It has been one of those years where almost every tournament with limited data has gone south on my betting card.
Unfortunately, the BMW Championship may sting the most as it's trending toward being the most extensive loss if Sungjae Im can't pass Brian Harman or if Jordan Spieth fails to overcome a slow start against Lucas Glover.
Obviously, it's far from ideal when our bread-and-butter portion of the market nose dives right away. Still, this is one of those spots thats tough to stomach because all four matchup wagers substantially beat the closing line, but will have nothing to show for it.
If you haven't already, you can find me on Twitter (@TeeOffSports). There, I provide a link to my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user input 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.
Round 4
I am a big believer that sometimes the best move is to take no action at all.
Sure, I might be hyper-sensitive to these small-field contests with limited data because I don't see any point in chasing something when it starts to feel like my model was improperly built from the beginning.
Perhaps I placed too much emphasis on distance. Maybe I should have weighed putting less. The fact that I can't articulate a proper response is telling me that the seven rounds of data we have from this track since the 2003 U.S. Open won't provide the necessary adjustments to make concrete decisions moving forward.
We do get a board heavily pointing toward a Scottie Scheffler win. The American has out-gained the second-ranked player in this field (Xander Schauffele) by 2.67 shots ball-striking over three rounds. We can get that number to stretch out to 5.4 strokes when looking into Sam Burns' 10th-place total in that area for the week. That shows how dominant Scheffler has been tee-to-green, but — as is always the case with Scheffler — the putter will be the ultimate decider.
Unfortunately, the time to buy the 27-year-old would have been Friday night, when he sat around 8/1, not at this new +130 price.
If you're not invested yet and just want to know who I think is going to win, I'll pick Scheffler. However, I'm not sure how much value there is trying to attack this board Sunday.
You can see where my model sits when each player keeps their ball striking for the week and adds in their baseline short-game statistics. Maybe that can help you to find a name I'm not seeing, though I'll note history shows the most logical winners are likely at six-under par or better. Anything deeper than that is probably asking too much.
