There will always be unknowns about a course when a professional golf tournament hasn't been held in that state since 1963.
That alone will be challenging to handicap the 2024 Black Desert Championship, given the questions surrounding what Utah golf looks like in a vacuum.
Still, the construction of a statistical model does start generating more questions than answers when you realize the Black Desert Resort Course only finished in May 2023 and was the last course Tom Weiskopf undertook before his death at the end of 2022.
I am going to spend less time than I usually do talking about this course since it is a landscape that has no data, but I did notice some visually unique features that will be prevalent when you watch it on television.
The most stark takeaway is how the course runs through a lava field. That factor provides one of the most impressive components any property will have all season, adding to the irregular aspect of a venue that is surrounded by mountains and sits 3,000-plus feet above elevation.
We just saw an extreme example of that elevation when the PGA Tour went to Castle Pines in Colorado for the first time. Black Desert sits at roughly half the 6,600 feet of Castle Pines, so elevation won't be nearly as big of an issue for golfers this week, but there is going to be an added boost for a venue that has wide-open fairways and limited hazards if you don't play into the lava boundary.
Good Chalk
*** All players had to be over 10% in projected ownership to be considered
Seamus Power ($10,300)![]()
- Second-Highest DraftKings Price
- Third-Highest Betting Price
- Third-Highest Projected Ownership Total
My flag plant of the week is that Seamus Power should have been the favorite on this board.
I run my model weekly to compare how a player is projected to play a specific course and then use that data to compare it to the rest of the field.
While any good model does the same thing, I bring that up because it is essential to realize the disparity of the field and not just look into the hidden rankings behind a model and say all No. 1 players in a sheet are of the same quality for an event.
While Keith Mitchell is a sure-fire top-two or three option, the model gap between Power and everyone else was about as strong as I have gotten this season for a non-Scottie Scheffler return.
Pricing for DFS will be less of a contrast since we are talking about a mere $300 difference between Mitchell and Power, but I found value in the fact that Power opened 10 points higher than the American in the outright market at 28/1 versus 18/1.
That has been marginally corrected over the last 48 hours, with Power making a push up the board, but anything over 22/1 should be considered value.
- Similar Option: Patrick Fishburn $9,600 (25.46%)
- Contrarian Option: Stephan Jaeger $9,300 (11.13%)
Andrew Novak ($8,100)
- 20th-Highest DraftKings Price
- 15th-Highest Betting Price
- Fifth-Highest Projected Ownership Total
When looking into this general range, I thought we had a powerful trio of golfers between Andrew Novak, Mac Meissner and Doug Ghim.
All three have lacked the upside you would want to see to warrant these hefty ownership percentages. Nonetheless, this watered-down field and overall consistency from the group made each of them a better target than you might typically get with similar chalk choices.
Novak has some intriguing matchups in the market if you shop around the head-to-head sector, and his third-place grade when combining driving, approach play and putting landed behind only Seamus Power and Patrick Fishburn.
- Similar Option: Mac Meissner $7,800 (15.56%), Doug Ghim $7,900 (12.40%)
- Contrarian Option: Patrick Rodgers $8,600 (9.80%)
Ben Kohles ($7,300)
- 39th-Highest DraftKings Price
- 40th-Highest Betting Price
- 14th-Highest Projected Ownership Total
Five players graded in the top 60 of all seven categories I ran this week.
You are going to get your expected favorites of Seamus Power, Patrick Fishburn and Erik Van Rooyen, three options that all sit in the top seven of the board. However, there were two outliers who landed out of nowhere: Ben Kohles and Sami Valimaki.
Valimaki is a boom-or-bust target that is GPP-only for construction after posting only one top 30 on the PGA Tour over his past 13 starts, but there is a certain safety that you are going to get out of Kohles because of his tournament-leading edge I had for him to make a cut this week.
Most markets have him just under -200 to get himself into the weekend, but my model shifted that projection out to nearly -275 because of his combination of recent form and long-term data.
Vincent Whaley would be the most natural leverage pivot if you are looking for a similar profile, but all of those names I have mentioned (Chandler Phillips included) will make up a strong percentage of my player pool in this mid-to-lower $7,000 range.
- Similar Option: Chandler Phillips $7,600 (8.54%)
- Contrarian Options: Sami Valimaki $7,100 (3.43%), Vincent Whaley (3.72%)
