RADIO
I am embarrassed that I advocated for the US team to be a force on Euro soil, and once again, Luke Donald and Team Europe proved that under the right guidance and with a statistically sound game plan, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The individual accolades of the American team continue all the way through the dirty dozen that faced sickness and sadness from the very first moment they teed it up this year. They return home empty handed after breaking all the wrong records, losing all four matches in foursomes in session one and then seeing three potential wins dissipate into halves on the 18th green, amounting to a Day 1 that had no wins, ultimately losing by the 5 points they found themselves down after Friday.
Transitioning to the Sanderson Farms Championship after writing thousands of words and takes about one of golf's most treasured biannual traditions, is straight up rough. The immensely talent Ludvig Aberg headlines the field as the clear favorite, but who knows where his levels of preparedness lie after jetting from Italy to Mississippi with his brain half its usual size courtesy of the excessive amounts of Peronis and Champagne that were consumed by the Euro team into the early hours of Monday morning. Eric Cole, Stephan Jaeger and Emiliano Grillo all find themselves priced in the +2000 range which we will be looking to exploit.
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 Twitter an unhealthy amount of the time @TheModelManiac, if you have any questions, compliments, or insults for me.
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Outrights ($20)
As I wrote in the Fortinet piece, "We are going to try something a little different for the next while and see how it goes, reducing the amount we bet on winners and siphoning those funds into Top 5 bets on the same golfers. We had a ridiculously variance infused year so far and not getting rewarded for any of our guys repeatedly finishing second or third is hopefully a thing of the past."
"The idea here is to use the T5 market to keep our bankroll a little more flush with cash along the way. Last season we hit only two outrights in Breaking $100, losing -$239 betting an average of $14 on winners. I did some quick retroactive calculations based off of all the outrights we placed last year, dividing those odds by 5 and we would have made $154 betting top-5s last season, which would have really helped our pockets. We averaged a golfer in the top 5 in 51% of the 37 events we bet on, with 19 top-5 finishes from a total of 157 bets."
Ideally, we want to double our exposure we have in the outright market with our T5 bets, so that we can make a tiny bit of profit in this section of the article when our card succeeds but does not win. We are rolling out Five Guys, who have odds that are synonymous with this burger joint as we have some large fries that come at a rather hefty price tag. (If you have never had Five Guys before, and love eating an abundance of fries that are at the bottom of the brown bag, Five Guys is the place to go.)
Eric Cole +2200 @ BetRivers
The Statue of Zeus from our last piece stood strong in the face of Sunday adversity, gaining strokes on Sunday for the first time since the Travelers Championship in June. Eric Cole finished the week as the second-best approach player but somehow, entering the week as one of the best putters, lost strokes putting throughout the week. Admittedly, we had some strokes gained blinders on, as his Poa putting splits are lagging behind his baseline, but on Bermuda we can expect a few more putts to roll in courtesy of Mr. Cole, who gained +4.18 strokes in R2 on route to a missed cut here last year.
He missed the cut here last year because of his ball striking, which should not pose as a road block this time round. Infact, his iron play is now Cole-powered, burning pure and hot to the tune of +0.84 strokes per round in his last 28 loops since the Travelers. His driver has also seen a bit of an uptick in efficiency, averaging +0.1 OTT in his last 15 starts, which, compared to the -0.7 he was losing in the 21 rounds prior, is almost a stroke per round. Cole secured our first top-5 for Breaking $100 at the Fortinet, with that strategy paying off immediately. Hopefully we can double dip this week with a win and a top-5!
Emiliano Grillo +2500 @ DraftKings
Last year we had Grillo on our card to win and things were looking mighty fine until he made an 8 on a Par 5 down the stretch on Sunday. He finished T5 despite the snowman and then went on to win the Charles Schwab Challenge in Texas earlier this year. Grillo is typically known for his ball striking and iron play, but what earned him a tartan jacked and a restored muscle car was his putter, gaining +7.5 strokes putting and adding to that with +4.5 strokes on approach. That is the EXACT recipe that we are looking for here this week and if the G-man shows up feeling tartan and muscular, expect him to be in the mix on Sunday once more.
Sam Ryder +5000 on BetMGM
This is my favorite bet on the card, as we are getting immense value on the third-best iron player in the field who is 50-1 to win this thing. If we take the last 15 rounds of golf, Ryder leads the field in strokes gained approach, averaging +1.5 per round. Over that stretch he has lost on approach only twice, no more than -0.45 either time. His ball striking has been phenomenal since the 3M, where there was an obvious "Aha moment" as his driver has also gained +0.3 OTT since. In 27 rounds prior to the 3M he was losing -0.8 off the tee, which is arguably an even more impressive turnaround than his scorching iron play.
