It will be interesting to see if the weather can hold up long enough this week to allow the tournament to get in a full 72 holes of golf.
Scattered thunderstorms on Saturday and Sunday are not ideal for an event that isn't going to want to hold things up for next week's second major of the season, which provides an interesting betting board to consider since a shortened event shouldn't be taken entirely off the table as a plausible outcome.
Thankfully, none of that will affect us on Thursday when trying to find value for matchups in the first round. Let's dive into a possible way to extract value on a board that is generating middling value when it comes to any of the edges available.
If you haven't already, you can find me on Twitter @TeeOffSports. There, I will provide a link to my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user inputs to create custom golf rankings. That sheet is released every Monday, so be sure to check it out and construct your own numbers from my database of information.
AT&T Byron Nelson Matchup Pick
Adam Scott -120 Over Min Woo Lee (DraftKings)
My model seems to believe that there are about five players at 80/1 or better who were disrespected for this week's AT&T Byron Nelson. Those names include Adam Scott, Scott Stallings, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Seamus Power and Eric Cole.
Of course, none of that directly provides context for a head-to-head wager since how I ran my model will marginally differ to account for safety. Still, it indicates that we might find these golfers in the wrong pairings for pre- and in-tournament matchups since my math appears to like them more than the industry does from a consensus standpoint.
Scott graded as one of the more perplexing values on the board for me when the market opened since it appeared to be one of those spots where both sharps and squares were looking to take the Aussie on in matchups. We have since seen some of that move the other direction over the past 24 hours when credible money entered the space for Scott in the outright sector, but I still believe the industry is massively too low on his potential to find success at a venue like TPC Craig Ranch.
The 42-year-old graded first in my model for expected Strokes Gained: Total for this venue over a two-year duration, and there is something to be said about his tournament-leading made-cut streak that has seen him generate 21 consecutive worldwide cuts.
All of that renders this highly encouraging profile to consider in various aspects of the market, and it shouldn't hurt that Min Woo Lee is one of the more boom-or-bust options in this week's field. It would have worked better from a full-tournament perspective since his potential to pop for a day isn't an inconceivable thought when we dive into his massive Birdie or Better Rate. However, it goes back to my theory that Scott should be graded ahead of anyone in this field that is not named Scottie Scheffler or Hideki Matsuyama when running data for any substantial duration of time.
Let's take a swing on Scott here in a matchup that my model believes should have been priced closer to -135.
