First TD Bets — Wild Card Monday Slate
Alex Christenson
After a few stops at iconic coastal courses, the PGA Tour now heads to TPC Scottsdale for the party of the year. It’s the WM Phoenix Open, also known as The People’s Open. This event was the first PGA Tour event I ever went to, and the comparison to all others are night and day.
Golfers are treated to a calm and quiet front nine, but they are greeted by a frat party as they make the turn. Nearly all of the popular holes that attract large crowds are ones that come down the stretch. It’s impossible to handicap which golfers are better suited in that kind of pressure environment but we can look at the course to see what golfers should like the desert style.
Course Fit
Despite having Phoenix in the name, it’s actually TPC Scottsdale that plays the role of host venue this week. This par 71 can stretch out to 7,261 yards. Add in a touch of altitude and warm weather and this plays on the short side of the equation but not dramatically.
Off the tee, golfers see exposed sightlines at this desert oasis. There are a few water hazards along the way and a few holes on the front nine where backyards come into play as OB hazards. Overall, this course allows golfers to pound driver early and often. It’s not the raw length of the course that makes distance advantageous but with the greens typically being very firm, it’s much better to have a wedge or short iron into these greens to be able to hold them.
Looking at the scoring environment, we see a 20% birdie rate and just 16% bogey rate. Even though this course ranks highly in number of total water balls each year, those penalties get muted a bit by the risk-reward nature of the holes they are on. Being on a par 5 down the stretch and the infamous par-4 17th, golfers are often still able to salvage pars or settle for a single bogey even after finding water trouble.
Looking at grass this week, we see beautiful overseed on the fairways and greens, showing extreme color contrast with the natural sandy areas.
For our course-fit search, let’s look at the split stats for easy course performance, driver-heavy courses, courses that are exposed off the tee, and courses with poa triv overseed. Here are the names who show the biggest increase in performance when playing courses with similar splits relative to their baseline.
- Jordan Spieth
- Nicolai Hojgaard
- Adam Hadwin
- Matt Fitzpatrick
- Nick Taylor
- Adam Schenk
- Taylor Moore
- Jake Knapp
- Max Homa
- Eric Cole
This list is loaded with golfers that excel with wedges and short game. Four of them have a win or runner-up finish at the Valspar. Mashers Nicolai and Knapp also snuck onto the list.
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:
Scheffler is under 3/1 to win this week! This is a decent field strength, and 132 golfers are in the field. He arrives with a plus-13 course monster score which matches the highest I have in my database and also flirts with plus-3 in the weighted baseline metric which measures how many strokes per round better a golfer is compared to the current field. All that to say that I understand why he’s such a heavy favorite but it’s priced too low for my liking. You can check the FTN PGA Betting Model to see what our model projects his win chances this week.
WM Phoenix Open Free Golf Bets
Eric Cole Top-20 Finish (+400)
The grinder from Florida is very comfortable around a water-heavy layout. He finished a ho-hum T49 in his tournament debut last year, but I think he can go lower a second time around.
Cole arrives with top 20s in eight of his last 17 starts (47%) but his current top-20 price implies a 20% chance of landing in the top 20 this week. That 20% number is exactly where I have his baseline expectation, but when I look at performance isolated to courses with similar split stats, he shows a 31% hit rate for expected top 20s.
So at worst it appears we have a break-even EV break from a long-term perspective but when you factor his return to form in the last six months plus his past performance on similar courses, and I think we are looking at some nice value here.
Wyndham Clark to Win (66-1, one-fourth each-way for 5 places)
He’s a big hitter with comfort in the area, elite short game and approach performance that is better when using a wedge or short iron.
That is the perfect recipe for success at TPC Scottsdale as long as he drives it well. That has been his biggest issue at this course in the past so there is a chance the course just doesn’t suit his eye. If that’s not the case, though, then he deserves to be half this price.
Clark grades out as the second highest week-to-week variance in the entire field. I think you need that kind of extreme upside this week if you want to keep pace with the Scotties and Hidekis at the top.
Jake Knapp to Win (150-1, one-fifth each-way for 6 places)
This one caught my eye last week as I was watching Knapp charge out of the gate at Pebble Beach, I thought to myself, “Wow, did Knapp learn how to golf again?” Then when I sign on to Discord I see a similar message from Alex to the PGA DFS chat. Knapp faded as the week went on but there are breadcrumbs suggesting he could be close.
Adding to his appeal, he made Scottsdale his home back in November 2023 and makes frequent practice trips to TPC Scottsdale. At this time last year he was in the middle of a four-event stretch that landed him a trio of top 5s. The upside is definitely there for him to contend.
Lastly, without any recent form bump or local knowledge narrative boost, Knapp graded out as a top 35 each-way value for me. Add it all up and I like a little nibble at this longshot pricing.
Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.
