It has been an exciting two days at TPC Summerlin as Mito Pereira will look to continue the hot run that has given him a slight lead over the likes of Tom Kim, Si Woo Kim, Maverick McNealy and Robby Shelton heading into Saturday. Pereira was someone my model liked from an upside perspective prior to the tournament.
He ranked ninth from a win equity standpoint when I removed some of the floor outcomes from the equation, but a victory will not come easy because the big names are still lurking and trying to hit Vegas' biggest jackpot of the season.
Let's talk a little about what my model is noticing after two rounds are officially in the books and see if we can find an edge to take advantage of during Saturday's third round.
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.
Players To Consider In Head-To-Heads
I haven't found a ton of head-to-head battles for us to play in the market since pricing has been relatively snug throughout the tournament. However, we did select Wyndham Clark +100 over Nick Taylor from a pre-tournament perspective before watching that crash over the final few holes to become a missed cut/missed cut push on Friday.
I had alluded to that potential in the initial write-up on Tuesday night, but things could have been worse if Clark didn't knock in his double-bogey on 18. It is one of those spots where we were on the right side, but will have to live with the money-back payment option.
The other play I found for round two was Taylor Pendrith -110 over Rickie Fowler. That was one of the better values I have seen on the board in a while after watching Fowler tank his round in person on Thursday. You can sometimes find value situations like that when a big-name golfer continues to acquire unwarranted market value, but it puts us in a 1-0-1 head-to-head position after two days.
Not all odds are posted as of this writing, but let's talk about a few players who I will be eyeing prior to Saturday. You can find out what plays I add to my card by following me in the Action Network App.
Taylor Pendrith
Despite sitting 61st on the leaderboard after two days, Taylor Pendrith remains firm with his placement on my head-to-head model, ranking sixth for the week. That is the most significant discrepancy of any golfer who made the cut inside of my sheet, and it is one of those spots where the statistical data far outweighs the perceived output level of the Canadian.
Pendrith was a victim of his short game on Thursday, losing 3.43 shots around the green while underperforming his expected position on the leaderboard by 51 places. While we did see a minor correction back to the norm when he partially over-performed the predicted scoring total my model believed to be accurate, I wouldn't be shocked to see books continue to price him against inferior competition. We saw it on Friday when they placed him against Rickie Fowler at -110 and there is a chance it could happen again.
Brian Harman
Only four players inside the top 50 of my model made the cut after underachieving their expected scoring on both days. Keith Mitchell, Matthew NeSmith and Davis Thompson would be three of the choices, but the one I am going to touch on in this article is Brian Harman, who looks to be sitting on a big round if he can get a few putts to drop.
Harman is underperforming with his putter by nearly a stroke over the opening two days and the 12th-place safety grade I had on him pre-event continues to rise, climbing to 10th in the field. It is generally a sign of good things to come when a golfer is ascending my list while staying stuck in place on the leaderboard. I would look for Harman to make a move on Saturday.
Kyoung-Hoon Lee
It took K.H. Lee a round to realize he was playing a TPC tournament, but there are a few interesting things to note about his production so far. For starters, there are only 12 golfers who reached both sets of criteria of this first example:
- The golfer must rank in the top 50 of my values.
- The player has to have gained strokes on both days with his driver AND irons.
The exact list of qualifiers would be the image below:
But the biggest takeaway from that image is when you look directly at the "total score rank." Only Lee gained on both days with each facet of his ball-striking metrics, but didn't make the top 50 of the event.
