2022 Sanderson Farms Championship Betting Preview

Welcome to my first edition of the FTN PGA betting preview. I have big shoes to fill, so hopefully we get started with a bang. I’ll include a little more behind-the-curtains analysis in this week’s preview than most so you all can become familiar with my process. 

The Country Club of Jackson is home for the Sanderson Farms Championship, with Sam Burns looking to defend his 2022 title (yes, I know that sounds weird since it’s still 2022). Burns continued a pattern of long-hitting, ball-striking winners at this course, and the course fit model supports this narrative…

Course Fit Model

First, a brief summary of the Course Fit Model, from my Course Fit article for FTNDaily:

“Every week, there’s a mad dash across the industry to try to figure out who best fits the course – you’ll hear everything from course history citations to quotes like “It’s a bomber’s paradise.” But what if we could actually mathematically measure which players are the best fits? We can.” 

In other words, there’s no need for speculation of which skills will translate into success at a given course when we can measure it directly.

This week’s model is a really fun one due to the emphasis on driving distance:

Thanks to our proprietary strokes gained: driving accuracy metric, we can separate the effects of distance and accuracy off the tee, and this week’s model shows distance off the tee is especially predictive of success. Putting is also less predictive than usual, so chances are, if you can find matchups between a long hitter who struggles with his putter and a short hitter who relies on his putter, you can find an edge this week.

Outright Odds

Here’s what the top of the board looks like on DraftKings Sportsbook:

Sam Burns is the defending champ and the clear favorite. He’s also first in my course fit expected strokes gained metric. An observation that stands out to me is that the rest of the odds board is full of players without a ton of distance off the tee. This may be a week where Sam Burns is so ahead of the competition that he just needs to play pretty well in order to contend.

Odds Shopping

We can get some better numbers through the use of our prop shop. At the moment, some of the largest discrepancies between various books that I’m interested in taking advantage of are:

• Gary Woodland (60-1 on DraftKIngs, as low as 45-1 elsewhere)
• Trey Mullinax (45-1 on Caesars, as low as 35-1 elsewhere)
• Byeong Hun An (80-1 on DraftKings, as low as 50-1 elsewhere)
• Luke List (90-1 on Caesars, as low as 40-1 elsewhere!)

I’ll post the outrights I ultimately place in our bet tracker.