Week 11: The PLAYERS Championship Preview and Picks
Don't lose the plot
We found a winner! It happened in Hong Kong with basically nobody watching but a win is a win. Abe Ancer tried to gag away his 5 shot lead but he held on to beat Cam Smith and Paul Casey in a playoff, claiming the trophy at 35/1! We had a nice run with Schmelzel as well (90/1) but Tardy played brilliantly in round 4 and Schmelzel had to settle for 2nd.
I’ve been struggling to stay ahead of the PGA Tour which is turn has lead to a lack of information in the newsletter, which bothers me.
In an attempt to remedy that situation this week what you will read below will NOT have any bets yet (unless books update odds before the end of API). In a perfect world I will get the newsletter/previews out earlier and perhaps that will be more useful to you, the reader, than coming out on a Tuesday.
That was always the idea but has not been the result since I was often waiting to complete my bets. To be honest, when it comes to outright wagering, I’m rarely surfing the lines at 6am on a Monday like I used to so there will be a new effort (we will see how long, lol) to push the newsletter up and into your inboxes earlier with my views/thoughts on the upcoming tournament(s).
Check back in for added bets as markets are posted and/or follow along on X where I send out my outrights as well! (Follow here @Axis_DFS)
The PLAYERS Championship - TPC Sawgrass
Outright Picks
markets updated a bit before I finished writing so I have bet the following
0.5u - Justin Thomas 25/1
0.4u - Collin Morikawa 28/1 (some at 25 & 30)
0.15u - Tom Kim 70/1
0.1u - Brian Harman 150/1
I’ve always loved this event and I like the course quite a bit as well. It’s wild. There is trouble all over the place. It won’t be over powered by distance. The elements may have a say year to year…it’s a test. While the shenanigans by the PGA Tour surrounding this event may distract at times (5th major and all) it really is a gem and despite what the Tour would say, it’s the tournament hurt the most by those who left to join LIV. At least the majors still get a large majority of those golfers.
Par 72 - 7,275 yards
Architect - Pete Dye
Greens - Poa Trivialis overseed
Holes w/ less than 280 median yard DD - 5
GIR from fairway - 76%
GIR from rough - 45.4%
Score to par, fairway - (-0.19) (-0.19 tour average)
Score to par, rough - (+0.23) (+0.13 tour average)
Score to par, greenside bunker - (+0.31) (+0.29 tour average)
*these numbers span back to 2018…sample of 500,000 holes (give or take) for Tour average
Two things in particular stand out to me when looking through historical data from TPC Sawgrass — approach play and the scoring on par 5’s. I’m not saying these things are necessarily predictive unless you perhaps can predict hole by hole scoring (which some people may be able to do).
The par 5s at TPC Sawgrass are scoring opportunities. This is true at most courses, however there is a particularly larger scoring gap among the most successful golfers during tournament week at Sawgrass. Now, if you pull up PGA Tour Par 5 Scoring, is that number you see predictive? I’ll say that is unlikely! But if you have the data could you determine what types of holes golfers tend to play well/better with a degree of signal? I’ll say that it is possible if you know what you’re doing and have shot by shot data.
Over a single season, the best par 5 birdie or better % has generally been about 58%. If you look at the 2024 season you will see there are currently 58 golfers above this mark! This alone should tell you blindly looking at a sample size of 2 months is not a great indicator alone. And honestly, looking at, and making wagers/DFS decisions based on a single golf stat is not a good idea to begin with — but it is a piece of a puzzle and we’re searching for upside in an outright wager.
Sawgrass is a volatile course and course history can be tricky on a good week, let alone at highly penal course where the wrong bounce can send you packing for the weekend. But if you look back at a 12 month sample, you see names like Cantlay, Scheffler, Aberg, Clark, Van Rooyen, Ghim, Spieth…of those who habitually score well on par 5s. Some have had success at Sawgrass (defined as good finishes). Is it simply because of their par 5 scoring? Not necessarily, and there are 14 other holes to play each day but again…we’re trying to build that puzzle (a theme) each week with the right pieces to hopefully see a complete picture.
