Flag Hunting: PGA Betting Picks - 2023 Open Championship

Welcome to Flag Hunting’s preview of the final Major of the 2023 season! It’s unfathomable to me how quickly this season has flown by, but I hope readers have enjoyed my breakdowns, and I intend to keep them coming even as the season winds down into events only consumed by the most fervent of golf betting degenerates.

This week, we’re at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, or Hoylake to those of us who prefer to speak in shorthand. This historic club was originally a mainstay on the Open Championship Rota dating back to 1887, but due to difficulties maintaining infrastructure within the small seaside town, it was dismissed for nearly 40 years starting in 1967. 

Its triumphant return came in 2006, where Tiger Woods captured his eleventh, and perhaps his most sentimental Major Championship just two months after the passing of his father. Eight years later, a boy from Northern Ireland who had idolized Woods’ reign, and now donned the same Nike threads, captured his first Major Championship on British Soil. With a past Champions list like this, you can be sure that Hoylake will provide a test becoming of such a star-studded field. Will legends continue to reign around Royal Liverpool? Or will we get our second consecutive longshot victor of the Major Season? I'll be taking my stands later in the article, but for now, here's everything you need to know about the 2023 Open Championship from Royal Liverpool!

The Golf Course

Royal Liverpool Golf Club - 7,383-yard Par 71

Although it’s tempting to refer back to past iterations of Major Championships to gather conclusions on current venues, you’d also be hard-pressed to find two courses with such a stark contrast in strategy off the tee as St. Andrews and Royal Liverpool. Last year, Cam Smith, Rory McIlroy, and Cameron Young were able to bomb and gouge the Old Course without consequence en route to a record-setting winning score of (-20).

Hoylake will not give players that same freedom, as the 31-yard-wide fairways here are not only 40 yards narrower on average than what we saw at St. Andrews, but they also come adorned on either side with knee-deep fescue, pot bunkers that are essentially one-shot hazards, thick gorse bushes that will have no trouble swallowing up wayward drives, and seven separate instances of out of bounds. Precision off the tee at Hoylake is a defining quality in the type of players I’m looking to invest in this week. 

One narrative you will hear from many who can recall the last two Opens held at Hoylake is the prevalence of club-down opportunities. Tiger Woods famously hit just one driver over the course of his 72-hole conquest in ‘06, and Rory McIlroy followed right in his footsteps - utilizing a driving iron or fairway wood on over half of his tee shots eight years later. 

Given the prevalence of hazards around Royal Liverpool, I would tend to prefer my player be short and accurate as opposed to long and sporadic this week, but I would caution those that place too much reliance on their players clubbing down a la Tiger or Rory. For one, the fairways this year are noticeably greener than the baked-out turf we saw in 2006 and 2014. 

Recent rainfall has softened Hoylake and will limit the ability of players to rely on the ground to compensate for a lack of distance. The golf course has also been lengthened by over 100 yards over the last 17 years, and par adjusted, now plays as the longest Open venue we’ve seen since Carnoustie in 2018. 

As a result, I’m placing a much higher emphasis on Total Driving than I’d ever typically consider on a links course. With the soft conditions effectively widening many of the landing areas, I think this setup could be very conducive for some of the Tour’s preeminent bombers to bring a PGA-mentality over to the British Links. Players that can utilize their driver to both push the ball down the fairway and avoid the many hazards will give themselves a huge leg up in my opinion. 

In terms of iron play, I’ll keep it a lot more simple: three of the four Par 3’s here play over 190 yards, seven Par 4’s play over 450, and with 15 and 18 expected to be aided by the prevailing westerly wind, I anticipate players being able to reach all three Par 5’s with a good tee shot.

As a result, middle and long-iron play is another key hallmark to success in my modeling. The greens at Royal Liverpool are far from the comically expansive targets we saw at St. Andrews or even last week at Renaissance, so players will have to be very precise with their 5, 6, and 7-irons if they want to consistently give themselves birdie chances. 

The softer side of Royal Liverpool seems to show up in those very green complexes, as unlike many venues in the Open Rota, Hoylake’s greens don’t place a great deal of emphasis on lag putting or deciphering extreme amounts of break. I’ll quote everyone’s favorite Twitter follow (@Mike_kim714), in his post about Hoylake’s putting surfaces: 

“The greens are pretty simple, not much slope to them honestly, they just have lots of run-offs on most of the sides so it’s important to hit the middle of the green or shape it the correct way. The putts themselves especially when greens are wet and on the slow side don’t have a ton of breaks. It’ll be interesting who putts well on these cuz there’s not a whole lot of imagination required like Augusta.”

I’ve always been of the belief that slow, flat greens tend to have a normalizing effect on putting (and short-game in general). With simpler reads, reduced emphasis on touch/feel, and less variability in outcomes, I think weeks like these present the clearest opportunity for some of our favorite no-putt darlings to level the proverbial playing field.

