RADIO
Welcome RotoBallers to my LIV golf betting picks series. The LIV Golf Series makes its first stop in Asia this week as the players head to the Pathum Thani province of Thailand, just north of Bangkok. It may also be the first tournament where OWGR points are on the line for LIV players. If you are interested in viewing the tournament from America this week, you will be in for a long night. Players are set to tee off at 10:15 am locally in Thailand, meaning they will go off at 11:15 pm EST.
If you do stay up to watch the event, the course should set up for a fun viewing experience. Stonehill is a brand-new course which just opened in July of this year. The course was funded by Sarath Ratanavadi, who according to Bloomberg, is the second richest man in the country. Stonehill sits on 340 acres of land and took five years for designer Kyle Phillips to complete. Ratanavadi was quoted saying “a good golf course can only be built once. You can’t change the layout or grasses once completed, I’m willing to make it perfect.”
The course this week will play as a monstrous 7891-yard par 72. It will be the longest course that players have played so far on the LIV circuit. The fairways are wide, and the greens are Tifeagle Bermuda surface. Below is the official round one LIV Golf scorecard.
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LIV Golf Bangkok Event and Course Breakdown
Below is the official round one scorecard provided by LIV Golf.
|
Hole |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Out |
|
Par |
4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
36 |
|
Yardage |
431 | 636 | 191 | 495 | 343 | 584 | 202 | 484 | 493 |
3860 |
|
Hole |
10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
In |
|
Par |
4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 |
36 |
| Yardage | 453 | 626 | 509 | 229 | 372 | 497 | 171 | 603 | 495 |
3955 |
Despite the wide fairways, we can expect players to be tested and struggle this week at Stonehill. Dustin Johnson spoke with LIV Golf’s Mike McAllister this week and was quoted this week as saying “don’t think you’re going to see low numbers. Even with the wide fairways, you have long clubs into the greens. If you’re not controlling your ball, it’s going to be a long day. If you get out of position, it’s tough to get up and down.”
Given the course length and width of the fairways, I will be focusing on driving distance over accuracy this week. Six of the par-4s play over 480 yards and three of the par-5s over 600. Players who are short off the tee are going to be hitting a lot of long irons into greens which will make it more difficult to create birdie opportunities. I will also be looking at players who can hit mid to long irons well. As mentioned above by DJ, getting up and down is difficult if you are missing greens at Stonehill. Players who want to succeed will need to hit a lot of greens in regulation this week.
Lastly, I’m going to take a hard look at scrambling and around the green game this week. On a course playing over 7800 there is going to inevitably be a lot of missed greens due to the long approach shots coming in. Players who have a chance to win come Sunday are going to need to be able to save par when missing the green.
LIV Golf Betting Odds - Bangkok
Below are the odds for the event as listed by DraftKings:
| Player | Winner |
| Dustin Johnson | 450 |
| Cameron Smith | 500 |
| Joaquin Niemann | 700 |
| Talor Gooch | 1400 |
| Louis Oosthuizen | 1800 |
| Sergio Garcia | 2000 |
| Patrick Reed | 2500 |
| Paul Casey | 2500 |
| Bryson DeChambeau | 2500 |
| Abraham Ancer | 2500 |
| Matthew Wolff | 3500 |
| Lee Westwood | 3500 |
| Kevin Na | 3500 |
| Jason Kokrak | 3500 |
| Harold Varner | 3500 |
| Charles Howell | 3500 |
| Brooks Koepka | 4000 |
| Anirban Lahiri | 4000 |
| Branden Grace | 4000 |
| Pat Perez | 5500 |
| Bend Wiesberger | 5500 |
| Cameron Tringale | 6000 |
| Matt Jones | 6500 |
| Marc Leishman | 6500 |
| Ian Poulter | 6500 |
| Henrik Stenson | 6500 |
| Char Schwartzel | 6500 |
| Carlos Ortiz | 8000 |
| Richard Bland | 8000 |
| Peter Uihlein | 8000 |
| Sam Horsfield | 10000 |
| Martin Kaymer | 13000 |
| Laurie Canter | 13000 |
| Sadom Kaewkanjana | 15000 |
| Scott Vincent | 15000 |
| Phil Mickelson | 15000 |
| Phachara Khongwatmai | 15000 |
| Hudson Swafford | 15000 |
| Graeme McDowell | 15000 |
| Sihwan Kim | 20000 |
| James Piot | 25000 |
| Hideto Tanihara | 25000 |
| Chase Koepka | 25000 |
| Shaun Norris | 25000 |
| Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra | 30000 |
| Jediah Morgan | 40000 |
| Turk Pettit | 40000 |
| Wade Ormsby | 40000 |
LIV Golf Betting Strategy and Selections - Bangkok
Dustin Johnson and Cam Smith have won the last two LIV Golf Series events and it looks as if the elites are finally taking control of the tour. On a long and challenging course like Stonehill, I believe it is going to be even more difficult for an unlikely winner to sneak a victory out. I am going to shift the way I create my card this week as a result. I will be making three selections somewhere in the 20-40 range.