Another trend (I’ll use that word because again — descriptive vs predictive difference) is that over the last five years there has only been ONE golfer who finished inside the top 5 that made double digit bogeys…Cam Smith (lucky me). Why did I even bother to look? Because intuitively, at a course where mistakes have a high cost, I believe that bogey avoidance could be an all encompassing stat. Of course, it’s not perfect, because the same variable does cause all bogeys. Driving it into the water or missing a 3 foot putt could be the reason a bogey was made but I do believe certain golfers have tendencies and more aggressive golfers score better but make more bogeys as well. Aggressive play can pay off in a big way or be catastrophic at a course like Sawgrass.
Again, if you have the data perhaps you can look at miss tendencies and break down the location of the water on each hole, etc. I did not do this (time consuming for a peasant like me w/ minimal coding skills) but I have 600+ tee shots marked as landing in water, and 500+ approach shots marked as landing in water…so perhaps one could find golfer who miss more right or left are at a disadvantage here? Or perhaps it means nothing because 200+ of those tee shots were on #17…
At this point I’m just doing a bit of “stream of conscience” but these are the types of things that run through my brain and the next step of the process would be to test some of these theories/narratives out. I have quite the list and we’ve already discussed the limited coding ability so I move at tortoise speed with this. Hopefully some of it can you get thinking and perhaps you’re reading this saying, “well you’re a dumb-dumb, of course that’s useless…..or maybe you’re onto something and I do have the ability to look into that”…honestly, it’s how I’ve stumbled into many edges/angles over the years. One thought triggered by somebody else’s brain/idea.
Lastly, I’ll touch on approach. Of course it’s important. It’s key every week to hit irons well. Above I mentioned all of the approach shots that have found water…trouble looms even after the tee shot. And while GIR% didn’t have a profound correlation to finishing position, strokes gained approach did. So it’s not simply finding the green…but finding the pin. There are quite a few short iron/wedge opportunities at Sawgrass so if you’re simply finding the green from 130 out instead of giving yourself a true look at birdie you’re going to be losing to the field.
I’m sorry if that just seems like a lot of random rambling. It kind of was. It’s how I prefer to write and think things through as I go. It can lead to writing things that may not be helpful. I’m hoping you found bits and pieces interesting or thought provoking. Slowly but surely, each week, I try to build a puzzle of each course. It’s just one category that goes into a model each week. Golf is full of GREAT descriptive stats. You can go back through many data points and see how/why players did well or played poorly. They do not all translate to future success or failure. That said, I don’t think it’s bad practice to see how things actually played out in the past. Even if you can’t personally figure out how to back-test it or quantify it…perhaps you can justify in your head as to how it could be important for a given week/tournament. If you are able to quantify those things you probably are not reading this newsletter.
Please do not forget that a golfers baseline skill and form does matter — more so than the course fit itself (imo).
I will NOT send out another email notification. I do not want to flood inboxes so you will either have to check back in or follow me on X, as I do tweet them out as well (Follow here @Axis_DFS)
Lastly, because a special week, below are some other people that have helped me out greatly along the way and I believe, if you’re not already, you should follow their work/content!
Sky Hook - https://twitter.com/SkyHookDFS
Pat Mayo - https://twitter.com/ThePME
Drew Mathews - https://twitter.com/redkacheek
Ryan Baroff - https://twitter.com/RBaroff427
Jude DeLoye - https://twitter.com/Jude_UT4 (espeically if you love MAC Football and college baseball)
Also, I made 3 bets for the Asian Tour International Series
0.2u - John Catlin 40/1
0.15u - Travis Smyth 65/1
0.1u - Maverick Antcliff 125/1
https://twitter.com/Axis_DFS/status/1767683817496576368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March
Public Results
2024 | +12.1u (26.5% ROI)
2023 | -23.71u (-10.49% ROI)
2022 | +80.7u (22.9% ROI)
2021 | +57.46 (8.7% ROI)