NFL Week 9 FTN Staff Bets
FTN Staff
After a brief break, the PGA Tour returns to North America for this week’s World Wide Technology Championship.
For the second year in a row, this event is played at El Cardonal at Diamante in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. This is a Tiger Woods design, and it presents us with some clear-cut split stats to focus on when handicapping the field.
Course Fit
El Cardonal at Diamante is a par 72 that plays around 7,450 yards on the card. There is a good blend of short and long holes but that’s not really what stands out to me.
Instead, when looking at last year’s debut, we saw that the field hit the fairway on a whopping 90% of their drives. While there is native area you can find with errant drives, there is not any traditional rough and the fairways average 60 yards in width which is almost double the size we are used to seeing on a week-to-week basis.
As you probably expect, when you give pro golfers 17 approach shots from the fairway or tee box, scoring is going to be low. The field average relative to par last year was basically 3-under and Erik van Rooyen flirted with 30-under en route to winning (-27).
For grass types we have wall-to-wall paspalum which is common in the tropical stops on the PGA Tour. Any past success in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic or Vidanta should be considered a big positive.
Looking at the last two years of results, here are the names who show the biggest increase in performance when playing courses with similar splits (small missed-fairway penalty, easy courses, coastal, paspalum greens), relative to their baseline.
- Luke List
- Alex Smalley
- Taylor Moore
- K.H. Lee
- Patrick Rodgers
- Chesson Hadley
- Beau Hossler
- Matt Kuchar
- Nick Hardy
- Adam Svensson
Could Rodgers or Hossler finally break their maiden?
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:
Similar to what we saw at the start of the fall schedule, nobody is close to single digits in pricing. What stands out to me is Cam Young being 22/1 in this field. He was 12/1 here last year despite bigger names like Aberg and Theegala also being in the field that week. His consistency has fallen off, but his upside is still top tier.
World Wide Tech Championship Free Golf Bets
Matt Kuchar Top 20 Finish (+145)
He ranks sixth in adjusted baseline performance over the last six months and he finished runner-up at the host course last year.
Despite those positive trends, there are still 10 golfers priced ahead of him in the top-20 market.
Kuchar’s infamous tipping-scandal win happened in Mexico on paspalum. While his desire to be as cheap as possible to the local caddie wasn’t great that week, it does give us some more supporting evidence that he likes the grasstype this week.
Beau Hossler Top 20 Finish (+130)
H’es been trending this fall, positioning inside of the top 20 after 10 of his last 16 rounds.
Now he heads to a wide-open coastal track that won’t heavily punish his lack of long-iron prowess.
Hossler missed just two fairways at El Cardonal last year and I turned that into a T15 finish. Given his recent play, I like his chances of repeating or improving on that finish.
Cam Young to Win (22-1)
As I pointed out above, Young was 12-1 at this event last year despite having some stronger competition at the top of the board.
From a long-term perspective he ranks 1st in the field in two-year baseline performance.
He doesn’t have the wins on his resume but when you adjust for field strength, he has the most win-worthy performances on courses with similar split stats (8% over the last two years). That would imply a fair price closer to last year’s odds but instead we get nearly double the price this time around.
I know Young has a cult following who have been betting him for years in hopes of landing that maiden win. I wouldn’t say I’m a part of that following but I am happy to jump in for a nice buy-low opportunity this week.
Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.