But wait, there's more!!! Ryder started the calendar year gaining +1.36 strokes per round with his putter, which lead the PGA tour up until the wheels fell off after the Valero Texas Open, losing -0.18 per round on the greens in the 38 loops since. Now, when he was rolling everything in, it was for 28 rounds over three months of golf. That is long enough to be called a great putter and not just a hot streak. So that ability still remains within the man, and now that he has had some time off to work on other areas of his game, maybe the flat stick starts getting the attention it received earlier in the year. If that putter shows up on these Bermuda greens, with the way he has been striking the ball he could run away with this event.
Peter Kuest +9000 @ BetRivers
Peter Kuest is the 2nd longest driver of the ball in this field over the last two-dozen rounds, behind only Brandon Matthews, who despite his immense length, still loses strokes off the tee. Quest on the other hand, is averaging +0.3 OTT and will head to a course where he can unleash the beast, with fairways 28% narrower than tour average and driving accuracy 11% worse than usual. Despite fairways being relatively harder to hit here, the penalty for missing them is also less than tour average over the last four years. This all favors Pete!
Even though he is incredibly long OTT, his putter is his biggest weapon, averaging half a stroke on the greens despite losing -4.56 strokes in two Sunday rounds at the John Deere Classic and Fortinet Championship. If we very generously remove those two rounds, he is gaining roughly a stroke per round since playing on tour. Now, nerves arguably affect short game the most as a putt is binary in nature. A putt that misses by a fraction of an inch is the same as a putt that is left 2 feet short. The likelihood of the following putt finding the bottom of the hole is the same. Nerves can result in a putt being a fraction of an inch offline or too soft, which is likely why Pete has seen the putter go MIA on Sunday's. More reps in PGA tour conditions should help ease the Sunday nerves, allowing him to fight for his first PGA Tour win, improving on his T4 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in July.
Sam Bennett +125000 @ BetRivers
Two Sams are better than one, and we have the PGA Tour Rookie and College star, Sam Bennett to round out our card for the week. At 125-1 the chances he wins this week are slim, but we have seen him thrive in a few events he has played in so far, with a T16 at THE MASTERS??? and a T20 at the RBC Canadian Open. For a profile that has as much green as his does, there are some really dark red boxes that show up.
Four of his five worst rounds on approach have come on either a Friday before the cut, or Sunday when prize money and finishing position add external pressure to a round. If you add the disaster on approach at the US Open in R3, Bennet is losing -3.75 strokes per round in those 5 performances. In the 23 other rounds he has played, his irons are a massive strength, averaging +0.81 which is pretty darn good. Reps, reps, reps! It's only a matter of time before those Sunday nerves subside and Bennett is right in the mix to win a tournament. Why not the very first week back after a two month layoff?
Did you know RotoBaller has a Premium DFS PGA subscription? Like what you read today? You can show your support for Byron by using the discount code MANIAC when purchasing a PGA Premium Pass. You get 10% off and full access to all of our Premium PGA articles, DFS tools, models, projections and Lineup Optimizer! You also get access to weekly betting picks from Spencer Aguiar, one of the top betting minds in the industry.
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 ($60)
This Week's Placements
- $10 Eric Cole T20 +100 @ BetMGM (ties paid in full!)
- $7.50 Sam Ryder T20 +188 @ BetMGM
- $10 Emiliano Grillo T20 +110 @ BetMGM
- $10 Ryan Palmer T40 +130 @ BetMGM
- $10 Andrew Novak T40 +120 @ BetMGM
- $12.50 Dylan Wu T40 -125 @ BetMGM
Matchups ($15)
$15 Sam Ryder over Nicholas Lindheim +100 on DraftKings
We are now finding ourselves slightly over exposed in the Sam Ryder market, but for him to be an underdog at even money against Nic who has admittedly, played really well on the Korn Ferry Tour, is a bit of an underestimation of Sam's capabilities and an overreaction to Nic's, who has only four rounds of incredible approach play on his side, potentially skewing his numbers in our favor.
The Farewell Fiver ($5)
Peter Kuest $5 +500 FRL Top 10 (BetMGM ties paid in full!!!)
Peter tends to do most of his damage early in the tournament and with his length and putting potential, expect him to be right in the mix on Thursday. Good luck this week, and as always, may the odds be ever in your favor!!!
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