Ron and Ryan turn their heads toward California as the tour heads to the mainland. They’ll talk about how the courses play, the early odds board, and who they think might be a look at these prices.
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1:15 The Courses
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American Express First Look: Early Betting Odds & The Golf Course(s)
Morning everyone welcome back bets spts golf here for first look at the American Express 2024 PGA West joining me here to uh walk through some of this here as we uh take our first journey now we are State Side uh a lot of stuff going on in
This guy’s life since we first last talked to him last week I mean we got a Michigan Natty we got a Aloha blue Lions playoff Victory Ron Claus just basking in the glory of uh just football wins buddy how we doing yeah I think the football capital of the world right now
Um so yeah you got it right now you got it right now and uh you know it’s like 20 below zero so I don’t even feel it though so you know it’s uh flying pretty high um gon to be interesting next next Sunday you know uh Eagles you know bucks
You know I think those are two beatable teams so uh we’ll see sky’s the limit yeah excited for you guys obviously been a very very very long time uh so yeah definitely the football Capital world right now for sure without a doubt so uh but let’s talk golf we are in the season
As we you know get to now California we’re gonna have you know these multi-course tracks obviously PJ West is uh is definitely one of them uh you know we get into this spot where you know Daylight’s tough we also are jamming in a proam here so in terms of like stats
That matter uh and some of the data is a little bit tricky because if you are unaware three course rotation here we have one course the Pete die Stadium Course which is capturing um the only shot link data that we have so it is a 54 hole Saturday cut instead of your
Traditional Friday cut after 36 holes you’re going to play all three of these tracks you’re going to play the Pete die course the Nicholas tournament course and Lita uh and then the guys who make the cut top 65 in ties will play again on the stadium course so we this just a
Little tricky in terms of data because we just have we’re Flying Blind essentially on two courses and they’re super duper easy Ron you want to just kind of talk about the courses here before we jump in yeah so and because they’re so easy it’s like the data is even less
Important than typical because um you know like John Ram said it’s basically is a you know a birdie Fest and um so you have these three courses all three of them are very similar um in a lot of ways um obviously there I think L is the third easiest
Course on tour Nicholas is fifth and then Pete the Pete di Stadium Course was ranked ninth and this is going back over the last five years so when you take that sample size three of the top 10 easiest on tour so one of the big things
For me is looking at past performance on other easyc scoring courses um so the field is stronger than it’s ever been here I think it’s actually the strongest ever so that’ll add a little twist to it but um I think just overall you know looking at those birdie stats
Birdie are better um scoring chances you know inside 15 feet um obviously guys who can make those consistent putts from you know five to 15 feet um you know those things and then you you look at par five scoring you know all four all three courses have four par fives so
We’re getting the Full Slate of par fives um so you know players who can take advantage of those obviously they’re very easy um and so you know when you get into you know the there’s a little a few things here and there like on the Pete dice Stadium course you know
There is a lot of water um there is danger off the tea um so you know we’re talking about three guaranteed rounds and only one guaranteed round on that course so you know players get to the fourth round they’ll be on there again but you know the Nicholas and the lint
Courses are just so easy there’s there’s no danger off the tea you know the par 3es are a little challenging um but really that’s about it and so you know for me looking at scoring stats looking at guys who are you know strong approach putting you know just kind of those Basics this
Week yeah your defending champ is uh John Rah he is obviously not here to defend um Hudson Swafford the year before also not here to to defend so uh you know maybe there’s some you know you’re you’re heading to live uh if you uh win this week so yeah it is a
Challenging week uh because you you have less data but again you know you have to score uh we know that that is you know one of the key commonalities here so uh before we jump in here let’s take a look at some of the stats that matter we can
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There on uh on the tool the rabbit hole we’re going to walk you through is also something that we’re really really excited about if you are uh just seeing this for the first time is a officially licensed fully customizable PGA Tour database uh that has things that you
Cannot uh chop up and split up anywhere else is something that is uh very unique to us uh CSV download I absolutely love because you can build lots of different models and kind of pull them to the side and do all sorts of stuff you cannot do
That anywhere else there are all sorts of customizable metrics uh filters conditions things that you are not going to find uh we’re going to talk through some of those today so if you are checking us out for the first time again you can get access access to this for
Five bucks for the entire season or just DM us and we’ll get you a nice little discount so all right Ron let’s take a look here so uh again what we have here in terms of if you were to pulled course history which you could do you could
