Flag Hunting: PGA Betting Picks - TOUR Championship

Here we are. After 42 weeks of PGA Tour golf, only 30 remain for the right to claim the season-long title, an $18,000,000 top prize, and the 2023 FedEx Cup. The historic East Lake Golf Club will be the host of this event for the 23rd time, and we've already got a star-studded leaderboard set up before opening tee shots have even been hit.

For those of you who have only recently gotten into professional golf, you might be surprised to tune in on Thursday afternoon to see players starting with a substantial head start. This new "staggered" format came into effect in 2019, and although it drastically reduces the number of viable contenders for the Tour Championship, this year's standings have inarguably placed the best in the world at the top of the heap.

Leading the pack is Scottie Scheffler, who might well be the architect of the best ball-striking season we've seen since Tiger Woods. Second is Viktor Hovland: the uber-talented youngster whose summer hot streak has put him in a great position to topple the sport's biggest names. And finally, Rory McIlroy starts third: the PGA's preeminent poster boy returning to his most hallowed of hunting grounds. One thing is for sure, we're in for a classic race to the finish for the Tour's top prize. Here's everything you need to know about East Lake Golf Club and the 2023 TOUR Championship!

Starting Stroke Position

The Golf Course

Eastlake GC - Par 70; 7,346 yards

Over the last month, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of driving accuracy at neighboring venues in Memphis and Greensboro, but Eastlake takes the Sedgefield/Southwind blueprint to the extreme. 

At just 24.5 yards wide on average, these are the narrowest Fairways on the PGA Tour, and although Eastlake’s rough length has historically paled in comparison to some of the courses we see in the Midwest/Northeast, the trickiness of summertime bermudagrass makes it some of the most penal rough we see all season. In fact, since 2015, only Muirfield Village has provided a higher average penalty on balls missing the fairway.

This is certainly not a golf course where distance should be factored above all else (as it was last week for me in my Olympia Fields handicap), but we have seen some of golf’s elite power players find success here through sheer muscle off the tee.

• Dustin Johnson was nearly dead last in the field in Driving Accuracy when he won in 2020
• Xander and Brooks both finished in the Top 3 in 2019 whilst losing strokes in Driving Accuracy.
• Rory finished outside the Top 10 in Driving Accuracy in two of his three wins

On the other hand, we’ve also seen a precision-based approach work for some recent standouts:

• Tiger Woods (3rd in Driving Accuracy in 2018 - Won Tour Championship)
• Kevin Na (3rd in Driving Accuracy; Tied Rahm on the Shadow Leaderboard in 2021)
• Sungjae Im (5th in Driving Accuracy last year; 2nd on Shadow Leaderboard), 

As a result, I’m going to be pretty inclusive when factoring in my preferred driving profiles this week. There are arguments to be made for both sides of the accuracy vs. distance debate, but as long as my intended target excels in one or the other, I’m comfortable enough keeping them on my shortlist into the next phase.

As is the case most weeks, Approach Play at Eastlake has been the leading indicator for success, as Top 5 finishers here have averaged nearly 3 Strokes Gained to the field over the course of the week.

Of all the proximity ranges, I would lean most into long-iron play (specifically >175 yards), as all four Par 3’s here at Eastlake measure over 190, both Par 5’s are easily reachable with a good tee shot, and three additional Par 4’s measure over 480 yards.

Eastlake is far from a one-note tune in its routing however, as six of the 12 Par 4’s here measure under 445 yards, so it could also be worthwhile to look at some wedge proximities from 100-150 yards as well. In my personal modeling, I’m primarily looking at general stats like SG: APP and Birdie Chances Created - with a smaller emphasis on the aforementioned Proximity ranges. 

Despite the incredibly small landing areas players will have to deal with off the tee, Eastlake’s greens are noticeably easier targets for the best in the world. At over 5,500 square feet on average, they rank right around Tour average in GIR % and easier than Tour Average when it comes to gaining strokes on Approach.

Couple these figures with the fact that Eastlake’s bunkers and fairway surrounds are fairly straightforward propositions by Tour standards, and the importance of around-the-green play becomes greatly diminished when compared to courses with similar scoring averages. 

Four of the top five on last year's leaderboard attained that position despite losing strokes to the field around the greens, and with the breakneck pace I expect these guys to need to keep up with the studs at the top, I’ll be placing a much higher emphasis on birdie chances created as opposed to Bogey Avoidance. 

In direct opposition to the last Donald Ross course we visited (Sedgefield), Eastlake’s greens are far from its staunchest defense. Outside of TPC Craig Ranch, they’ve actually been the easiest greens to gain strokes on the PGA Tour since 2015. 

That being said, I think there is something of a skill gap to be noted between Tour Championship vets and Eastlake newcomers. These greens have been notoriously tricky for many top players on their first go-around (Rory, Rahm, Vik, DJ), and Rory even talked in last week’s post-round presser about how his familiarity and comfort around these greens have grown as he’s returned year over year. Rahm and Viktor have had similar stories, with Rahm losing strokes in his first 4 trips to Atlanta/Viktor in his first two.

