Benny and the Bets: Time for top players to put an end to longshot trend

It’s been cute. It’s been a real taste of some great depth. But the time for longshot winners on the PGA TOUR this season has come, and now needs to be gone as we gear up for the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard.

Regular readers will know I praised the early run of triple-digit odds winners in this column not too long ago, pointing out, and rightfully so, that no other sport gives you the chance to hit a lottery ticket so often.

It is part of the charms of golf betting. And I love it. But the boys on the PGA TOUR have taken it too far. It’s time for those at the pointy end of the betting boards to get a little bit fired up, show some mongrel and steal the confidence from the new kids.

The average bettor needs a chance to get some hard-earned cash back from the books who are raking it in in the outright markets. (Perhaps there is a lesson here to play the place markets, or look to live betting throughout the tournament.)

So far, we’ve seen the following winners this season with their pre-tournament odds from BetMGM Sportsbook:

• The Sentry - Chris Kirk: +12500
• Sony Open in Hawaii - Grayson Murray: +35000
• The American Express - Nick Dunlap: +40000
• Farmers Insurance Open - Matthieu Pavon: +15000
• AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am - Wyndham Clark: +6600
• WM Phoenix Open - Nick Taylor: +10000
• The Genesis Invitational - Hideki Matsuyama: +6000
• Mexico Open at Vidanta - Jake Knapp: +4000
• Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches - Austin Eckroat: +10000

It’s insane.

Now I want to be clear here. This is more a take on the odds. Not the players themselves.

Clark and Matsuyama are major champions and rightfully stars who had inflamed odds for various reasons like injury concerns, and Taylor’s odds were certainly a little surprising given he’d been runner-up the previous year at the WM Phoenix Open and won a TOUR event between that point. You could also put Kirk in a separate bucket as a multiple-time TOUR winner who was in the midst of a life turnaround.

And Murray, Dunlap, Pavon, Knapp and Eckroat are all great stories and very well-earned winners. It’s not easy to win on the PGA TOUR and they’ve all added their names to history. It’s just near impossible to have picked them!

With all due respect, anyone who has nailed even one or two outright winners this season from a betting standpoint has been downright lucky and must be placing more than one or two options on the table each week.

“It is certainly correct that the outright winner market has been very profitable for us this season,” said Thomas Gable, the Director of Race & Sportsbook at The Borgata in New Jersey.

“I would say that last week when the Florida swing started, we finally started seeing some customers start to take some flyers on some guys at the bottom of the odds boards, but I don’t believe we will ever get to a point where the favorites and top names are not taking the majority of the handle.

“I’m not sure how much longer this trend of extreme long shots winning will last, but for right now, I’m not arguing with it.”

And why would he, or anyone from the books argue! The closest I’ve come to an outright winner pre-tournament is pointing out Taylor as a longshot option in this column prior to the WM Phoenix Open… but I didn’t even slate him as my first-choice longshot!

Thankfully I’ve been able to advise you all on a winning card via Top 10s and place markets as well as some head-to-head wins via our Expert Picks. But it’s time to hit a winner!

Which brings us to this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational. As a Signature Event we have an elite field of 69 players who need to wrestle back control of the narrative.

With Knapp’s +4000 being the low point of pre-tournament odds for winners I’m going to use that as the cut off. The trend must stop. This week’s winner will set the new standard for the season. (And yes, I know Kurt Kitayama won at Bay Hill last season as a 200-to-1 shot).

That leaves us 16 players.

Scottie Scheffler (+650), Rory McIlroy (+900), Viktor Hovland (+1400), Xander Schauffele (+1400), Patrick Cantlay (+1600), Jordan Spieth (+2000), Ludvig Åberg (+2000), Collin Morikawa (+2200), Sam Burns (+2200), Max Homa (+2500), Cameron Young (+2500), Justin Thomas (+2500), Matt Fitzpatrick (+2800), Tommy Fleetwood (+2800), Will Zalatoris (+3000) and Jason Day (+3300).

