AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am Picks and Preview
Bahrain Championship
Pebble Beach Picks
0.50u - Collin Morikawa 14/1
0.40u - Hideki Matsuyama 25/1
0.25u - Jason Day 40/1
0.20u - Taylor Pendrith 50/1
Last year at Pebble Beach the weather was an absolute disaster and Wyndham Clark was declared the winner after only three rounds.
The weather appears to be quite docile for the weekend which should allow the field to tear this place up (as well as a round at Spyglass). Clark was able to reach -17 before the bad weather rolled in and killed the tournament. While Pebble Beach is an iconic course, it doesn’t present a difficult challenge to the pros of today. I usually forget to mention weather in the newsletter and will be trying to make a better point of it…I think why I typically don’t is because I do look at the weather but I also make my bets on Monday before tee times are published anyway so if there is a weather advantage I’ve already rolled the dice in hopes of beating line moves.
Generally speaking, the driver isn’t as big of a weapon here. Shorter courses tend to do that. As long as a golfer isn’t driving the ball into the ocean, the tournament will be decided from the iron to putter. Even missing fairways below field average won’t kill a weekend — while the greens are small, there will still be a lot of wedges in hand allowing the field to attack. As just mentioned, despite having the smallest green complexes on the PGA Tour schedule, the GIR% is still tour average. You can interpret that in many ways but the number one thing that indicates to me is that from any approach shot, golfers shouldn’t have to bail out often.
The most difficult shots on the course will be the few approaches that aren’t wedges (which is generally the case every week, shocker!) and putting. The Poa greens can be tricky, and at times, unpredictable, even for the best putters on Tour.
The four golfers I tipped are all coming into this event is solid form, mostly built on strong approach play (Day being the weakest, but still positive in his recent body of work). In fact over a 40 round sample, all four are positive in all strokes gained categories. While I don’t largely factor course history, I always look and of the three, Matsuyama is the only one without a solid finish (also minimal history).
Been a slow start to the year, but hey…it sure is nice to have some primetime golf (if you live in the eastern time zone).
Bahrain Championship Picks
0.40u - Laurie Canter 20/1
0.30u - Guido Migliozzi 40/1
0.15u - Jason Scrivener 70/1
0.15u - Ivan Cantero 80/1
LPGA Tournament of Champions
0.40u - Linn Grant 18/1
0.30u - Angel Yin 30/1