RADIO
My sausage fingers are cheering with every stroke of a letter on the keyboard knowing that we only have two outrights to write about this week, which is significantly less than the eight or so golfers we have been talking about here for the last few events. Two of those golfers gave us a great chance at our first win of the year, but Sahith Theegala depleted his energy bank battling through the horrific a.m./p.m. wave that saw him as the only golfer from that wave challenging for a win at the WM Phoenix Open. He played magnificently and I truly believe he wins that tournament if he were in the less mentally exhausting wave. Sam Burns also flirted with the win, but ultimately ran out of holes.
After saying what I did about Theegala, I don't think the Frankenstein golfer of Tiger Nicklaus would have beaten Nick Taylor the way he was sniping putt after putt on the glassy Arizona greens. We bet him multiple times this year already and decided to leave him off our card at a course that arguably made the most sense of them all. Sheesh. Regardless, the two TVs in the living room on Sunday evening definitely had more of our room's eyeballs watching Charley Hoffman recycle Nick Taylor's ambitions of winning this event. The WM ambassador shot -7 on Sunday and ultimately ended up losing in a playoff to Taylor, who birdied five of his last six holes he played that day.
For those of you who are new to the article, Breaking $100 is a comprehensive PGA betting guide on how to squeeze every cent out of your $100. We will be breaking $100 into a betting card of outrights, first-round leaders, placings, and a "farewell fiver" all in an attempt to turn a structured betting strategy into a profitable and entertaining Sunday sweat. $100 is easily divided or multiplied, so please only bet amounts that you can afford to lose. You can find me on X an unhealthy amount of the time @TheModelManiac, if you have any questions, compliments, or insults for me.
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Recap of Last Week
The move to reduce the amount we win on outrights has been wondrous! We will keep the outright budget at $10 and make sure that we allot the majority of our funds to bets that we know we can regularly return profit on. After getting whacked with a reverse sweep at the Farmers, our last two weeks have clawed our way back to just about erasing that $100 we lost in the California catastrophe. $43 at Pebble and $25.59 last week has us about 70% of the way to recovering our losses there. Another good week and we should be back to profiting for the year. If we hit an outright, that would really help as well.
Theegala finishing fifth and letting Burns finish T3 with only Scottie splitting that purse with him really had us feeling good about our OAD and both those bets. Adam Scott had a nice little back door top-10 and Tom Hoge notched his third T20 in his last four starts, while Brendon Todd putted his way all the way to a comfortable T40. We had a ton of bets in the placement market and Justin Thomas barely missed out on a T10 by one shot, which would have been a $33 swing had that cashed. It was a good week!
✅Breaking $100 #WMPhoenixOpen Recap: +$25.59
💀Outrights: -$8.20 ... Sahith Burns ...
Placements: +$38.79
✅Sahith T5 +600
✅Burns T10 +220
✅Scott T10 +450
✅Hoge T20 +275
✅Todd T40 +125👋Farewell Fiver: -$5
Notes:
Placement market continues to subsidize the outright… https://t.co/HG9V2TkXSc
— Byron Lindeque (@TheModelManiac) February 12, 2024
Outrights ($10)
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Last week, we left a little budget on the table, as Justin Thomas just never drifted far enough down the odds board to pull the trigger on a live add. So, we will make it right this week and go a little more aggressive on the outright card with two outrights that would return x6.11 instead of the usual 7.0 that we aim for.
Scottie Scheffler $8.27 at +750 (Bet365)
Scottie Scheffler is the World No. 1! However, the publicity and limelight he will have on him this week will not be that of the best golfer in the world. Tiger Woods is back to playing golf. Max Homa is the hometown kid looking for redemption at a course he vowed to win at again in front of his family and fans. Rory McIlroy is making his second start of the 2024 season and will be the target of many LIV-related questions.
Nick Taylor just won the WM Phoenix Open and will have precious preparation gobbled up by media obligations, which, for the first time in 1,000 days, Scottie Scheffler will not enter the week as the champion of the WMPO. To me, this is a massively overlooked factor for the World No. 1, who, admittedly, likes to fly under the radar.
Now that we get the off course analysis behind, which I think is the most important element of Scottie's chances this week, let's take a look at how he suits this golf course. If you take a look at last year's leaderboard, notice the rankings in the strokes gained tee-to-green column, where eight of the 10 best performers in that category managed to find themselves inside the top 10 on the leaderboard.
