Flag Hunting: PGA Betting Picks - 2024 Valspar Championship

Between Monday's Course Preview piece (found right here on RotoBaller), and last night's podcast (currently posted on our X page), we've given y'all every possible trend, key stat, and player take needed to make the most educated betting decisions possible this week at Innisbrook's Copperhead Course. This Wednesday article will now serve as a final bow to wrap up a jam-packed week of PGA content at Flag Hunting. No fluff, no rants or superfluous soliloquies, just the entirety of our 2024 Valspar Championship outright betting card.

The three names on this betting card are aimed at returning ~6.5 times our investment (including potential live adds). Because of the inflated odds associated with the outright market, it becomes even more imperative to remain disciplined when setting your unit allocations from this article's picks. Golf outright betting is a notoriously fickle beast, and multiple month-long droughts are very much within the range of outcomes. However, at these prices, one single hit can pay off many weeks of poor decision-making.

In the two-year history at Flag Hunting, we've been fortunate enough to cash a total of 22 outright winners (a 20.9% hit rate) for a profit of nearly $15,000 (betting roughly $350 per week) and an aggregate ROI of 39.4%. The volatility of the sport means I can't promise you a winner in any given tournament, but if you're willing to bet methodically and stick with the process, the outright golf betting market has the potential to be one of the most profitable (and enjoyable) betting sweats in the business. But I suppose I'd better keep my word about the necessary rants, so with no further ado, here's every bet I've made for the 2024 Valspar Championship!

Valspar Championship Betting Card

Justin Thomas (18-1)

JT didn't do much to pay off his believers at 22-1 last week at Sawgrass, but although he hasn't yet conquered Innisbrook's Copperhead course to the tune of a victory, the Valspar Championship has historically been one of his happiest hunting grounds. Thomas has missed just one cut in six starts here in Palm Harbor, recording a third-place finish in 2022 and amassing four other top 20 finishes since 2015. He's gained at least 2.5 shots on Approach in 5/6 starts, he ranks 3rd in Total Driving over the course of his Innisbrook career, and has also managed some of his more consistent putting splits on these greens: Gaining >2.5 strokes putting in 3/6 appearances.

It is clear that JT is as comfortable around these confines as perhaps anywhere on Tour, and the underlying stats from last week don't exactly point to a player on the verge of an extended slump. Thomas actually led last week's PLAYERS field in SG: Approach on a per-round basis (+2.51), and if not for a costly three-putt from four feet on his final nine on Friday, he might well have finished above the likes of Burns, Finau, and Young who all sit around him on this week's odds board.

With his history around this golf course, the steady progression we've seen week-over-week thus far in 2024, and a reduced price based on a disappointing finish last week, I'm making Justin Thomas my strongest outright position of the week. In the strongest field we're likely to see all year on the PGA Tour, people were lining up to bet 22-1s on JT. I see no reason for the market to have shifted this far (particularly in a windswept event that should further accentuate Thomas's feel-heavy playstyle). He currently sits at +1550 on BookMaker and +1500 on Bet365's Enhanced Win menu -- both prices I would endorse based on my win projections.

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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

Brian Harman (25-1)

Brian Harman’s getting hot. 🔥

He’s in third after 4 birdies in 8 holes. pic.twitter.com/KM9Id8aRxI

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) March 16, 2024

Unlike the "question marks" surround JT after the PLAYERS, Brian Harman's last two starts have left nothing in doubt when assessing the PGA Tour's most in-form commodities. Over four rounds at TPC Sawgrass, the reigning Open Champion produced the second-best iron week of his entire career (+9.0), and gained strokes in all four major categories in a runner-up finish to Scottie Scheffler.

For a player with such a bankable profile for 10+ years on Tour, this recent progression with his approach play all of a sudden makes Harman one of the more intriguing projections for the remainder of 2024 -- particularly when you consider it comes to a part of his game that has held him back over the course of his career.

Harman has always leaned on his driving precision and short-game acumen to accrue his results. Look no further than last year's Open Championship, where Brian won his first ever Major title despite ranking 31st in SG: Approach (+2.24), but 1st in Putting (+11.4), and 2nd in Driving Accuracy (73.2%). Now, with his irons dialed in to the tune of 14.6 Strokes Gained over his last two starts at Sawgrass and Bay Hill (the best two-start stretch of his career), Harman presents a ceiling typically only reserved for those at the very top of weekly odds boards.

Ideally, we could have cashed a ticket at 3x this number last week at the PLAYERS Championship, but nothing I saw last week indicated we should be getting off of this bandwagon any time soon. In a reduced strength of field, and a venue where Harman has already recorded a top-five finish two years ago, I'm perfectly comfortable chasing the outright number down to 25-1.

