2023 Fortinet Championship Betting Preview

The PGA Tour returns this week with the inaugural FedEx Fall series starting this week in Napa. It’s the Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort.

While the incentives for playing in the fall are different this year, not much has changed with this week’s event. The host course has been used for roughly a decade and the only big changes are the routing of the holes. 

Course Fit

The first step of the process is always to evaluate the course. 

My favorite way to look for stats that matter at a course is to see how past contenders separated from the pack, by looking at their lead-in rounds before contending.

When we look at Silverado, it’s always laughable how little those recent rounds have mattered. 

What we are seeing here is that past contenders here have generally been slightly stronger off the tee and around-the-green but see no signal popping for approach play and contenders have been putting worse than the field prior to contending. 

Overall, we see the past contenders bunched together with the field, failing to really show any trends. Why would that be? The most obvious reason for this would be the timing of the event. It’s always been after the playoffs so a large chunk of the field has been out of action for over a month. Golfers we finding their groove to end the regular season may have lost it while sitting at home and on the flip side, golfers that were lost may have found something in their swing during the down time. 

While recent form will matter less than usual, the split stat correlations are still quite juicy, so we can lean heavily on the past performance on poa annua greens and performance out West. Check out the splits page to see who is popping in those categories. 

Outright Odds

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

Max Homa has back-to-back titles in Napa but is coming straight from a quick trip to Rome. His body is surely confused at this point as to when it should be sleeping but will that even matter? The bookmakers aren’t giving any jet-lag discounts, that is for sure. On the bottom of the board posted above, we see freshly engaged Akshay Bhatia. Can he parlay his engagement into a win at Silverado? 

Finish Position Market

The outright markets are most common when looking at golf bets but the finish-position markets can provide some value too, especially with names that are unlikely to win but no stranger to poking their heads into contention. 

Mark Hubbard Top 20 Finish

Best available: +280 (PointsBet)
Worst available: +225

Right off the bat, we see that using the FTN Prop Searcher can find us a +280 number rather than settling for +225 odds which is only slightly better odds than I have this graded (+223). 

What do I like about Hubbard here? 

First of all, he checks enough of the baseline boxes to grab my attention and this his course history is where he really pops. 

His best finish here is just a T-13 but he’s bettered the field scoring average by 2.6 shots or more in five of his last 12 rounds played at Silverado Resort. That kind of consistent bludgeoning will often lead to a big finish so a top 20 is well within his range of outcomes and he’s proven thatwith top 20s in two of his last four tries here. 

There are plenty more that catch my eye this week so keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more play. Hop in the discord to get those bet alerts. 

It may feel like a down period for PGA betting or PGA DFS but I’m extremely pumped for this FedEx Fall Series. Use promo code CULP when signing up for FTNBets and FTNDaily to get a 10% discount while staying sharp in the fall. I think it’s going to be a very fun finish to 2023 with so much of the competition having their attention stolen away by NFL.