Simply go into the course tab you know and pull up the events and pull up the American Express and you’d be able to you know look at uh what’s happened here in the past a little bit noisy so I’m not going to do that I again we’re only
Going to capture the two rounds here too but uh in terms of what you’re looking at here when you want to look into the Rabbit Hole uh scoring you mentioned what would be some spots that you would start from a uh statistical standpoint yeah well I think just even
Just from a broad perspective just to let people know like if you go to course type um we have a desert so obviously there’s um you know desert golf this week you know TPC Scottsdale is another course where you know it’s kind of a desert environment um and so if you
Wanted to go look at that angle um under course typee that’s there um I just think uh if you also would go to course region now you could go by state obviously you’re not just going to um select California although you could but um you could go also to filter by
Conditions and once you open up that section um we have the West Coast season so obviously January February are all part of these you know early months in the PJ tour so if you just want to see okay how do guys perform you know the first two months of the year which this
Tournament is included um you just check on West Coast and it’s going to pull up those courses for you so for me this week just keep you know coming with this theme one of the one of the things um related to this time of year is the Bermuda grasses dorment so
For our green surface we have poetri Vialis which is the surface uh they’ll be playing on this week for all three courses so that is definitely one um for me when I’m building my model on here that I’ll be looking at uh for putting um if you let’s see what else we have
Here um if you go on the very top of that filter menu you can see we have not not just three filters for scoring conditions we have easy and also very easy so these three courses would be in the very easy category so if you just wanted to see like these extreme
Probably I think it’s I think it’s about 10 or 12 courses that are have played very easy over the past um you know eight or nine years you could select that category so I’ll be looking at that um and then when you kind of get into
Back to the main page um for me you know go to the scoring section obviously you see bir your better percentage there very important um a lot of guys are going to be playing from the Fairway uh fairies are wide even the rough is is very minimum here we’re talking you know
Between one and two inches uh the rye grass is going to be the um grass that has been overseed so Bermuda will be dormant it’ll be brown on your TV this week uh and so it’s going to be just really easy to hit uh greens this week
You know G percentage is very high as as well so a lot of stats from this section I’ll be using and then par five performance um and obviously the approach um ranges kind of looking at uh more of the uh kind of the wedge up to 17500 uh was kind of the proximities
I’ll be looking at here um so that that’s a few that I’ll be probably waiting pretty high this week yeah the approach buckets are interesting because you you know you have a lot of wedges you don’t get a lot of like the longer 200 plus but you know those are
Kind of important because you have to take advantage of the par fives here like if you are not scoring on the par fives uh you know there’s just some pretty massive Eagle rates uh obviously birdie rates you got to take advantage so even though like you’re not getting
Like a a large plurality of shots from that Vantage Point like you got to be really strong with them too so I think it does matters does is gonna be something that I look at even though I think it might not be something that a lot of people are trying to capture here
Too um you notice too what I did while Ron was talking there use this uh this round minimum feature too to basically you know sus out any of like the really small sample sizes and then it reshuffles uh and reweights this based off of the rounds uh sampled so you
Could actually click on this too these will give you the data in terms of uh you know shotlink data and measured rounds versus unmeasured rounds because you know and we’re going to have that here a little bit too we’re working on expanding and building out these player
Pages but that’s something that you can do here they get a little sense of uh you know based off of the metrics and samples and filters that we have on you want to get some of the data here based on that you can go ahead and click in here too pretty straightforward let’s
Just look big picture before we start here Ron let’s just look at uh you know from a Strokes gain standpoint I love the rounds gain featured we touched on a little bit last week before we got off um the not just looking at where someone ranks what the average or what the total
Is but the percentage of round gains I think gives you a little bit of a better story in terms of consistency how often guys are getting the job done versus just you know having some some real Spike weeks so uh you’ve got to be able to obviously be dialed in in across the
Board here these are really small greens so I do think around the green matters a little bit too we’re scrambling or some sort of way to be able to capture that though you can make the case that hey if you are you’re missing the greens you’re not putting yourself in in position to
Make burries with your approach being dialed in you’re probably in trouble this week anyway I think that’s probably fair but I think that uh it does matter a little bit here just looking at the last six months let’s see who in this field uh so we got some small sample uh stuff
