I can’t wait to see who is shaking the Golden Bear’s hand walking off the 18th green on Sunday!
It might not be a major championship, but don’t get it twisted, folks. The field this week at “Jack’s Place” is nothing short of spectacular.
Not only will 8 of the top 10 players in the world be at Muirfield Village Golf Club, but Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods are also slated to tee it up on Thursday.
We got Justin Rose coming off an absolute “clinic” of a performance at Colonial, while Rory McIlroy seems to be in tip-top form after his runner-up showing across the pond at the BMW Championship.
Justin Thomas is making his first start as the newly-crowned number-one player in the world, and speaking of that title, Dustin Johnson is back on the links for just the second time in the last six weeks.
If you can’t get amped up for the action this week at the Memorial, then you just must not like golf. This is set up to be can’t-miss television, and I have a feeling we could be in a for a thrilling finish.
If the drama set to unfold isn’t enough to get you excited, surely a couple of matchup sweats will get your blood flowing.
That’s where I come in, to break down the betting sheet at Bovada.lv and offer my perspective on where the value lies.
Muirfield Village is as pristine as any track they play all year long, and the greens are lightning-quick. All in all, the venue is in immaculate shape.
This is not a bomber’s golf course, as many players are forced to club down in order to find the short grass off the tee. Just take the last three winners of this event for example. You’ve got Jason Dufner, William McGirt, and David Lingmerth – not exactly the longest guys on tour.
Clearly, the key is being able to position your golf ball so that you can attack the pins from the proper angles. That leads me to my key stats for the week.
Greens in Regulation % Stokes Gained Around the GreenGiven that Muirfield Village is known as a “second-shot golf course,” I want to target players that know how to get it in play off the tee and are consistently good iron players.
Due to the severity of the putting surfaces, I’ll try and steer clear of the guys who aren’t as tidy around the greens. The players who are really good at chipping and pitching the ball are the ones that can salvage pars and succeed at the Nicklaus design in Dublin, Ohio.
So what does all this mean in terms of betting? Where is that value I alluded to? Let’s take a look.
It is really difficult for me to bet against Justin Thomas, but I have to stay true to my beliefs and attack perceived value when I see it.
I’m trying not to overthink things here because after doing some homework, it seems like this bet should feature two golfers who are -115 vs. each other.
The fact that we get some “built-in juice” in our favor if we take Spieth makes it seem worthwhile to me.
Believe me, I am more than aware of what JT has been up to for the better part of the past 18 months. He has yet to finish outside of the top 22 in a stroke-play event this year and finished 4th in the Memorial in 2017. But here’s what I also take away from this wager.
Thomas actually missed the cut in his previous two appearances at Jack’s Place in 2015 and 2016, and let’s be honest.
If you take his game and compare it to Jordan’s, the glaring advantage that the Kentucky native holds over the Golden Child is his incredible distance and power off the tee. Unfortunately for Thomas, Muirfield Village has proven to be a track that places a premium on other facets of the golf game.
Enter Spieth. The two areas that Jordan excels at are his ridiculously reliable iron game and his ability to get the ball up and down when he misses greens.
This isn’t hearsay or my opinion, ladies and gentlemen; these are cold-hard facts. Spieth is 2nd on the PGA Tour in Greens in Regulation (GIR) and is 8th in strokes gained around-the-green, while Thomas is 26th and 39th in those two categories respectively.
This isn’t about Jordan being better than Justin or vice versa, this is simply about unlocking value and trying to turn a profit. It’s there on paper, so let’s see if it pans out.
The oddsmakers seem to be on point this week, making it incredibly difficult to locate any “bad lines.” However, this is one of those wagers where I think there is some room to take advantage.
When I added everything up, it appears to me that it is Day that should be the -120 favorite in this scenario. Here’s why.
Both of these guys can tear the cover off the ball, so I opted to concentrate on the short-game stats. Despite some drastic improvements in the wedge department for DJ, Jason is the more complete player on and around the greens, and it’s not even a debate.
Jason is leading the tour in sand save percentage and is 3rd overall in strokes gained around-the green.
He is coming off a win and a 5th place in his last two starts, and – oh yeah – Jason resides in Columbus and is a member at Muirfield Village.
While Day and his family will be sleeping in their own beds this week, Dustin is making the trip the trip north from Florida and will be competing for just the second time since the RBC Heritage in mid-April.
Now, golf is a funny game, and anything can happen in a given week, but we have to bet with our brains, not our hearts. Trying to pick between Dustin Johnson and Jason Day is typically like splitting hairs, but this may be one of the golf courses that plays right into the hands of the Aussie and makes him a favorite.
I think the world of Dustin’s golf game, and I will rarely be betting against him in a head-to-head matchup. But I like to rely on data and statistics to point me towards the Promised Land.
This week specifically, Day seems to have the edge over Johnson given his short-game prowess. Let’s see if the “proof is in the pudding.”
I’d love to give you some more advice on the rest of the matchups. But quite frankly, I think the rest of them are fairly priced, and I don’t see much else sticking out. In terms of other wagers that I think are inaccurately priced, there was one that caught my eye.
We are talking about finding good value, right? Well, when I saw that Charley Hoffman had the same odds (+1200) to finish in the top 10 as Brice Garnett, I thought something seemed off. I glanced closer and saw that Shubhankar Sharma was ahead of Hoffman at +1000 to crack the top 10. The alarm bells started going off.
Now, I was shocked to see that Charley has yet to record a top-10 finish on the year, but I did notice that the former UNLV Rebel has four top 25s on the season and is coming off a first-round 63 last week at Colonial.
He is by no means a lock to get on the first page of the leaderboard, but I certainly think +1200 is more than a bargain for someone who leads the tour in proximity from 125-150 yards.
Remember, all we have to do is win this bet a little more than 8% of the time to be profitable in the long run. He’s got 48 career top-10s in 353 starts, meaning he finishes in the top 10 about 13.6% of the time.
This player at this golf course at this price? This is the definition of good value in my book, so I think it warrants some serious consideration.
I’d love to recommend another dozen or so bets, but I don’t want you just blindly throwing money at the wall, hoping something sticks.
At the end of the day, I want you placing the wagers that are going to put money into your pocket. My goal is to find the bets that have a real chance of paying off so that you and I both walk away happy.
I think we found a few opportunities to cash in, but we just have to wait and see how it plays out. I’ll be here next week for the FedEx St. Jude Classic, the last event before the U.S. Open!
Until then, good luck!
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