set of those two data points. The premise again here is that putting is often unpredictable and will regress from round to round, whereas approach and tee to green are the "sticky" stats that indicate which golfers are/aren't playing well in the moment.
Our "buy" golfers will be those with a rating of "+3" or higher. Our "fade" golfers will be those with a rating of "-3" or lower. For the sake of this tournament, however, and with the limited 30-man field size, I'm willing to stretch the numbers to +2 for buys and -2 for fades to give us more matchup options to bet:
Strokes Gained Approach (BUYS):
- Webb Simpson +3.90
- Collin Morikawa +2.97
- Justin Thomas +2.58
- Sebastian Munoz +2.14
- Scottie Scheffler +2.01
Strokes Gained Tee to Green (BUYS):
- Justin Thomas +5.00
- Webb Simpson +2.73
- Collin Morikawa +2.44
- Tony Finau +2.26
- Cameron Champ +2.18
Strokes Gained Off The Tee (BUYS):
- Collin Morikawa +3.11
- Bryson DeChambeau +2.84
- Justin Thomas +2.64
- Cameron Champ +2.64
- Tony Finau +2.61
- Ryan Palmer +2.20
- Webb Simpson +2.14
*Players who qualified in all three stat thresholds are as followed below, with total combined net ratings. These are our strongest rated BUYS going into Saturday for Round 2 of the TOUR Championship:
- Justin Thomas (+10.22)
- Webb Simpson (+8.77)
- Collin Morikawa (+8.52)
Strokes Gained Approach (FADES):
- Billy Horschel -3.25
- Brendan Todd -3.23
- Mackenzie Hughes -2.89
- Joaquin Niemann -2.39
Strokes Gained Tee to Green (FADES):
- Mackenzie Hughes -4.22
- Billy Horschel -3.60
- Kevin Kisner -3.30
- Joaquin Niemann -3.30
- Brendan Todd -3.06
- Marc Leishman -2.70
Strokes Gained Off The Tee (FADES):
- Marc Leishman -3.22
- John Rahm -2.89
- Mackenzie Hughes -2.14
- Billy Horschel -2.05
*Players who qualified in all three stat thresholds are as followed below, with total combined net ratings. These are our strongest rated FADES going into Saturday for Round 2 of the TOUR Championship:
- Mackenzie Hughes -9.25
- Billy Horschel -8.90
Note: Although Brendan Todd makes the fade list on two of our data point sets, I will lean towards passing on fading him to due to his high level of consistent putting overall, especially since the restart. He's a guy who can keep the short game at a high level all weekend. I saw a matchup with him and Sungjae Im and decided to pass. Below are the bets matchup bets I was able to target based off our numbers from Round 1. These matchups are currently being offered via betonline.ag, for those of you (like me) who might live in a non-legalized sports betting state like Florida. If you can find one of our buys head-to-head with one of our fades at a different book, I would strongly recommend placing your biggest bets on those specifically:
Round 2 Matchup Best Bets:
- Scottie Scheffler > Billy Horschel (1 unit)
- Webb Simpson > Marc Leishman (1 unit between ML and -1/2)
- Ryan Palmer > Kevin Kisner (1 unit between ML and +1/2)
- Sebastian Munoz > Patrick Reed (1 unit between ML and +1/2)
- Tony Finau > Daniel Berger (1 unit between ML and +1/2)
- Justin Thomas > Rory McIlroy (0.5 unit)
- Justin Thomas > John Rahm (0.5 unit between ML and +1/2)
With Webb, you're going to have to lay a little juice at -180 for the ML, but it's worth it. He led the field with +1.88 strokes gained approach on Friday but lost over 2 strokes with his putter. Justin Thomas, on the other hand, finished top four in strokes gained approach (+1.43) and nearly doubled the entire field with a whopping +3.88 strokes gained tee to green. Add that to the fact he lost 1.15 strokes putting, and JT is in a prime position to contend for the overall top spot on the leaderboard once Round 2 concludes. I also saw Thomas with head-to-head Round 2 matchups against Dustin Johnson and John Rahm. Once we added the tee to green numbers and I noticed Rahm on the fade list there, I decided to split my Justin Thomas unit between his head-to-head with Rahm and his head-to-head with Rory, whose putter was on fire.
As for our main fades, I mentioned earlier that I'm not simply blind-fading Brendan Todd because his putting numbers are the least likely to regress out of the entire 30-man field this weekend. The only Joaquin Niemann matchup I could find was against Mackenzie Hughes, and with both of them listed as fades above, I decided to pass on that. I am comfortable fading Patrick Reed again for the second straight day, after he was in the negative with his approach and tee to green numbers in Round 1. Reed simply had a bad day on Friday, and based off the numbers he might be set for an overall bad weekend. Anyways, big thanks again to DataGolf.com's Live Strokes Gained page for providing us with the free data and sortable chart. Best of luck to everyone on their matchups and overall TOUR bets. I will continue to analyze our matchups and give out my best plays for each round based on the numbers here on the website as well.