The Valero Texas Open

I’m back from my week-long hiatus after starting a new job and finally finding some time to put together something for the Valero Open this week. There’s nothing to review from last week so let’s dive right in.


TPC San Antonio is a prime ball-striker’s course. Keeping the ball in play off the tee will be important, but hitting into the rough isn’t going to cause too many problems. It’s the bunkers and hazards that pose the problems. It has the third hardest Par-5’s on Tour, so it’s important to score well and take advantage. Wind also comes into play here, which paired with firm greens provides the worst GIR% from the fairway on Tour.


Let’s look at the 5 key stats and the Top 10 at each position:


SG: OTT - Rahm, Mitchell, Garcia, Young, Steele, List, Conners, Zalatoris, Buckley

Ball Striking - Rahm, Morikawa, Hovland, Conners, Matsuyama, Im, Power, Burns, Glover, Henley

SG: APP -  Henley, Zalatoris, Hovland, Donald, Thomas, Casey, Hoge, C Smith, Burns, Matsuyama

SG: ATG - Knous, Kuchar, Fleetwood, Jones, Gooch, Neimann, Jager, Willet, Sabbatini, Berger

Par 5 Scoring - Cantlay, Smith, Fitzpatrick, Thomas, Homa, Matsuyama, Power, Gooch, Hatton

Outright:

Chris Kirk +3000 - He ranks in the Top 68 or better in all five stats above. He missed the cut at the Players, but he finished T5 at the API and T7 the week before at the Honda. He also finished 6th last year.

Hideki Matsuyama +2000 - Statistically, he fits. He ranks no lower than 48th in all of the above stats. He’s also won twice already this season, and is playing well lately too.

Top 10:

Corey Conners +250 - He’s a previous winner here and ranks in the Top 7 in both SG: OTT and Ball Striking.

Top 20:

Sahith Theegala +320 - He ranks 68th or better in the last three stats. He has typically been playing very well early on and then fades over the weekend. I may sprinkle a FRL on him too.
Matt Jones +500 - He’s 4th in SG: ATG and T31 in Par 5 Scoring. He’s mediocre at best on the other three stats, but we only need him to finish Top 20.

The Valspar Championship

I don’t think I’m the only one that’s glad last week is over. The Players Championship experienced some wild weather, a first round over 55 hours long, multiple delays, and A LOT of water balls. One of my outright winners, Matsuyama, withdrew after the tournament started. The other, Daniel Berger, drew the short straw and had to play his second round in the crazy winds, leading to a 75 after posting 67-70-70 on the other three days. Collin Morikawa missed the cut after also getting buried by the weather. Corey Conners played well, but his T-26 was two shots off cashing a Top-10 pick. Finally, I actually hit a bet! Shane Lowry T-20 cashed as he finished T-13. I told you he plays well in bad weather!

Now for this week. Driving Accuracy will be key at Innisbrook this week, as the course sports the 5th narrowest fairways on Tour. Ball striking is also going to be important as there are 12 dog legs on this course to go along with a lot of tight, tree lined areas. The Par 3s are all over 195yds and we go back to Poa greens after a stretch of Bermuda. Innisbrook is the 5th toughest course on Tour with scoring relative to par of +0.81.

The GIR% here is 31.3% lower than the Tour average, and although scrambling is slightly easier, the birdie or better percent is 39.1% lower and the bogey avoidance is lower. That means less birdies and more bogeys - so bogey avoidance will be key this week.

Let’s look at the 5 key stats for this week and the guys in the Top 10 of each category entering this week at the Valspar Championship:

Strokes Gained: Off The Tee

  • Rahm, McIlroy, Mitchell, Garcia, Young, Steele, Hovland, List, Conners, Buckley

Ball Striking

  • Rahm, Hovland, Morikawa, Conners, Burns, Matsuyama, Oosthuizen, Im, Power, Glover, Henley

Strokes Gained: Approach

  • Henley, Zalatoris, Hovland, Casey, Hoge, Smith, Donald, Knox, Thomas, C. Kim

GIR% 175-200yds

  • McGreevey, Knox, English, Straka, Donald, Fowler, Reeves, Glover, Barjon, Conners, Simpson

Bogey Avoidance

  • Berger, Thomas, Im, English, Morikawa, Cantlay, Matsuyama, Burns, Schauffele, C. Smith

Outright:

Collin Morikawa +1200 - He’s the best iron player on tour. He missed the cut last week, so he should be looking to rebound this week. He’s in the Top 15 for all of the above stats except for GIR% 175-200yds where he sits 31st.

