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The elevated events have caused a massive difference in the past few months between the strongest fields and weakest fields around the PGA. This is the first week in quite some time that has star power, but little depth behind it. This talent gap could mitigate the importance of course fit, but that won’t stop us from trying to identify it.

Once again, new this season, this article will focus on both DFS and betting (including PrizePicks).

Golf is the only sport such that the “arena” in which the game is played changes dramatically from one event to another. Consequently, each tournament provides its own unique challenge, emphasizing certain areas of the game more than others. 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.

Thanks to DataGolf’s Course History Tool and our proprietary strokes gained: driving accuracy metric, we can run a regression model on past performances at each course to determine which strokes-gained statistics are most predictive of success at each event. In other words, we’re trying to answer the question, “What skill sets are most likely to translate into success at this course?” rather than “What have past winners done well here?” That’s a distinction that makes the model predictive instead of descriptive.

Meanwhile, Josh Culp has his own data driven process for us at FTN when it comes to evaluating course fit for each player in the field. His Course Notes and Quotes article is a staple of my weekly process, so also new this season, I’ll be discussing how our separate analysis combines to form a clear picture of how we want to attack each tournament.

Course Fit Model Results: The 2023 Valspar Championship

Predictive Power: 9/10

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This is another strong, unique course fit model. We’ve been fortunate to have so many in a row with such predictive power. Innisbrook has a number of holes that take driver out of the players’ hands, so it’s unsurprising to see such a low weight on driving distance. This signal gets picked up largely by iron play, though it’s also important to be good on and around the greens here.

Josh’s Takeaways for the 2023 Valspar Championship

You can find the majority of Josh’s thoughts in his excellent Course Notes and Quotes article.

Josh once again referenced the course management signal that around-the-green play often picks up, and this course management importance also explains the importance of accuracy off the tee.

Josh also found a major boost to approach play, and while I didn’t find the same boosted signal on mid and long irons that he did, it makes intuitive sense that both would be more important here than usual.

The biggest finding is that bogey avoidance is a major predictor of success, above and beyond the correlation it has to overall strokes gained. As such, when I cite it in the next section, it’s not the ranking we care about, it’s the difference in rank between bogey avoidance and birdie or better rate that matters.

Course Fit Specialists — Valspar Championship 2023

For a player to qualify as a course fit specialist, he can’t just project well — he has to project significantly better at this course than he would on the average PGA Tour course. This week, the list includes:

Tier 1

Eric Cole (39th in bogey avoidance, 64th in birdie or better rate)
Taylor Moore (52nd in bogey avoidance, 133rd in birdie or better rate)

Tier 2

Adam Hadwin (30th in bogey avoidance, 54th in birdie or better rate)
Brian Harman (4th in bogey avoidance, 49th in birdie or better rate)
Matthew Fitzpatrick (19th in bogey avoidance, 95th in birdie or better rate)
Denny McCarthy (23rd in bogey avoidance, 67th in birdie or better rate)
Stephen Jaeger (24th in bogey avoidance, 85th in birdie or better rate)
Mark Hubbard (49th in bogey avoidance, 148th in birdie or better rate)
Ben Griffin
Nick Taylor

2023 Valspar Championship Early Outright Betting Targets

The course fit projections are a crucial part of my outright betting process, as well. I will always shop for the best lines, as PGA is home to some of the largest odds discrepancies you’ll see in the sports betting world, as well as quantifying things like past win rate, the strength of those wins, and overall volatility.

The bets I’m making this week:

Taylor Moore

60-1, Caesars

Moore checks every box — he’s accurate off the tee, great on and around the greens, and his iron play is rapidly improving. His strong bogey avoidance, despite playing the more difficult courses and strongest fields this year, is also super encouraging.

Moore is a course fit specialist who I consider a breakout candidate, and yet his baseline strokes gained projection also shows clear value on him at this number — he’s 9th in baseline expected strokes gained.

Eric Cole

90-1 each way, BetRivers

Cole is the only Tier 1 course fit specialist for a reason. His course fit expected strokes gained is in the 91st percentile in this field while his baseline strokes gained projection is in the 84th percentile.

Perhaps most importantly, Cole has gained off the tee in two of his last three events. This is of course a tremendously small sample, but he had previously lost strokes in every event on Tour, so it would be a major development for his game if he found something with the driver. His swing off the tee passes the eye test, for what it’s worth.

Course Fit Takeaways

Most weeks, there’s little danger in blindly following the strokes gained projections. This week, the bogey avoidance signal is so strong that we want to use the projections as a guide, but also ensure that our players are more apt at avoiding bogeys than making birdies. For example, Justin Thomas is first in both strokes gained projections, but he’s 12th in birdie or better rate and a whopping 144th in bogey avoidance. That screams fade to me.

Here’s to hoping this approach results in a great week at FTNDaily and FTNBets. If you’re a subscriber at one but not the other, it’s time to use promo code BLICK for 20% off.