Going on here let’s pull out uh go say last 16 rounds very interesting here what’s actually popping up uh Sam Ryder is gaining Strokes on approach uh had 81 and a half perent of his measured rounds over the last six months which is I think that’s that’s probably pretty good
Sam Ryder plays some pretty good golf uh in the west coast uh with someone that’s actually interesting to me last night and was it open it 200 to one today uh so I didn’t think we’d you know lead with Sam Ryder but uh you could see Sheffer not far behind some other
Familiar names JT Poston continues to be dialed in kley has played well here in the past uh as has uh his uh his dinner buddy uh Xander who opened up uh pretty short nine to one Xander to open who had a nice little showing here last year too
But this again this is I like this because I think this just tells a better Strokes gain story uh in terms of percent round game versus just kind of capturing the spike weaks you know which obviously we want from a DFS standpoint you want to be able to have those strong
Performances but I think from a betting standpoint finishing position bets matchups things like that I think consistency matters quite a bit yeah and if you um another another good thing to check this week like I was saying earlier with it being early in
The year is um if you go to the um the filter menu again and and select you know West Coast um let’s look at it for that season and and you know these guys and that’s just another thing with you know predictiveness you know some guys just
Play better earlier in the year some guys definitely play better you know out west um on these types of greens especially um and so um you know hadwin as a guy as you see here you know first up there he’s you know his course history is impeccable here um hasn’t
Been playing well here the first two weeks of the year um as well as he as he typically does uh but it’s just real interesting to see kind of the patterns you can pick up on and you kind of combine this with current form with you know I know course history really does
Not matter a whole lot this week um for me it’s more of looking at this West Coast history instead of just these course history and then combine that with performance on easy scoring courses as well yeah oh that’s a good call so this is you can see here you got a
Little red dot that let you know you have a condition uh activated and you can see it here as well where it says event season West Coast that’s the filter that we currently have uh eliminating some of the small sample stuff with a minimum of 16 rounds I went
Last three years and you can see for most of these guys we’re getting a fairly decent sample uh obviously you know 40 rounds spread out over three years is you know maybe a little bit of a noisy data set but you know I think you’re going to just be dealing with it
With in terms of you know filtering out coar region stuff to begin with but I do think it’s part of the story to be told and uh you know Xander California guy uh here at the very top in terms of Strokes total uh over the time frame Scotty
Canley not three guys that I’m super shocked to see at the very very very top let’s look at it from a te green standpoint uh then we can look at some easy scoring condition stuff here before we wrap because I think that that’s pretty important too uh so same you know
Similar stuff zalot Taurus is interesting obviously the zalot Taurus you know data set here is being pulled from you know really good zalot Taurus not missing last year so you’re G to take that with a a grain of salt we’re going to probably have some of that with
Uh we only went back three years we’re not going to get much Daniel Burger data although we’re gonna have Daniel Burger back this week which is interesting as well uh and opened up significantly shorter than I thought he would at like 66 to one uh will be definitely a stay
Away so yeah some of the top names that you would expect here sunj who uh has had a nice little run here has played some good golf in the past uh popping here SEIU winner here before which makes a lot of sense we get JT uh back in
Action JT obviously uh you missed the Hawaii swing there made sense for him to not go to Sony after not qualifying for the sentury but yeah JT seems to be getting uh JT credit for basically wiping 2023 off the board in terms of where he is on the odds board this
Morning as we opened up uh where he is between like 18 and 25 from what I’ve seen so you’re basically paying almost full Freight for JT which I think is very interesting but let’s look at some of the uh easy scoring condition stuff here on before we uh before we wrap I
Think that that’s a a really good thing someone asked me this uh and I think it’s important for to clarify here if I pick uh very easy scoring conditions um am I capturing anything from easy or if um if I’m clicking easy am I getting the
Very easy as well or do I have to click them both so yeah that’s that’s one where you would select both so if you select one it’s only going to pull those and so you pull both it’s going to show you everything easy and that’s that’s
Definitely the way that I would I would use that yeah and that’s why I told people so I’m glad I gave the right answer yeah this is brand new for us too so we want to make sure that we are um you know know the thresholds that count
As easy and very easy and what counts for that so um what else do we I don’t want to I don’t want to over like chop this up should we just do uh these scoring additions and see what spits out yeah now typically the normal American Express you I would select for field
Strength you know very weak and weak because that’s what it normally is but this week is not I would I would say it’s probably average um and maybe even not not probably not strong yet but I would probably just this week just look at those easy conditions and see you