We’ve seen bad putters have repeated success on the slow, flat Paspalum surfaces at Mayakoba and Vidanta Vallarta, and although the agronomy in Northern England is wildly different, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the same trends emerge on similarly simple complexes this week.

I’ll be the first to admit that this part of the handicapping process is more imprecise than I’d like, but given the heavy emphasis I’m placing on things like total driving, mid/long iron play, and Major Championship track record, short game and putting are two categories I’m comfortable putting on the back burner.

If Cam Smith wants to gain another 12 strokes putting with the flat stick to win back-to-back Opens, I'll gladly tip my cap, but from a handicapping standpoint, I feel much more comfortable banking on guys who can separate themselves in more predictive facets of the game.

Scouting the Routing

For those looking to dabble in the live market this week, it will be imperative to contextualize a player’s position on the leaderboard alongside where he is on the golf course and which holes he still has left to play. 

With no real long-term data to go off of at Hoylake, I’ll be reiterating a lot of what I said last week at the Renaissance Club. Live betting on the links is oftentimes more a test of projecting playing conditions than calculating expected scores from five-year data sets. 

As I write this Tuesday evening, there doesn’t seem to be an emphatic advantage for either wave on Thursday or Friday, but the weekend could well be where things get fun. Current projections have winds gusting at 25-30 mph on Saturday afternoon, and moderate rainfall could provide a further hindrance to the final few groups looking to start their penultimate round.

If these forecasts hold, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a few early starters make their way into contention by posting a decent number and watching the leaders stumble back to them. In my estimation, this looks to be the clearest opportunity to find value in the live market - so stay alert in the early hours Saturday morning! You could well be the beneficiary of some of the Open Championship’s trademark volatility.

From a routing standpoint, it does appear as if we have a clear delineation between the two nines and the opportunities players will have to score. Most reports on-site have claimed the front-nine will be the best chance for players to score and the back-nine will play a bit more treacherously. 

It makes sense, as not only do two of the easiest scoring chances on the course reside back-to-back on the outward half (the Drivable Par 4 4th and the Reachable Par 5 5th), but many of the changes made to increase difficulty around Hoylake have been done on the back side: The 10th has been modified from a 532-yard Par 5 into a 507-yard long Par 4, 17 has been shortened, but now plays into the wind and infinitely more treacherous, and both 15 and 18 have been lengthened by 40-50 yards. 

Again, there isn’t any statistical backing to these claims, so I wouldn’t treat these assertions as gospel, but I do think it’s a safe bet that front-nine starters stand the best chance of getting off to quick starts Thursday morning.

In any case, live betting on links golf is far more art than science. We see wild shifts in forecasts on a daily basis in this part of the world, and I don’t believe a round in the low-60’s is out of reach for an in-form Tour pro around a benign Hoylake. If you are dead set on leaving room in your outright budget for in-tournament adds, being first to react to sudden changes in weather could be much more of an asset than the intimate course knowledge we rely on on a weekly basis on the PGA Tour. Best of luck and embrace the variance!

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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 Units

Total Winnings: +311.229 Units

Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

The Betting Card

Jon Rahm (16-1)

I’ll be the first to admit that Jon Rahm didn’t exactly come to the top of my mind when initially projecting my top plays at Hoylake this week. The Masters Champion hasn’t played since he missed his first cut of the season at the Travelers at the end of June, and when you compare his recent results sheet to that of the other top two dogs at the top of the OWGR rankings, there certainly seems to be a gap emerging over the last two months.

However, when books begin to price the World No. 3 at over double the outright number of Rory McIlroy or Scottie Scheffler, it makes it difficult to make the case against one of the most reliable ball-strikers we’ve seen over the last half-decade. Over his last 50 rounds, Rahm is the only player in this field to rank inside the top 5 in all three of my key Approach stats this week (SG: APP, Proximity 175-200, Proximity 200+), and when combining distance and accuracy, Rahm actually outpaces the likes of Rory McIlroy, Tyrrell Hatton, and Cameron Young in Total Driving acumen. 

Combine a stellar ball-striking profile with one a putter that has proven far more reliable than either Rory’s or Scottie’s, and a links track record that is practically unmatched over the last five seasons:

• Winner of both the 2017 and 2019 Irish Opens
• 11th and 3rd in the 2019 and 2021 Open Championships
• 7th at the 2020 Scottish Open while leading the field from tee-to-green

16-1 is as compelling a price as I’ve found at the top of the outright odds board. I’ll be the first to admit that McIlroy or Scheffler are safer propositions to finish inside the Top 10 or Top 20, but if the Spaniard’s top-end game shows up to Hoylake this week, I don’t believe there’s a more fearsome name to see on Britain’s iconic yellow leaderboards.

