2024 NBA Draft Liveblog
FTN
The summer solstice was last Thursday, which signals my daughter’s birthday. But more importantly for our purposes, it also signals scoring season on the PGA Tour.
With hot weather and cool-season turf, there is no protection when it comes to protecting par in the Midwest.
We saw the birdie-fest bonanza begin last week at the Travelers and it will continue with stops in Detroit and the Quad Cities before heading overseas.
Course Fit
The host course this week is Detroit Golf Club. It’s a Donald Ross design, which means we see classical design features with an emphasis on green difficulty. Ross greens are typically heavily sloped in an attempt to reward good iron play. Many players saw that recently at Valhalla, another one of his designs.
Stretching past 7,300 yards, it can seem like an OK distance at first, but then you realize it’s a par 72, and one of the par 5s takes us 635 yards. There are four par 4s under 400 yards and just one par 4 over 461 yards. So on a hole-by-hole basis it’s actually pretty short. The wedges and short irons get a lot of use this week.
Joaquin Niemann summed up the tee-to-green test well in 2021, “You hit a lot of drivers here and if you hit the driver well, you’re hitting a lot of wedges.”
Many golfers also speak on the tree-lined nature of the course and how it brings comfort to them if they grew up playing similar setups, aesthetically. A course like Silverado Resort is one that comes to mind as a great comp as it features the tree-lined setup with non-penal rough and poa greens. These are all aspects that are the same at Detroit GC.
With a historical field average birdie or better rate of 23% it’s one of the easiest to score on and with a bogey or worse rate that sits at just 13% it’s also one of the easiest to avoid trouble.
So now we have four split stats to consider in our course fit analysis. We are referencing short course performance, past results on bent-poa greens, performance on easy courses that don’t heavily penalize a missed fairway. If we weigh all of those split stats, here are the names who show the biggest increase in performance over their baseline.
- J.J. Spaun
- Alex Smalley
- Matt Kuchar
- Rickie Fowler
- S.H. Kim
- Taylor Montgomery
- Alejandro Tosti
- Ryan Fox
- Cam Davis
- Daniel Berger
There are a couple of big hitters on the list but most of this group gets the job done with stellar short irons and short game.
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:
Kim being the favorite immediately stands out here. Of all his starts this season this is his first time being priced under 25/1 and his last five median odds are 50/1.
Similarly, Cam Young’s median odds are 60/1, so both of their prices are basically cut in half compared to recent weeks. Sure, it’s a pretty average or weak field, but I would prefer to look further down the board for my outrights this week.
Rocket Mortgage Classic Free Bets
S.H. Kim to Win (125-1 each way, 6 spots)
While Thomas the Tank leads the betting market this week, it’s another Kim that catches my eye in triple digits.
As Alex shared in the Discord, his course fit model shows a big jump in putting performance at Detroit GC. Kim ranks seventh in putting if you go look at the ratings over on the Ownership page.
He’s yet to win on Tour, but his closest call was a runner-up finish at Silverado, which is the course I pointed out above as my favorite comp.
Cam Davis Top 10 Finish +600
Davis has posted top-10 worthy finishes in roughly 17% of his starts in the last year. That by itself makes this a decent bet based on fair odds (+488).
Then you look at the split stats and see that he’s twirled top 10s in 22% of his starts on courses with similar splits, over the last two years. That implies a +355 fair price, when isolating that stat alone.
Adding to his appeal from being on the split stat list above, he also won at Detroit GC back in 2021, so the splits suggest a snug fit and his history provides some extra evidence.
That week of his week, he arrived with 11 straight finishes of T25 or worse, so we don’t need to be overly concerned about him having seven straight finishes outside the top 35 this time around.
Ryo Hisatsune Top 20 Finish +350
He was a cash cow in Euro DFS last year and has flashed at times in his rookie season on the PGA Tour. He has four top 20s in 16 starts.
While his putting stats don’t leap off the page, he has popped with 4-plus strokes gained putting in three starts this season include twice in his last five starts. One of those came at Valhalla, another Donald Ross design that tries to punish golfers with tricky greens.
He ranks 23rd in six-month baseline performance but he’s outside of the top 35 in top-20 odds.
Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.