Know how guys perform yeah let’s let’s do that because we’re gonna obviously if we chop up very easy easy West Coast and obviously that you know we’re getting a really small sample but let’s just look at very easy and easy scoring conditions here let me play around with uh maybe a
Smaller sample because you can see we’re grabbing quite a few rounds let’s just look what happened in uh in the last 12 months see what we’re getting here and see what the rank or the average is too because I think that’s that’s as if I think this week it’s also important to
Look kind of look at ceiling because you want a guy who’s going to you know go off with birdies and stuff and so you know looking at the average will show you even some separation and low Strokes gain total averages all right yeah we’re getting a good size 50 rounds or so for
Most guys uh Strokes gain total on easy courses Andre shley uh at the very top which uh again I can be sold on Scotty Sher there as well shuffler uh like 550 uh 5 to one or so to open here Xander at 9 uh kind of right behind him JT Poston
Continues to play good golf I know uh you know we were a few of us were on him last week put together a fantastic Sunday to tease us again uh consider him again this week the nice Strong finish there like T6 although you got cost I
Don’t know how much uh we didn’t even touch on uh any of the Sony it was a very tilting Keegan sweat uh very tilting to watch Carl Yan absolutely bang one off like the uh you know right field foul pole and gets credit for uh a drop there and cost some other some
People some money and made me pretty aggravated at the time cost posting some uh some harder in cash there too but yeah post a nice finish Sammy Burns makes sense Sam Burns has played decent golf here Sam Burns can get just white hot with the putter as we know uh
Popping here in terms of uh easy scoring conditions Jason day Eric Cole Tony fenos is really some of the top of the board that we would expect uh here showing up in a big big way Cam Davis as well who I know you were on got off
Through an early start there as you can see Adam hadwin uh this is just Strokes game total let’s look from a uh TD green standpoint see if there’s anyone else because you mentioned here look you see here with Haden from a TD green standpoint not popping like he is from a
A Strokes game total so you the Potter can get pretty hot here short game can get pretty hot on easy scoring conditions let’s go t to green and see if there’s anyone else that might be showing up for some uh separation some of the same names here and brought it
Out to like maybe three years and see I know Klay has a reputation for you know kind of eating these courses up he has a great history here as well um so I’ll be curious to see if we widen it a little bit that changes a little
Two yeah I mean two years we’re getting aund 100 rounds for some of these guys have big old sample and we could even that’s another thing you can do if you want to you know that is a lot of sample for some of these guys you know you see
Canley going up to number two you could also you know we could also check out just the very easy since these are definitely a category of a grouping of courses that are you know playing well under par so it’s another option if you want even less sample you want to narrow
It down further yeah these definitely some of the names I would expect to see here so let’s we’ll move e uh easy let’s see what we get here for uh all getting around 35 30 rounds last two years here uh for folks on very easy scoring conditions
Uh and there you go at the top Patrick Hanley sunj M Scotty Sheffer Tom Kim again some of the top of the board from a uh odds standpoint we get an appearance from Taylor pendrith who we hadn’t seen yet uh Stephen Jagger who Andy will bet for sure now that he’s
Popping up there uh we don’t need to twist Andy’s arm to bet Stephen jger he loves to make that bet Eric Cole continues to uh show up although the sample here pretty small but Eric Cole playing really good golf uh consistently in the mix got saved by the Damon putt
Last week on the cut uh but it just continues to play consistent golf TOA green short gamees really good uh a spot here where again like you mentioned you don’t have to be like Precision off the te in terms of you know setting yourself up for the second shot on Stadium course
You do have to worry a little bit about water you know they wanted this course to be set up very very difficult to have it kind of be a Saw Grass of the West and you so you do have some of the similarities there but you know from a
Typical Pete die standpoint you don’t need to have that like Precision off the which is sometimes when you maybe want to move off of Eric Cole because uh You Wayward drives are kind of his undoing at times so and watch out for Tom Kim this week too you know you saw him I
Think he’s fourth on this list uh he yes also eats up these easy courses uh was sixth here last year you know he’s 30 to1 which I think is is pretty decent odds for him so um you know had a week off last week so he’s he’s a guy
Definitely have on my radar this week yeah that’s a good call also want to look at you know we mentioned the poor trivial for the for the greens also because we have the amateur situation here like you’re gonna have easier pins you’re gonna have slower greens too um
Do you think there’s any use in looking into like slower green speeds as well or are we probably you maybe over chopping it up there no I mean this is you know these greens are about as pure as a kits um you know caddies have told me that
They’re it’s basically like putting on carpet you know it’s not it’s not bumpy POA it’s it’s like a mixture of you know the very bent the purest bent grass you can imagine is kind of what they described it as and so you know you get
