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The PGA Tour is returning to Utah this week for the first time since 1963. This new event is called the Black Desert Championship and it’s being hosted by Black Desert Resort in Ivins.

Baseline stats reign supreme when handicapping golf, but we often find edges when diving deeper into the course characteristics and that deep dive is pretty fun when we have a new course to work with.

Let’s jump in and see what stands out.

Course Fit

This week’s host venue is Black Desert Resort, which is a par 71 that stretches to 7,371 yards. With the course being at slight altitude, it will play shorter than that.

When looking at a new course, I always like to start with aerial photos and this week those are gorgeous. Unlike a lot of boring courses used on the PGA Tour, this one looks like to have a lot of character.

After going hole-by-hole, what stands out? These are incredibly wide fairways and very large greens. The course is built on a lava field, so there is some trouble for extremely errant tee shots, but it looks like a course the pros can bomb-and-gouge to their heart’s desire. Add in a pair of driveable par 4s, and this looks like a course where distance can be very useful.

The next thing to note is that we are out West in rocky terrain and the course is played at slight altitude. So, the easy comp courses to toss out include TPC Summerlin, TPC Scottsdale and PGA West. When I average the scoring conditions of those desert tracks, we see 23% birdie rates and 15% bogey rates. Scoringwise, that would put it right in line with courses like Vidanta and TPC Twin Cities, two other potential comp courses where we’ve seen big hitters feast.

Overall, that last note tells us that the course should be expected to play rather easy. It’s also the first time using the course on the PGA Tour and the superintendent’s first time hosting a Tour event. All those factors typically lean to the side of caution when it comes to course setup, so I would expect a major birdiefest this week unless we get a surprise with the weather.

Lastly, we look at the turf and see bentgrass lining the property. Golfers who are comfortable on bent surfaces could be given a slight bump.

Here are the names who show the biggest increase in performance when playing courses with similar splits (easy courses, links, bentgrass, West), relative to their baseline.

Alexander Bjork
Ryo Hisatsune
Alex Smalley
Sami Valimaki
Matt NeSmith
Nick Hardy
Justin Suh
Greyson Sigg
Chesson Hadley
Nick Taylor

When I reference links performance here, I am talking about courses that are more wide open off the tee and exposed to the wind without tree lines to help guide the eye, not just traditional Scottish links. 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:

For a second straight week, we see a field without any golfers near the single-digit threshold in the outright market. You could call it the new norm, given the weak fields we are seeing in the fall with so many superstars resting.

Black Desert Championship Free Golf Bets

K.H. Lee Top 20 Finish (+260)

Lee has a reputation for going nuclear on easy courses so perhaps it’s no surprise then to find him #1 in most low rounds recorded on potential comp courses this week.

He didn’t crack the course fit top-10 list above, but he was 11th.

With so much crossover success on courses I’ve viewing as correlated (TPC Summerlin, TPC Scottsdale, PGA West), I want to take a nibble on the top-20 market here.

Harris English Top 10 Finish (+600)

When you sort by distance over the last year and find golfers who are also more accurate than the average Tour pro, English is third on the list behind only Rico Hoey and Matti Schmid. I like that as a potential bomb-and-gouge fit without having to worry too much about losing strokes in the native area.

For English, his one-year expected top-10 rate compared to this field is 28%, which would imply a +335 fair price, but we are getting +600 for a top 10 over on Bet365.

Sami Valimaki to Win 100-1 (one-fourth each-way for 5 places)

He checks the box for being longer than Tour average so he can take advantage of some bomb-and-gouge opportunities at Black Desert Resort.

When you look for close calls on the PGA Tour, you find a runner-up finish at Vidanta, another resort track where big hitters can separate from the pack.

He’s fared very well overseas in the Middle East with recent notable finishes being a win at Doha and a top 10 at the Irish Open. To me, this shows that he prefers wide open terrain more than the tree-lined tracks we so often see on the PGA Tour side of the schedule.

Most importantly, when looking at his range of outcomes on similar courses, he pops as 2nd in expected top-three rate when playing courses with similar splits. He is 8th on that list when looking at one-year baseline performance so not too shabby in the baseline department and his preference to this course type elevates him. Not bad for a triple-digit outright.

Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.