Notably, the two worst putters here on a per-round basis over their careers have been two of the top five guys on current betting boards: Scottie Scheffler and Patrick Cantlay. Neither have gained strokes on the greens in any of their 8 combined starts, Scheffler losing 3.86 strokes to the field per tournament, Cantlay losing an average of 4.14 in five starts at Eastlake.

When it comes down to projecting putting performance this week, I don’t believe anything about these greens will keep the elite putters from maintaining that status - particularly those comfortable on Bermuda (Burns, Hatton, Xander, Sungjae, and Henley all have stellar records on these greens), but for those that tend to be a bit more volatile with the flat stick, I would certainly be taking a look at where they are on the Eastlake learning curve.

Key Stats Roundup: 

• Total Driving/SG: OTT - no particular preference in distance vs. accuracy, just good overall drivers of the ball
• SG: APP/Birdie Chances Created (small emphasis on Long Iron Proximity - 175+)
• Recent Momentum (Weighed SG: Total over the last 3 months)
• Eastlake History - Looking specifically on the greens

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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

TOUR Championship Betting Card

Rory McIlroy (6-1)

We've been chasing a McIlroy victory since the playoffs started; why stop now as we return to one of Rory's most prolific hunting grounds? A three-time FedEx Cup Champion already, Rory comes into 2023's iteration in the best-sustained form we've seen in years, and in the best starting position he's ever held since the Tour moved this Championship to a staggered start in 2019.

Rory's 4th finish last week in Chicago was his ninth consecutive Top 10 and marked the fifth start out of his last six in which he's gained strokes in all four Strokes Gained Categories. In his own words, he's playing some of the best golf from tee-to-green he's ever played, and of the five guys kicking things off at the top of the Championship leaderboard, McIlroy is far and away the most accomplished at Eastlake.

If there has been one bugaboo for McIlroy as of late, it has been in his ability to pay off the premium birdie chances his ball-striking has afforded him. He even mentioned in his Sunday post-round press conference in Chicago how he routinely was unable to trust his reads on Olympia Fields' tricky green complexes, but if there's one spot where McIlroy can course-correct in a hurry, it's right here at East Lake.

Rory hasn't lost strokes putting in Atlanta since 2018 - gaining a combined 11.1 strokes on the greens over his last four TOUR Championship starts. Perhaps more notably, he registered his best-performing performance of the last 12 months in his win here last summer (+6.6 Strokes Gained).

In full disclosure, the 6-1 price was a future I caught last Thursday while Rory was still leading the BMW Championship and projected as the top golfer in the FedEx Cup Standings. I still have full faith in his current 4-1 price, but if you want to take a more conservative approach, here are a few names I'd be looking at down the board:

Max Homa (45-1)

Seeded sixth and starting at (-4), Max Homa remains one of my preeminent dark horses to spoil the party for the big three at the top of the oddsboard. We alluded to the steady resurgence of his ball-striking at The Open and St. Jude Championships, and the positive momentum continued last week in Chicago. Homa has put together the three best driving performances of his season in back-to-back-to-back weeks, and this sudden revelation off the tee has allowed the rest of his game to shine through. He's steadily improved his results in each of his last five starts and looks to be in as close to peak form as the guy we all touted as a Top 5 player on the planet early in the year.

Although Max doesn't have the extensive Eastlake track record as someone like Rory, he proved in his debut last year that his game is very well suited to this classic Donald Ross design. Starting at (-2) on the staggered leaderboard, Homa recorded rounds of 71, 62, 66, and 66 to jump into the Top 5 of the final standings. Over those four days, only McIlroy and Sungjae Im recorded better four-round totals, and Max was particularly quick to adapt to Eastlake's notoriously unforgiving greens (+4.5 SG: Putting).

With the way Max's game is trending, and those positive memories in his back pocket, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he bettered his 2022 result. Starting six shots back of the World No. 1 is certainly a tall order, but for a guy that ranks 5th on Tour in Birdie Average, all it could take is one day in neutral for the leaders to put Max firmly in the mix.

Lucas Glover (60-1)

Already one of the best stories of the PGA Tour season, a late-season charge including two wins and three additional Top 10s has seen Lucas Glover catapult himself into the mix for the season-long title. Glover starts the TOUR Championship as the 5th seed (-5), and given the many throughlines you can draw between Eastlake, Sedgefield, and TPC Southwind, it's quite puzzling to see how quickly books have dropped Glover down the betting board. Although I was far from his most ardent supporter last week in Chicago, Glover acquainted himself well at a less-than-stellar course fit: Gaining nearly six shots to the field on Approach and ranking seventh in Driving Accuracy.

That combination of precision off-the-tee and prolific iron play will fare far better around Eastlake's more claustrophobic layout, and the South Carolina native has already proven himself capable of making clutch putts on quick Bermuda greens. Outside of the Top 3, you won't find a more compelling profile on the board this week, and at 60-1, I'd be more than willing to take another shot on the PGA Tour's Cinderella to cap off his fairytale ending.

Best of luck guys, and Happy Hunting!

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