Doug Ghim (60-1)

Doug Ghim gets the 16th crowd roaring with an excellent tee shot to set up birdie. 🎯

📺: Golf Channel & @peacock | @WMPhoenixOpen pic.twitter.com/3suhIJV1ew

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) February 10, 2024

Long considered one of golf's most exciting up-and-comers, dips in confidence and a notoriously faulty short game has pushed back Doug Ghim's projected ascension to the top of the game. This year, however, in his sixth season as a professional, it seems as if the former blue-chipper from UT has found the formula required to fulfill his lofty ambitions.

Since he came on Tour back in 2019, Ghim has repeatedly flashed the ball-striking prowess of a future top 10 player, and through three months of 2024, the short game looks as if it's finally caught up. Over his last five starts, Doug has gained an average of 2.8 strokes to the field on and around the greens -- which ranks 10th in this field in that time and amounts to a nearly 3.5 shot improvement over his career baseline. This newfound green-side acumen has earned Ghim one of the flashiest recent form sheets in the sport: logging five straight top 20 finishes, including a 16th-place result at last week's PLAYERS Championship and a 12th in the WM Phoenix Open.

Ghim has made these progressions whilst maintaining the enticing ball-striking profile we all loved when he first came on Tour. He ranks 8th in this field in Driving Accuracy and 7th in SG: APP over the last two months, and over the long-term, Ghim also rates out as a top 20 mid/long iron player and a surprisingly proficient player in the wind (4th in SG: Total over the last two years in Moderate/Heavy Winds).

If you prefer a less long-winded case for Ghim's prospects this week, look no further than the 2024 SG: Total rankings on the PGA Tour website. There, you'll see just three names ahead of the former Longhorn to this point in the season: Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, and Xander Schauffele. Doug Ghim may not have nearly the same name value as the players listed 15-20 points above him on odds boards, but every number I see indicates he's playing as well as anyone in the game. At outright prices still sitting at 45-1 on bet365, why not take a shot on the former No. 1 amateur who may finally be emerging right in front of our eyes?

In-Tournament Strategy

With these three names on the card, we're still left with ~30% of our weekly budget to use on in-tournament additions. This section will outline a few names to monitor in the live markets, as well as a few potential angles to use when assessing player viability over the course of the week.

• Although not quite as difficult historically, the Copperhead Course can draw direct comparisons to Bay Hill in the scoring opportunities available within its routing. The four Par 5’s (1,5, 11, and 14), at Innisbrook are far-and-away the easiest birdie opportunities players will get over the course of the round, as well as the only holes on the entire golf course that carry birdie rates over 20%.
• Par 5 scoring has always been a key stat around Innisbrook, but on a week like this, I’d anticipate Bogey Avoidance to play just as crucial of a role in a player's overall win equity. Pars on the 3rd, 6th, 8th, and 13th holes have cut the average field by nearly two-tenths of a shot, and that’s before you venture into the infamous “Snake Pit.”
• The 16th, 17th, and 18th holes at the Copperhead course are reserved for special mention, as they have long represented one of the more difficult finishing stretches on the PGA Tour. Carrying a cumulative scoring average of (+0.54), it’s absolutely imperative from a live-betting standpoint that you account for this finishing stretch when prospecting for live additions on Thursday and Friday.
• If a player has gotten through this stretch of holes unscathed, it can be as valuable as a birdie on any of the Par 5’s, and any player with the Snake Pit still ahead will need to temper their expectations until the final putt is holed. The Par 4 16th, nicknamed “Moccasin,” is the biggest hurdle to look out for, as it carries a nearly 30% Bogey or Worse rate, and plays to a ridiculous 4.29 scoring average.
• With so many difficult holes to navigate, patience is once again the name of the game when scouting players in the live market. If we flashback to when scoring conditions at Innisbrook were routinely among the most difficult on Tour (2013-2019 in particular), you will see that six of the seven champions in that span were able to do so despite shooting a round of even par or worse over the course of the week.
• This week, especially with winds projected to sit in the 15-25 mph range for much of the tournament, we should expect some wild swings on the leaderboard if a certain subset of players are caught in the wrong wave or don't possess the requisite traits to handle such blustery conditions. Often times, tournaments like this are best viewed through a long-term lens since players should be able to recover from one bad round if the current leaders are facing a course that could see them lose an exorbitant number of strokes.
• Here are a list of players I've identified as great course fits by my key metrics referenced on Monday, and also tend to increase their baselines in more difficult, windier conditions. If any of these names does get off to a sluggish start, I'd have no hesitation taking a shot at a depressed number as the week progresses:
  • Xander Schauffele
  • Sungjae Im
  • Cameron Young
  • Tony Finau
  • Sepp Straka
  • Christiaan Bezuidenhout
  • Aaron Rai
  • Brendon Todd

Best of luck guys, and happy hunting!

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