Wait? Is there a golf tournament this week? I almost forgot after the wild news that hit the golf world on Tuesday when it was announced the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the DP World Tour were joining forces to form a new partnership moving forward.
That is a conversation for another day that probably goes beyond my knowledge of the situation and would take up more words than I could fit into an RBC Canadian Open article.
So instead of constructing a 10,000-word synopsis of the status of everything that would make me public enemy No. 1 to those who edit these articles over here on the great team we have at Action Network, I'll instead bite my tongue (and lock up my keyboard) and get right into some of the outright value I found on the slate this week for the RBC Canadian Open.
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.
2023 RBC Canadian Open Tournament Picks
Cameron Young Outright Winner +1600 (bet365)
It is a tough sell for a golfer who has never won on the PGA Tour and is entering the week with no finishes inside the top 51 over his past four starts. However, I believe there is a strong reason books are masking this price here at less than 20-1.
It is fair to call the past six weeks "forgettable" from a production standpoint, but it doesn't necessarily tell the entire story of the randomness that has occurred.
There was an illness that caused Cameron Young to lose weight. He found himself in that weird circumstance at the PGA Championship — he forgot to re-mark his ball and suffered a two-shot penalty that influenced an implosion shortly after finding out the news. And then we saw all of it come to a head last week when he lost nearly six shots with his flat stick on those fiery Memorial greens, even though he had gained in all other critical areas.
Those putting answers will always be a concern for him until he gets over the hump and enters the winner's circle. Still, the biggest takeaway from my model came from a metric I created called "Expected Realization Of Opportunities Created."
This is a category that incorporates how often someone would generate a birdie look and then capitalize on it by making the putt. I like running it that way because it doesn't automatically remove poor iron players or putters. Instead, it focuses on the sheer number of attempts and the individual make percentage for each golfer.
Young saw himself propel up my model to seventh overall when highlighting that hand-made concoction, which landed as highly as it did because of his first-place rank for opportunities created.
Essentially, my model expects him to render the most makable looks of anyone in the field, and even though the putter could present a highly volatile output, the outpouring number of attempts will cover some of the flat stick woes.
My math thought all of that helped Young land No. 1 when running my data for upside, and I will take a wager that I know is going to be tough to stomach for some in the space.
Sam Burns Outright Winner +1400 (FanDuel)
If it weren't for Cameron Young being in this field, it would be hard to find a more robust output in my model than what we got from Sam Burns.
My totals are typically very consistent with what you get from most shops. The considerable deviations are the ones that catch my attention because it is abnormal for most names to be massively off from the consensus price when trying to consider the need for value.
Still, Young and Burns found a way to surpass some of the normalcy as two names near the top of the board that landed their way into options that possessed value at their going rates.
Burns joined the man he beat in the finals of this year's "Match Play" tournament as the only two golfers in this field to crack the top 10 of all six essential categories that I ran for upside, highlighted by a much cleaner trajectory when we look at his current form compared to Young's.
I usually don't stack these cards with multiple names near the top of the board, but as you might expect, more aggression does come with extra exposure and the need to hit a higher percentage of your bets. That is something I was willing to take on by marginally decreasing my win amount from eight to seven units, and it allowed me to better adapt my card to what we have gotten so far this year.
The definition of insanity is landing in the 40-1+ range every week and failing to produce an outright.
Pick: Sam Burns +1400 |
What is QuickSlip?
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Keith Mitchell Outright Winner +4000 (FanDuel)
Keith Mitchell continues to struggle to produce when looking at only his results, but many of those finishes have been stunted by a poor round that has caused him to free fall down the leaderboard.
My model had him as one of nine players this week to rank in the top 10 for both weighted scoring and weighted strokes gained total. Those are two areas that mainly featured the same weights in both categories, but he joined a list featuring Rory McIlroy, Cameron Young, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Sam Burns, Corey Conners and Tyrrell Hatton as the only players to land under that answer.
I thought it was a savvy way to close a more aggressive card than I typically take after stacking Young and Burns at the top. It is going to diminish my availability from an in-tournament answer because I don't like taking on more than 1.25 units when I can avoid it on an outright card.
Pick: Keith Mitchell +4000 |
What is QuickSlip?
QuickSlip is an Action Network feature that allows users to automatically pre-load their bet slip at FanDuel Sportsbook.