Russel Knox +6800 - He ranks 44th or higher in all 5 stats above. His style fits this course nicely, has finished 26th of better here in the last 3 years and just put together a nice T6 last week at the Players.


Top 10:

Abraham Ancer +350 - His SG: APP leaves some to be desired, but he ranks 56th or better in all four other stats. He has played here twice in the past and finished 16th and 5th in those.

Webb Simpson +600 - He has 3 Top 10s at Innisbrook in 10 events. He hasn’t played here since 2019, but he finished 8th in 2018. 


Top 20:

Luke Donald +650 - He won here in 2012 and finished 9th in 2019. He’s one of the worst on Tour in SG:OTT, average in Ball Striking, but Top 10 in GIR% and SG:APP. 



The Player's Championship @ TPC Sawgrass

Well, my cold streak has continued. After what looked like sure-things with Zalatoris and Im in the Top 10, they both imploded on Sunday. My Corey Conners outright got real close and at one point was only 2 back from lead on Sunday, until he made back to back bogeys on 12 & 13 to take him out of contention. It’s too bad “close” doesn’t count in betting. I’m getting crushed lately.

But, as the great Michael Jordan once said, “Just wait, the cards will change.” So we continue to power through and hope for some better bets. For what it’s worth, I did actually hit Scheffler live at +360 early on Sunday, which helped.

Now we move to The Players Championship; oft-referred to as the “unofficial 5th Major.” This is another hard course and it looks like the streak of good weather is ending this week also with rain and high winds in the forecast, at least at the beginning of the tournament.

TPC Sawgrass has plenty of trouble to get into. It boasts the most water danger holes on Tour, with 16. It also has the 9th most bunkers with smaller, very fast greens. It will be interesting to see how the rain will affect the speed of the greens. They have a sub-air system, but I haven’t seen anything on whether or not or even how frequently they will be running it.

That being said, accuracy off the tee will be important again this week, and playing through high winds will be ready to throw curveballs to guys that aren’t ready for it. The five stats that we will focus on this week are the following:

  1. Good Drive % - On Par 4’s and 5’s, how often a player hits a fairway, or hits the green/fringe in regulation when they miss the fairway.

  2. Strokes Gained: Tee-To-Green - Comprehensive stat that combines SG:OTT, SG:APP, and SG:ARG.

  3. Bogey Avoidance - With high winds and rain, guys that avoid bogeys will have an advantage. Just ask Daniel Berger and Talor Gooch.

  4. Scrambling - How good are guys at saving par when they miss the green? Expect a lot of missed greens this week.

  5. GIR% - Guys that can actually hit greens consistently will have a much better time this weekend.


Let's look at the names in the Top 10 in those stats:

Good Drive% - Morikawa, Harmon, Kisner, Oostheuizen, Berger, Conners, Stanley, Dahmen, Ancer, Armour

SG: T2G - Rahm, List, Zalatoris, Thomas, Berger, Morikawa, Fitzpatrick, Henley, Neimann, Im

Bogey Avoidance - Morikawa, Cantlay, Im, Berger, Thomas, Rahm, Burns, English, C. Smith, Spieth

Scrambling - Berger, Kuchar, Im, Cantlay, English, Hoge, Spieth, McCarthy, Hubbard, Thomas

GIR% - Rahm, Morikawa, Knox, Conners, C. Smith, Thomas, Oosthuizen, Glover, Burns, List

Outright:

Daniel Berger +3000 - He’s Top 10 in 4/5 categories above, and he’s 15th in GIR%. He played really well through 3 rounds at the Honda before blowing it on Sunday.

Hideki Matsuyama +2800 - He’s Top 30 in 4 of the categories above and ranked 30th in Good Drive %. He’s had some success already on Tour this season and has 2 Top 10’s and 2 MC’s in his last five trips to Sawgrass.


Top 10

Corey Conners +600 - He ranks no lower than 37th in 4 categories above. The only thing that strikes me is a 154th in Scrambling. He finished 7th here last year and T11 at a similarly hard course last week.

