It was a mixed-bag Thursday for my wagers at the CJ Cup. Gary Woodland connected on a first-round leader ticket at 90/1, but my top head-to-head wager of Corey Conners (-120) over Andrew Putnam was not to be after the American gained +2.64 shots with his short game.
That is the sort of financial loss I am fine taking since the premise of fading Putnam's ball-striking worked out, but a poor 18 holes from Conners, along with the overachieving from Putnam, made us settle for a one-shot defeat.
It is one of those situations where a fair outcome, according to my model, would have been a push at around +1 since each player experienced their fair share of good luck, but we will roll with the punches after encountering our own good fortune on Woodland in the first-round leader market.
If you aren't doing so already, you can find me on Twitter @TeeOffSports. There I will provide my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user inputs to create custom rankings for golf. That sheet is free and released every Monday, so be sure to check it out and construct your own numbers from my database of information.
Who Were The Biggest Overachievers When Taking Into Account Baseline Putting Versus Actual Ball-Striking Metrics?
I want to be careful about how I word this because it is a somewhat convoluted process as to what you are looking at in the image above.
My model tries to project future outcomes and does so in multiple ways, including pinpointing baseline putting versus actual flat-stick performance for the field. I then merge those totals with the steadier ball-striking marks to better understand how someone has performed in the categories that are easier to predict long-term, but it is a process that needs extra work to avoid common traps.
Not every golfer who has over/underachieved on the sheet can be expected to do so again the following day, which is one of the reasons I always recalculate the information with my pre-tournament research. However, the image shows the golfers who finished higher on the leaderboard than they should have when taking multiple data points into account.
Someone like Sungjae Im or Viktor Hovland didn't experience massive shifts in their full-tournament expectation, but there are a few golfers I want to discuss when it comes to finding ways to bet in round two.
Seamus Power
It's not often we get these spots where someone grades in the bottom 75% of the field pre-event and slips backward on my sheet after finishing the day inside the top 10 on the leaderboard, but here we are with Seamus Power.
The Irishman lost a staggering 2.49 strokes with his ball-striking on Thursday, a total that placed him 68th out of 78 golfers, but was also a +5.27 performance over expectation with his around-the-green game and his putter propelled him up the board and into ninth place.
I believe we have a pre-determined outlook for Power in the market, which is why I don't imagine we be offered a ton of high-end opponents, but a matchup against someone like Sebastian Munoz at BetRivers (-120) could be a tangible way to fade Power's overinflated production.
Shop around to see if you can find a better opponent, but you should be in a decent spot as long as it isn't K.H. Lee you are using against Powers.
Pre-Tournament Grade – 58th
Grade After Day 1 – 64th
Andrew Putnam
I alluded to why I felt we were on the wrong side of at least a push when we grabbed Corey Conners (-120) against Andrew Putnam on Thursday and I don't see a reason why we shouldn't go back to the well.
I want to note that I had this matchup at -150 before the tournament began, a total that now sits at -140 because of the issues Conners experienced on day one. However, the same 30-point threshold is still prevalent if you can grab the -110 price at Bet365. If you only have access to DraftKings, the 20-point advantage is still worth a shot, but be aware that the edge has diminished some of our long-term equity.
Pre-Tournament Grade – 51st
Grade After Day 1 – 57th
*Conners fell from 15th to 24th himself.
Wildcard Opponent – Jason Day (Matchup Specific)
I want to be as transparent as possible with this answer regarding Jason Day.
- My long-term metrics have not taken into account his recent surge in ball striking. I fixed some of that on the back end of my model, but it doesn't show on the surface when looking at the image that places him 55th. The number is still lower than some might want to hear (myself included), but we do have a better prospect profile than what meets the eye.
- The reason he is included on this list is purely a number/opponent grab. I am not running out into the space trying to pick on Day, but one of my official wagers for tracking will be Si Woo Kim over the Aussie. I had a recalculated price pre-event at -120 as the proper number, and while I am not overreacting to one bad round from my favorite golfer on the planet, it was enough to shift my projections up another five points, making my new "accurate" lookahead line -125.
All of that is important to note since there is a -105 in the space if you look around on Si Woo Kim for Friday's round. Maybe I am forcing things a little bit across the board since nothing technically reached the 30-point threshold I try to uncover before officially tracking plays, but 20 points is still a substantial difference in this spot when it provides almost a 4.5% increase in implied win probability between the prices.
List Of Players I Want To Find Matchups Against If Possible:
Harris English, Lucas Glover, Andrew Putnam, Brendon Todd, J.J. Spaun, Seamus Power