Below are the official odds as posted by Draftkings sportsbook. As always odds vary from book to book so be sure to search around and see where you can find the best number.
Sergio Garcia +2000
2021 was the first year since 2010 that Sergio Garcia failed to win any tournament worldwide. It is now October and he is dangerously close to extending the drought to two years. It would be easy to suggest that Garcia is done winning but I truly don’t think that’s the case. While his best days are surely behind him, I believe he still has what it takes to win a golf tournament, especially in a 48-man field. Sergio has finished 4th, 9th and 7th in the last three LIV Golf tournaments and I believe this course should set up nicely for him.
He is fantastic off the tee and has enough distance to be able to compete on a track of this length. His irons had been holding back over the past year or so but he looks to be turning that around. He finished third in the field in Chicago in GIR, a stat that will be important this week in Bangkok. Despite being a notoriously bad putter, Sergio has actually putted okay in his recent LIV starts. At both the LIV Chicago and Bedminster event, Garcia ranked top-15 in the field in total putting.
Lastly, I like Garcia’s record in Asia. He has won six times in his career on the continent of Asia, including a win at the Thailand Golf Championship which took place in Bangkok. This isn’t necessarily a make or break factor but I do like that he’s headed to a city that he’s won in before.
Matthew Wolff +3500
In four starts on the LIV Golf Series, Matthew Wolff has never finished outside the top-16. I wrote about it before the Chicago event but Wolff really seems like a different player since joining LIV. He’s noted that he’s in a much better head space now that he has more free time in his schedule and it appears to be translating into his performance on the course.
I like the set up of this course a lot for Wolff as he is one of the longer players in the field. Over his four starts with LIV, Wolff has consistently ranked inside the top-5 in the field in driving distance. He’s also been known to have some success on longer courses in his career. He finished T15 and second in last two US Open appearances at Torrey Pines and Winged Foot respectively. These are two of the longer courses we have seen played on the PGA Tour schedule over the past few seasons. He also has another T21 finish at Torrey Pines at the Farmers Insurance Open which is the longest course consistently featured in the PGA Tour rotation.
Brooks Koepka +4000
This may end up going very poorly. Koepka has done virtually nothing in the past six months to suggest he’s going to win a golf tournament. In fact, he hasn’t finished inside the top-10 of a stroke play event since the Waste Management back in February. That being said, the 40-1 number is large enough to get me to spin-zone my way into liking this one. So here we go.
Brooks finally has had some time to relax and work on his game. In the past four months he’s dealt with injury, got married in Turks and Caicos and spent two weeks honeymooning in Italy. He’s never exactly been a range rat but not touching a club for weeks at a time on multiple occasions over the past few months was never going to result in good finishes.
In a move that raised some eyebrows around The Open Championship, Koepka went back to his TaylorMade SIM driver, despite signing a deal with Srixon less than a year prior. He never really felt fully comfortable with the Srixon driver and went back to old reliable. At the last LIV event in Chicago, Kopeka was seen with a new Srixon model driver which has yet to be released to the public. He worked directly with Srixon on the design and it is tailored exactly to his liking. This tells me two things: he will hopefully see improvement with the driver and that he is actually paying attention to his game and working on ways to improve it.
Furthermore, for the first time since joining LIV there are potential OWGR points on the line. Koepka has historically stepped up his game when the event actually matters to him. While I think it would be ridiculous to compare the minimal OWGR points players will receive for winning this week to the likes of a major championship, it does feel like there is a little bit more on the line this week. LIV members need all the help they can get in the OWGR and any points players can acquire feel significant.
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