WNBA Best Bets (Wednesday 9/25)
Josh Gross
Time flies when PGA major season rolls around, and we are just one week away from the third major championship of the 2024 PGA Tour season.
But first, we have another signature event — the Memorial — that features a small field. For the third time this year, we will see a unique cutline that is top 50 and ties or anyone within 10 shots of the lead after 36 holes.
Course Fit
This week we head to Muirfield Village Golf Club, also known as Jack’s Place.
A par 72 that stretches to 7,569 yards this is a rather long layout at first glance. Add in the fact that numerous par 4s call for less-than-driver, and that length gets emphasized even more.
The positional nature of the tee shots puts more weight on long-iron play, but it also means that scrambling becomes a necessity. When golfers are attacking with 5-irons instead of wedges, we will naturally see more missed greens, especially with average green sizes at Muirfield Village that measure just 5,000 square feet.
Adding to the difficulty it thick Kentucky bluegrass rough lining the fairways. It’s basically a coin flip to hit the green when attacking from anywhere other than the fairway.
For grass types we are looking at bentgrass this week, but we are in the part of the country where it’s very hard to keep poa annua out of the mix. I like to look at bent/poa performance when the Tour heads to this part of the country.
When finding a course fit, I prefer to look at split stats and this week I’m using those course characteristics I just talked about to drill down on long courses, hard courses, courses with a big penalty for missing the fairway, and courses with bent/poa greens.
If we factor in all of those split stats then here are the names that show the biggest increase in performance over their baseline.
Justin Rosee
Rickie Fowler
Will Zalatoris
Sungjae Im
Tony Finau
Cam Davis
Emiliano Grillo
Tom Kim
Brendon Todd
Matt Fitzpatrick
Fowler continues to hint at a return to form, but he’s yet to truly pop in 2024. Based on his performance on similar courses in the past, this could be the venue where he finally climbs back into contention, or he could just keep running in place all season.
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:
Rory and Xander are both surging in 2024 but even still, the oddsmakers have World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler as a huge favorite. This type of price has usually been reserved for superstars in weak fields, but Scheffler has earned this price tag against the best in the world. It’s a testament to his insane run of big-finish consistency.
Memorial Tournament Free Bets
Justin Rose Top 20 Finish +300
Don’t look now but Rosey has gained off-the-tee and on approach in three straight events. That is something he failed to do in eight of his previous nine starts.
He’s finding his game just in time for tough-course season. He is someone who always comes to mind when taking on a tough course and the stats back that up. When looking at events over the last two years with a big penalty for missing the fairways, Rose ranks 19th in the field in top-20 worthy weeks (40%).
He’s proven his ability to handle this course specifically as he’s a past champ at Jack’s Place and he’s been inside of the top 20 after 30 of his 48 rounds at the Memorial.
Matt Fitzpatrick to Win (50-1 each-way, 6 places)
Muirfield Village is a course that asks you to keep the ball in play and do the heavy lifting with your irons or short game. That works well for Fitz because he’s landed more fairways than the field in five of his last six starts while also being longer the field in 14 of his last 15 events.
He ranks just 28th in weighted top-five rate, but he’s 10th in the field when looking at top-five rate on courses played with similar split stats.
What stands out the most is that he’s posted top-five-worthy weeks in five of his last 22 starts on courses with a big penalty for missing the fairway. That 23% rate is fifth best in the field behind only Scheffler, Rory, Hovland and the man I will talk about next.
Will Zalatoris to Win (66-1 each-way, 6 places)
The elite ball-striker has always overperformed in big events, which says a lot about his ability to play well on tough courses.
He’s flashed some of that big-finish upside since returning from injury with top-fives at Riv and Bay Hill.
When you look at his career top-10s, 10 of his 19 top-10s have come on weeks where he finished at 10-under or worse. Only one of his top-10s came on a week where he eclipsed the 15-under mark. Again, this shows we want to target him on tough courses.
Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.
