BMW Championship Picks and Preview
AIG Women's Open Picks and Preview
Lauren Coughlin…once again, a hero. We collect another winner, at 33/1, on the LPGA Tour, with perhaps one of the most in form golfers in the world. I’m sure many balked at the number because of the name along side it, coming off her first win only 3 tournaments ago…but she stayed in form and we’re reaping the benefits. Xander had no business giving us a sweat at the FedEx but to finish two back was a solid effort (assisted by Hideki’s inept play down the back stretch).
In Europe the women will be taking on St. Andrews for the AIG Women’s Open. I will have some more thoughts on the women’s at event at the bottom of the newsletter…
BMW Championship Picks
1.5u - Xander Schauffele 7/1
The BMW is quite possibly the best tournament on the PGA Tour schedule outside of the majors. It is a strong, 70 man field, however there are large stakes on the line, not just for winning, but for finishing inside the top 50 and getting the auto invite to all of the Signature Events in 2025.
This week the Tour is traveling to Colorado to play Castle Pines. The course is a par 72, listed at 8,130 yards. According to google, the city of Castle Rock, CO, where the course is located, sits at an elevation of 6,283 feet above sea level. Per conventional math (provided by Titelist web site), this elevation will add roughly 7.2% to distance. A 7.2% reduction on the overall length of the course bring it down to 7500 yards — which is still fairly long. This probably isn’t the best method, since it par is just a number and it will vary hole to hole, but it should give you a better understanding of the difference.
As always when the PGA Tour goes to courses we don’t have historical data from or where I believe things will be more difficult I fall back to relying more on ball striking. I’m not insinuating scoring itself will be difficult, but these golfers do not play at much elevation on the PGA Tour and distance control will be a new wrinkle to iron out prior to the tournament.
This course has seen PGA Tour golf, for 20+ years in fact, but this will be the first event since 2006. If you go searching for those leaderboards, a stableford scoring system was used in place of regular stroke play so you’ll have to do some extra work if you’d like to figure out field scoring (which I think would be futile but you do you).
I will not get bogged down in the minutia trying to tailor my model to a course fit I’m not fully aware of. When in doubt, the standard advantages will more than likely be sufficient. Now if I’m wrong, and scrambling and putting skill are the most important then I’ll need to get lucky but those types of courses are rare and even when there is a pronounced emphasis on short game it still doesn’t exceed the importance of driving and iron play. One last note on the course though — if you like to know the green types — they are T1 Bentgrass/poa mix.
AIG Women’s Open Picks
0.65u - Nelly Korda 16/1
0.3u - Minjee Lee 35/1
0.2u - Ally Ewing 40/1 each-way
We recently saw the men return to St. Andrews where Cam Smith was victorious and this week we will get a glimpse at the women on the Home of Golf where we should see a truer test of golf from the old links. The power/distance of the mens game has grown too strong and outside of extremely blustery conditions, St. Andrews can do little to stop them.
As we have seen when the women have played other historical venues that we generally only see the men play at, you get a completely different view of the course and how it’s played. St. Andrews has hosted women’s Opens in the past, with the most recent being played in 2013 (Stacy Lewis winner, -8). The course played around 6,600 yards then, which is long in the women’s game, and while I haven’t see a card for this week’s event, I can’t imagine it will change drastically. Between the length and potential weather, it could be quite the challenge.
If you’re ever questioning how an event will play, by now, you should know to just default to ball striking as your guide, or strokes gained tee to green (using the KPMG data for LPGA). And while I find form to be important, long term tee to green gives you a wonderful overview of pedigree.
For this event and venue, I did look into event history as well as some other links style venues over the past couple of years…mostly to get a feel for how the tournaments played out because I think it can be a fault to get hung up on overall results for individual golfers historical results…such things would have probably prevented us from betting Coughlin twice over the past month, missing the two victories — they never win until they do!
DPWT Danish Golf Championship
0.15u - Shubhankar Sharma 66/1 each-way
0.15u - Joe Dean 66/1 each-way
0.15u - Brandon Robinson Thompson 66/1 each-way
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Public Results (as of 8.18.24)
2024 | +72.94 (75.1% ROI)
2023 | -23.71u (-10.49% ROI)
2022 | +80.7u (22.9% ROI)
2021 | +57.46 (8.7% ROI)