Collin Morikawa +190 - He’s the best iron player in the game right now, and you can get him to finish Top 10 at almost 2-1 odds. I’ll take that every day.

Top 20:

Shane Lowry +210 - Whenever there’s wind and rain and gross conditions, you can bet Lowry will be hanging around near the top. He finished 8th here last year.

Arnold Palmer Invitational @ Bay Hill CC

Before I begin with this - proceed with caution. I have been ICE COLD across all sports since the Super Bowl. I try my best to stick to plain statistics, and recently, the stats haven’t pointed me in a great direction. But nonetheless, I shan't give up on my strategy! This is how sports betting works, you can get on a hot streak and then a cold streak in the blink of an eye. Hopefully, I can break out of it this week with the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.

Let’s take a look at how the course stacks up. Bay Hill is the 4th toughest course on Tour with a score relative to par sitting at +0.88. There’s plenty of things that can bite you at this course: it has the 11th most water danger holes on Tour with 9 total, it boasts the longest Par 3’s on Tour, and don’t forget about those Florida winds and what they did to guys in the Bear Trap last week. Despite having the 7th largest greens on Tour, they are firm and fast, so putting will be important.

The other important things at Bay Hill will be focusing on accuracy off the tee. The rough is grown to 3.5” and is overseeded rye, which can make it extra difficult to get out and get back on track. Scoring on long Par 3’s will be paramount and making your approach from the rough might be more important that the players will want to admit. Let’s take a look at the 5 stats I’ll be looking at for this week.


SG: Off-The-Tee - Driving accuracy and distance will be important this week. Avoiding the thick rough and navigating the Florida winds will be key to a successful weekend.

Par 3 Efficiency 200-225yds - With the longest Par 3’s on Tour, scoring from this distance will go a long way to contributing to success.

Approaches from 175-200yds from Rough - Getting out of the rough from this distance is going to be a frequent occurrence if they can’t keep the ball in the fairway off the tee.

Bogey Avoidance - We saw what happened to Daniel Berger at a comparable course last week - no bogies through 3 rounds got him a 5-shot 54 hole lead. And well, his Sunday round showed what happens when you can’t avoid those bogeys.

SG: Putting - These greens are big, firm, and fast. Being able to putt effectively and avoid 3-putts should help immensely.

Here are the guys in the Top 10 of each ranking:

SG: OTT - Rahm, Young, Mitchell, Im, Cantlay, Garcia, List, Morikawa, Conners, Palmer

Par 3 200-225 - Burns, Todd, Berger, Byrd, Na, Novak, Spieth, Conners, Reavie, Landry

Approach 175-200 RGH - Simpson, O’Hair, Sabbatini, Wallace, Schwartzel, Smith, Im, McDowell, English, Conners

Bogey Avoidance - Rahm, Garcia, Im, Burns, Morikawa, Cantlay, Berger, Zalatoris, Lowry, Thomas

SG: Putting - Gay, Morikawa, Todd, Schwab, Kraft, Kisner, McCarthy, O’Hair, Hughes, Lowry

Outright:

Corey Conners +6000 - He’s in the Top 10 in 3 of the categories above, ranks T45 in bogey avoidance, and T76 in SG:Putting. He’s missed the cut in 3 of his 4 last events, and historically at Bay Hill he’s missed 2/3 cuts. However, last year he finished 3rd so hopefully this pays off.


Top 10:

Sungjae Im +320 - He was the favorite last week, for some weird reason, and missed the cut. I think it was mostly just a bad weekend. He is in the Top 10 in 3/5 of the categories above. I think he turns it around and can pull off a Top 10 this week.

Will Zalatoris +350 - Top 10 in bogey avoidance, he’s also Top 25 in SG:OTT and Approach 175-200. The only thing that concerns me is his putting. He ranks 164th in SG:Putting, but if he can get hot, hopefully he can pull off a Top 10.


Top 20:

Sean O’Hair +700 - He ranks 2nd in approach from the rough and Top 10 in SG:Putting. He also ranks T49 in bogey avoidance and T33 in Par 3 efficiency.

Chez Reavie +500 - I don’t feel as good about this one, but he’s Top 10 in Par 3 efficiency, and Top 55 in bogey avoidance and approach.