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The WM Phoenix Open has everything — electric crowds, one of the strongest fields we’ve ever seen, and an incredibly reliable course fit model that plays into our edge here at FTN. Having this tournament to look forward to is about all that’s keeping my Super Bowl nerves in check (go Birds).

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

Predictive Power: 9

Table

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This is what we love to see — while every category is statistically significant, telling us that the course is an excellent test of golf, there’s an emphasis both off the tee and around the green. Since the field generally underweighs these categories anyway, an added focus on them enhances our edge.

Josh’s Takeaways

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

He also finds off the tee performance to be extremely predictive this week, though he may be weighing distance a little more than accuracy. I think this is where the SGDA metric is so powerful — separating the two components of driving allows us to see the signal of both. As we’ve discussed before, there could also be a bit of interaction here. In other words, accuracy on its own may not be enough to overcome a distance disadvantage, but accuracy in the presence of distance could be enormously predictive of success.

Josh and I overlap even more when it comes to an emphasis on around the green play this week. Josh points to the difficulty in holding these greens as an explanation for why, but I tend to think it’s also because a sharp short game is required to score on this course. The immediate example that comes to mind is the tricky green complex on the short 17th par 4 — to make birdies on that hole, guys are required to hit some incredibly precise chip and pitch shots with water looming if they make a mistake with their contact.

Lastly, one place we differ is that Josh finds an emphasis on mid iron play when looking at where iron play is most predictive here. Personally, I found mid irons to be surprisingly unpredictive with an emphasis on long irons instead. This concept will be discussed at length on Pro v Pro Tuesday — tune in!

Course Fit Specialists

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

Rory McIlroy
Cameron Young
Si Woo Kim
Aaron Wise

Tier 2

Jon Rahm
Scottie Scheffler
Patrick Cantlay
Matthew Fitzpatrick
Taylor Montgomery
Jason Day
Alex Noren
Seamus Power
Keith Mitchell
Brian Harman
Wyndham Clark
Luke List

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 now are:

Sam Burns

45-1, PointsBet

Burns is always an interesting outright bet. Simply put, he has proven to possess the skill of knowing how to win, including three Tour victories last season. He’s consequently sixth in my expected win rate model, but 17th on the odds board.

This course isn’t the best fit for Burns on paper, as he struggles with accuracy off the tee and isn’t the sharpest around the greens, but he has proven time and time again that if there’s a player on Tour immune to course fit, it’s him. For example, his last win came at Colonial CC, a course that de-emphasizes distance in favor of accuracy off the tee and like this week, emphasizes around the green play.

Si Woo Kim

90-1, PointsBet

One danger in using past win rate to help measure a player’s skill of knowing how to win is that wins in weak fields can inflate the estimate. There’s no such danger with Si Woo. When he won at PGA West in 2021, he gained over 4.5 true strokes gained per round — about the same as Cameron Smith in his Open Championship performance last year. In 2017, he nearly did the same when winning The Players Championship.

You best believe I’m still predicting a breakout into stardom for Si Woo this season, and he’s an excellent fit for this golf course. In fact, this CF Model is a lot like the ones we see at PGA West and TPC Sawgrass.

Course Fit Takeaways

Driving performance is the foundation for success here. TPC Scottsdale is a well-rounded test, but it all begins with creating an advantage off the tee. We can also lean into the extra predictive value of around the green play since the industry as a whole tends to overlook that aspect of golf. Here’s to hoping it leads to another 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.