Brooks Koepka (25-1)

Well, perhaps I was getting ahead of myself in the Rahm write-up, as Koepka could be the one name that inspires more fear than Rahm in Major Championships. After his PGA triumph at Oak Hill, I didn’t think there was any way we’d ever see a better number than the 22-1 tickets cashed by his backers in Rochester.

I was also vocally skeptical about his focus going into his back-to-back bid at the U.S. Open, but although his play was disappointing to those that bet him at 12-1, nothing about his performance since should be causing books to drop Koepka’s number back to the origination point. Brooks gained over 8 shots from Tee-to-green at LACC, and followed that up with a solo 3rd at Valderrama on the LIV Tour - a course that notably puts a large premium on driving accuracy. 

Brooks dominated that course off the tee, and in London two weeks later, Koepka completed a ten-start stretch (since April), in which he’s had zero finishes outside the Top 20, including two wins and three top 3’s. 

He leads this field in SG: Total through the first three Major Championships, the killer mentality is back, and with four Top 10 finishes over his last six starts, Brooks possesses as solid an Open Championship track record as anyone in the field. I’ve already been burned once this year underrating Brooks’ chances on the biggest stage, and if books are giving us a second opportunity to catch a healthy Koepka >20-1 at a Major, there’s no way I’m passing that up again. 

Viktor Hovland (25-1)

Back at the site of his first taste of Major Championship contention, Viktor Hovland is looking to cap off what has been the sharpest upward trajectory in the game over the last 12 months. The young Norwegian has done nothing but build on a stellar all–around week last year at St. Andrews: finishing 7th at the Masters, 2nd at Oak Hill, and at 19th at LACC in his three subsequent Major starts. 

But what’s really emboldened me on the 25-year-old's chances this week has been the steady progression we’ve seen out of the mental game over the last year. After two disappointing 74’s to close his title runs at St. Andrews and Augusta National, Hovland went blow-for-blow with an in-form Brooks Koepka at the PGA Championship: closing the margin to just one shot with three holes to play before one of Oak Hill’s famously treacherous fairway bunkers ended his title challenge. 

The payoff finally came for Viktor at Muirfield Village, where the notoriously undisciplined Hovland put together a masterclass in overcoming brutally difficult conditions. He drove the ball on a string around an extremely penal golf course, he showcased an exceptional ability to hold Muifield’s firm greens with towering mid/long iron shots, and he proved time and time again that when the chips are down, he’s a guy you can trust over a must-make putt from 10 feet.

This is the exact progression I’d draw up when projecting a future Major Champion, and Royal Liverpool looks to be as good of a fit as you could find for Hovland’s breakthrough. On a course that requires Elite Total Driving? Hovland ranks 5th on the entire PGA Tour when combining driving distance and accuracy. Mid/Long Iron Play? Hovland is one of just two players in this field that ranks inside the top 5 in both of my key proximity models. Proficiency in the wind? Hovland ranks 4th in SG: Ball-Striking in Moderate/Heavy winds since the start of 2019. Heck, Viktor even rates out inside the top 20 in Sand Saves over the last six months and has gained at least 3 shots around the greens in his last two Major Championship appearances. 

Viktor Hovland’s time is coming soon in a Major Championship, and I’m willing to take a macro stance above 20-1 at virtually every venue he decides to tee it up. We’ve known Hovland has had the makeup to be the best player in the world one day. I believe that time is coming sooner than bookmakers are indicating. 

Collin Morikawa (35-1)

After a Sunday 64 that came up one shot short of being the winning round at the Rocket Mortgage, I was bracing for the inevitable free fall of Collin’s outright number this week. After all, this is Morikawa’s first competitive return to England since his 2021 triumph at Royal St. George’s, and the 12.1 shots he gained from tee-to-green in Detroit was his best-measured total since winning the WGC-Workday at Concession to start the 2021 season.

Instead, books have graciously pushed Morikawa back to 35-1 on outright odds boards in a spot I see as the best opportunity he’s had from both a current momentum and course fit standpoint. The driver is in absolute peak form for Collin at the moment, as he’s gained 8.5 shots off the tee over his last three starts (his best ten-round stretch in 18 months), and the iron play has remained one of the biggest weapons in world golf. Morikawa trails only Scottie Scheffler in SG: APP over his last 50 rounds, and is one of just six players in the field to rate inside the top 15 in both key proximity ranges (175-200; 200+). 

It sounds silly to call the Rocket Mortgage a turning point for the season of a two-time Major Champion, but having listened to soundbites and re-watched that final round, this is as close to 2021-Morikawa as I’ve seen in some time. The ball-striking is operating at elite levels and he’s sneakily had an above-average stretch with the putter/short game. I’m adamant something big is on the horizon for the former World No. 2, and I can’t think of any place better to start than in the Championship where he last lifted a Major Title.

Best of luck guys, and Happy Hunting!

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