It has been a mad-dash effort from the field at the Sanderson Farms Championship as Thomas Detry and Mackenzie Hughes lead the way at 10-under par through two rounds.
Detry's steady play of back-to-back 67s has generated one of the more controlled production outputs we have seen from the field, but there are still a few "what-ifs" to mention when we look into how he's climbed the leaderboard.
Prior to the tournament, I noted how 27% of the daily opportunities will account for 60% of the projected winning score, but Detry has bucked conventional wisdom over his two rounds at the Country Club of Jackson, playing his 10 chances at even-par. We can look at this exhibit in either direction of sustainability, but the one thing that remains certain is that if the Belgian golfer starts creating openings at the more straightforward holes, this tournament could be his for the taking.
Let's continue to dive into what the pertinent information is telling us about the weekend and see if we can find a betting edge.
If you aren't doing so already, you can find me on Twitter (@TeeOffSports), where 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.
Top-15 Head-To-Head Value Golfers For Saturday
Top Matchup To Consider
Kevin Streelman -110 over Nick Taylor -110 (Bet365)
It has been a good start for us on the head-to-head front at the Sanderson Farms Championship. My Thursday article went 4-1 on playable options, and I added a relatively easy win in round two when I grabbed Stephan Jaeger (-105) over Stewart Cink. Matchups are still entering the market as of this writing, but let's try to capture the most enticing early price I have seen for round three.
If you recall my Thursday article, Nick Taylor graded as one of my five most overvalued commodities for the day, which resulted in the one blemish we have for the week on our head-to-head wagers.
Part of gambling is adjusting when the data tells us things have shifted from what we initially thought, but those changes should always come gradually since our research leading up to the tournament remains the focal point of the conversation. It doesn't mean we can't find new value when someone like Nick Hardy or Sepp Straka earns the boosts they have received in my model, but it is another story when a golfer like Taylor, who had the anchor abruptly hit the floor Friday, continues to get an increase in projection from one stellar round during.
Taylor's 2.87 strokes gained ball-striking on Thursday were quickly erased Friday with his negative-1.56 mark, which placed him 120th on the day in expected scoring. While you would expect some regression with the way he struck the ball during his second appearance on the course, we never quite saw that downfall come to fruition.
Taylor shot a two-under 70, the 45th best score of the day. That is one of the reasons the Canadian has only jumped from 94th to 80th in my head-to-head rankings model — even with his 10th-place output score. That gives us grounds to believe things could go south on Saturday.
Kevin Streelman, on the other hand, has experienced an upgrade because of his two-day showing. Starting the contest 49th overall in my model, the American has steadily climbed up to 28th after giving us back-to-back rounds of 1.44 and 1.78 strokes gained ball-striking, respectively.
It is that sort of in-tournament form that I mix into my pre-tournament data to either heighten or lower the safety bar on these golfers. It seems the market is still overreacting to a one-off performance from Taylor on Thursday, which he didn't follow it statistically, yet was still rewarded because of a flat stick that ended the round ranked ninth in the field.
You will hear a lot from me about how putting is the most volatile category to try and predict daily, so if the critical and tangible metrics are moving south when the outlier numbers are spiking, I will always look to fade those players in that spot — especially when going against a golfer my model didn't like from the start.