How can we narrow them down? We can take the statistical route, and we will, but first I have to scratch off Cantlay and Schauffele for personal reasons. They’ve found my blacklist until they win again after burning me a few times. Just 14 to go.

Eight of the last nine winners had finished T17 or better at Bay Hill prior to winning. If we believe this trend continues, Thomas and Åberg are out.

Six of the last seven champions here have been inside the top 16 of Strokes Gained: Approach on the way to victory. It’s a ball-strikers course, something Tiger Woods’ eight titles can attest to, and in recent years the greens have been some of the toughest on TOUR to hit in regulation. If you enter this week in the negative for SG: Approach, I’m wiping you out. So, we lose Fleetwood, Hovland, McIlroy and Fitzpatrick. Just eight options left.

To take it deeper, there are way more approach shots from 200-225 yards than the TOUR average each year at Bay Hill. If you are averaging over par from this distance, you’re out. Sorry, Mr. Homa.

Which brings me to the next issue. The majority of the trouble at Bay Hill is on the left side of the tee box. In fact, half the holes on the course have significant danger on the left side. Take last year for example, Alex Noren missed the fairway left just six times last year…but he played those holes in 10 over. Of all the players who made the cut, the average score for misses left of the fairway was +2.6. Only five players managed to play their left misses into under par scores.

So let’s look at who misses left more than others. They are going to face more adversity. This is where we lose Scheffler, who was ranked dead last on TOUR last year in this category and is 146th so far this season. When he misses, which granted isn’t often, he invariably misses left. We also lose Burns (146th). Just five guys left.

Bogey Avoidance is another critical factor at Bay Hill. And it is here we lose Cameron Young as he’s making bogey 12.57% of the time. Four left.

So we are down to Day, Zalatoris, Spieth and Morikawa. All four have solid reasons to back them so now it’s down to who gets the outright nod, and who fits into the place markets.

Outrights

Surprise, surprise I’ll start with Jason Day (+3300) as my first outright pick. My Aussie mate has two top-10s in the lead up and is a former winner at Bay Hill back in 2016. When the going gets tough, he laps it up. Day is 15th in SG: Total this season and his world class scrambling is back, ranking sixth in SG: Around-the-Green.

Next, I’ll go with the player who was going head-to-head brilliantly with Day back in 2015-2016 in Spieth (+2000). He has two appearances at Bay Hill and was T4 in both. He gained 2.4 strokes per round on the field including an entire stroke per round around the greens. Importantly, Spieth rarely misses left off the tee where most of the trouble lies.

Place Markets

Zalatoris (+100 for a Top 20) seems a great play for the former Demon Deacon coming off a runner up at The Genesis Invitational. His play at The Riviera Country Club shows his return from injury is just about complete and the +240 for a Top 10 could be worth investigating also.

Morikawa hasn’t been eliminated from my stats, but I’m still not getting a great vibe from his current form. His T9 at Bay Hill in 2020 feels very long ago but he has three out of four results in the top 20 this season.

Instead, I’d go back to the eliminated Fitzpatrick (+240 Top 10) in the place markets. He thrives on courses where par means something and despite the slight worry of the occasional foul ball off the tee, he pops in plenty of metrics. He has four previous top 10s here, and six total finishes T14 or better. He also ranks fourth in Par-5 Scoring and is great from 200-225 yards.

Longshots

Since we already know one of the top 16 on the board are going to win, we don’t really need to go here this week – right? But just in case…

Corey Conners (+5000) finished third at Bay Hill a few years ago and since was 11th and 21st. When you get a ball-striker at long odds on a ball-strikers’ course, you have to at least entertain the idea.

And don’t completely sleep on Keegan Bradley (+5500) as he’s finished T10-T11-T10 here the last three seasons and was third and second back in 2013 and 2014.

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