What is even more appealing to me is that only three golfers ranked inside the top 10 were inside the top 12 in SG Putting for the week. If you are an avid golf bettor, you don't even have to research who has handsomely led the PGA tour in SG T2G -- it's Scottie Scheffler, who has been doing it at a level that many describe as Tiger-esque.
Seriously considering a Scottie Single bullet just looking at last year's leaderboard pic.twitter.com/tkbDdcfKLk
— Byron Lindeque (@TheModelManiac) February 12, 2024
Scheffler has gained an average of +3.12 strokes T2G in the last 12 months, outdriving the likes of Rory McIlroy and ironing out the likes of Collin Morikawa, ranking first in both those categories. Scheffler has gained an average of +1.14 strokes more than Rory, who sits in second place T2G.
The difference between Scottie and Rory is the same as the gap between Rory and the 26th-ranked T2G golfer, Tom Kim. If that puts his ability to control his ball in the air into perspective. He is ELITE in that department and won the Players last year while losing strokes putting through 71 holes, finally holing a lengthy one on the final hole when he probably was just trying to lag it to gimmie.
Some more reason to like Scheffler this week? He has actually gained strokes putting in the last two weeks. He has ALSO gained +0.5 strokes putting per round at the Riviera Country Club in his last two trips here. His recent form and course history are going to sync up perfectly this week, making Scheffler yet another Masters winner to win this event, too. The price is right, the course fits his biggest strength and an under-the-radar Scheffler is a dangerous Scheffler, who is due a win!
Adam Scott $1.73 at 40-1 (BetMGM)
From green-jacket Scottie to green-jacket Scott, the methodology for this bet remains the same as above. Scott has won this event twice and has multiple top-10 finishes here in the last five years. Five of his last six starts worldwide have been T8 or better, with his only "poor" performance being a T20 at Pebble two starts ago -- atrocious!
If you filter on ball-striking (SG OTT + SG APP) over the last two-dozen rounds, both our outright selections are sandwiching Viktor Hovland, who sits between Scottie (first) and Scott (third). Adam is playing phenomenally tee to green.
Adam Scott’s SG: Ballstriking in his last 3 measured tournaments:
WM Phoenix Open: +8.22 (T8)
AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am: +4.22 (T20)
Dubai Desert Classic: +4.59 (T7)3 x T10s in his last 5 starts at Riviera, including a win. pic.twitter.com/SnbQNWnmP7
— Mark Fox (@ThePluggedLie) February 14, 2024
His biggest issue is his around the green play, which ranks 65th of 70 this week, but when you are hitting as many greens as he does, it's tough to have opportunities to add strokes to that category as it is a cumulative stat. He was 40-1 for a reason, with that stat likely being a large part of that.
However, if he can lean into this incredible ball striking for one more week, Scott, who is also putting really well lately (10th), should see an improvement on his baseline putting when he graces the Poa greens of Riviera. He has typically putted really well on this surface, validated by the +7.2 SG putting here in 2022. If we get that kind of putting performance to sync up with his ball-striking he has shown recently, Scott will win this event for a third time!
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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod
2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 UnitsTotal Winnings: +311.229 Units
Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36
H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE
— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022
Placings ($85)
Below is a summary of how each golfer has done in each respective betting market based off the logic that we would bet them every event to return $100 in each market. Obviously, we don't do that, but it gives us a good idea of the profitability for each golfer and whether or not we are missing out on a golfer's upside by not being aggressive enough and bumping them up from a T20 to a T10. Or the other way around for guys who never quite crack the top 10, but always find themselves in the top 20. Let's call this the opportunity cheat sheet?
The yellow columns are the dollars lost or won in the last 12 months, white column being the return on investment % (profit (loss)/investment), and the green column being the rate at which a golfer finishes in each respective position tier.
Matchups ($10)
Jason Day out in California is sensational when putting on Poa. We get some plus money here against Cameron Young, who has some great course history, but outside of his decent showing last week where he gained his third-most strokes putting in his PGA Tour career, he really hasn't been consistently finishing at the top of the leaderboard.
The Farewell Fiver ($5)
Round 1 3-ball Parlay $5 to win $107.45 (DraftKings)
Good luck this week, and as always, may the odds be ever in your favor!!!
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