First TD Bets — Wild Card Monday Slate
Alex Christenson
The PGA Tour kicks off the West Coast swing this week with the Bob Hope Classic. Or what is now known as the American Express, just one of many extremely silly PGA Tour event names. Is it a credit card or a golf tournament? Tough to say but AmEx likely just wants as many people typing and seeing their name each year so this certainly achieves that goal.
Let’s jump right in and talk about this unique event in the Coachella Valley.
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Course Fit
This week’s event features a three-course rotation with golfers getting a guaranteed round at each of the courses before heading back to the host venue Sunday.
During the first three rounds, each pro will be paired up with a pro-am partner, while Sunday will be like a normal Tour event, pros only.
With three courses it may seem like course fit would get thrown out the window a bit. However, there is plenty of crossover when it comes to course style and that is what we’ll focus on below.
First of all, each of the three courses is a par 72 on the scorecard and none of them play over 7,200 yards. Well, Stadium Course is slightly above at 7,210 yards. Even at the Stadium Course there are just two par 4s at that that play over 455 yards while five of them play under 410 yards. The result is a lot of wedges this week, which is why our first course-fit angle will be short course performance.
Off the tee, the general vibe is generous landing areas and with the dormant bermuda rough not causing many problems, there isn’t much of a penalty for missing the fairway. The exception would be water balls, but overall this is a course that doesn’t heavily penalize inaccuracy off the tee.
So, when you have courses with a low penalty for missing the fairway and a lot of wedges, naturally the scoring is going to be a breeze. So, for our last course-fit angle let’s attack past performance on easy courses. We want the golfers with the patience to play boring target golf and rack up birdie after birdie. The Anti-Koepkas, if you will.
So now, let’s combine all those split stats and look for golfers that overperform on similar setups. Here are the names who show the biggest increase in performance when playing courses with similar splits relative to their baseline.
- Adam Hadwin
- Chris Kirk
- Taylor Moore
- Rickie Fowler
- Adam Svensson
- Emiliano Grillo
- Cam Davis
- Nick Taylor
- Michael Kim
- Eric Cole
We see some good crossover with last week’s list as well as last week’s leaderboard. Given that Wailae and PGA West are both short and easy tracks, that checks out.
Jesper Svensson and Jackson Suber were also on this list but with their PGA Tour sample being so tiny, I chose to omit them. I loved Jesper as a potential breakout candidate this year so I’m not against riding the hot hand early in the year for the Swede.
Head over to the Split Stats page to see who the top performers are in these split stat categories.
Outright Odds
Here’s what the top of the board looks like on DraftKings Sportsbook:
With Scottie Scheffler pulling out due to injury, that left Xander Schauffele as the easy favorite for this event. Then, X-man pulled a fast one on Monday and withdrew from the event himself. That leaves a five-pack of favorites listed at 22/1 or better. With easier scoring conditions, should we be quick to run away from the top of the board? Jon Rahm managed to win this at 10/1 (2018) and then again at 7/1 (2023), so it’s not impossible for stars to win here.
Yet, this is also the spot that amateur Nick Dunlap announced his presence with a 300/1 victory last year. In fact, four of the last six winners have been triple digits of 150/1 or longer odds. Don’t be afraid to shoot for the moon this week because easy resort style scoring tends to even the playing field from tee-to-green more than the week-to-week grind of tougher Tour tests.
The American Express Free Golf Bets
Max Greyserman Top-20 Finish (+180)
During the fall it felt like we were just waiting for the Greyserman momentum balloon to pop, but at some point you have to wonder if he’s actually found something in his game.
Sure, his putter is scorching, but you don’t grade out 1st in six-month baseline performance based on putting alone. Max has a plus-2.27 baseline rating over the last six months and historically that has led to a 63% hit rate for top 20s, when looking at full-field events. With Vegas giving him roughly 36% implied odds, there is a lot of value here.
Tom Hoge Top-20 Finish (+260)
I don’t live and die by course history, but when outlier scores pop up I try to take notice. For Hoge, he sports a plus-8 monster score at PGA West over the last five years. Historically golfers in a full field who arrive with a plus-8 monster score go on to post top 20s at a 56% clip and if we isolate it to golfers within half a stroke of his weighted baseline, that number doesn’t change much (60%). That is roughly double the top-20 odds that Vegas is implying with their odds.
He enters the week with his driver out of whack, but his irons and short game on fire. If he finds anything with his driver while maintaining the hot short game, then look out. Even with the wonky driver he still managed a top 10 at the Sentry.
Rico Hoey to Win (125-1, one-fourth each-way for 5 places)
Saving the bets for last, Hoey is a flusher whose elite driving puts him near the top of the leaderboard many a rounds. He was T3 after day one of this event last year, which was his tournament debut. It wasn’t his first rodeo at PGA West, though, as he said it felt like a home game, having grown up playing these courses in junior golf events. I’ve been patiently waiting for a good spot to land his breakout win and this would be a decent spot for it.
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