A pretty pure role here um and so yeah I think you know if you select um I’m I’m looking here on another screen at at the POA and yeah you can see you know you don’t even necessarily have to look at putting just you know even Strokes gain
Total on these greens um and you know a guy like Justin Thomas is even popping up here um as well um because you know again they’re two of the courses this week you know with Nicholas and linta you’re not going to get the actual putting data um but there are a bunch of
Courses that use po trivialis even TPC sress um you know Harbor toown you know some of these other ones use that same surface and so you know there’s there’s just so many different ways you can you know you can look at it you know even you know like we’re looking at right now
You know you know three putt avoidance will not be as much of a deal this week um but we have another putting sections putting ranges um and that will show you you know if you want to look at 5 to 15 feet um you know can kind of hone in on
You know the guys who are really consistent in those ranges you can build a model and you know what I’ll do is I’ll build a model and add just those two categories you know five to 10 then 10 to 15 and weigh those pretty heavily
You know and that’s kind of how you weed out you know the guys who tend to get lucky sometimes making those longer putts yeah no that’s a really good call you can see here this is the putting range section where we were capturing some of this data here and a decent
Sample I guess relative with the uh you know split out here for thep green surface uh that you can do here just looking again go back to uh putting or you can just go in The Strokes gain section uh you could see here who is putting really well on the surface
Taylor Montgomery who had a nice showing here last year I believe it was top five or close to Sam Ryder Again Sam Burns uh cooch Justin sus you know some some just good Baseline Putters some good California Putters uh which makes sense is where we uh we have these guys
Showing up you can see here hadn here down at the bottom as well well um these things these things matter a little bit even Scotty uh putting fairly well with a decent sample uh on this track so if you want to uh just bite the bullet it’s
Just hard for me to to you know take a shot at five to one in in a spot where you we need we might need to get to 30 uh it might not be my preferred spot for a guy like Sheffer when you know some of
These other guys are actually in the mix but yeah I would not be surprised to see a a decent Scotty week based off of some of this stuff here too cley here as well some other names that we saw just looking big picture Strokes gained off
The te Strokes gained Tea Green uh you know on easier courses are just the best players in the field so not surprising the best players in the field showing well no matter what the uh the stuff is that we’re chopping up here so yeah that’s uh that’s a good first
Look for us Ron I think again like you get access to this for very very very cheap to Simply build the up top here you see create mixed condition model all you got to do is click this little add uh you can make a note here uh you can
Add it to the model all the things that you add at the end once you hit this create button it will take you to a screen uh let me just add a couple things here just to show you and it’ll take you to a screen where you can weigh
All the stats so you want to play around with the weights um I’ll just do this for now just to show you if you’re looking at it for the first time it’s going to populate into a new window you can uh give it a name and you
Can save it you can see here I have stuff from uh last year when we first were getting this tool rolling I could simply just turn on and off and see what I want to do but you can see here any of the notes that you would have put would
Be here in the description uh and then all you need to do is weigh it you can also hover hover over this little thing here and it’ll show you all the uh filters that applied so this is golfers in the American Express field over the last two years uh with puttting again
Depending on what you’re doing it’ll have all that for you which is really really nice to to be able to to take a look at um the other thing I was going to say you can also look at what we have so you can go here to this tab and view
Expert rankings uh Ron myself and Andy will have something saved for you every week and you want to see what we’re weighing and what matters to us this week you can simply go in there take a look see what our model looks like see if you want to add any stats to yours
And again part of this is allowing you to do whatever you want to do on your own and not just uh you know copying off of what we’re doing I think is an important thing and I think people really enjoy when it comes to handicapping golf so all right good stuff good first
Look uh hang it head over to the site again betsports golf.com and more information on the site in terms of how to get access to this this for cheap Vivid deal is great jump in the DMS PJ splits 101 uh me Ry noon on nun on Twitter and then also betsports golf as
Well we can get you a promo code to get take access or take advantage if you can access the Vivid deal which sorry outside of our control but again uh fun site I made some money on the NFL Vivid picks yesterday so uh and we will have
Golf every week as well so good stuff come back to uh BBS golf later in the week Ron’s going to have lots of content for us covering DFS the DFS show on Wednesday Andy and I betting uh on Tuesday so for Ron I’m Ryan we’ll see you all next time thanks everyone
1 Comment
Tom Kim, squad play. Winner, FRL, Wire-to-Wire, matchups.