Prime-Time Props – Monday Night Football, Week 1
Sam Choudhury
The PGA Tour’s regular season comes to an end this week at the Wyndham Championship.
I can’t go any further without mentioning the terrible weather in the forecast. It’s right in the path of Tropical Storm Debby, with the current forecast showing the worst in Greensboro on Friday morning. There is a chance of rain all day Thursday as well. It’s in the range of outcomes that the Wyndham Championship doesn’t even start until Saturday. A fitting end to a 2024 campaign that has seen so many soft courses.
Course Fit
While weather remains a wild card, the host course is pretty well known. It’s Sedgefield Country Club, longtime host of this event.
In typical Donald Ross fashion, the course becomes tougher as you get closer to the hole. It’s a true less-than-driver course that puts an emphasis on finding the fairway and then managing your misses from there.
It never hurts to be long off the tee, but this course doesn’t really allow that strength to be showcased as often, so if a golfer leans solely on distance, then they will likely have a bad time at Sedgefield.
Looking at scoring here, the field average a 22% birdie or better rate which is about as easy as it gets for a par-70 layout. Adding to the ease, the field average bogey rate is just 15% which is also in the easiest quartile when comparing to all other Tour venues.
The caveat to that ease is the penalty for missing the fairway. With wall-to-wall bermuda, missed fairways are heavily penalized since bermuda rough can be so unpredictable. The penalty is about 0.41 shots which puts it behind only five other regular Tour stops.
For a course fit, we can combine all those angles (bermuda, easy courses, big penalty for missing the fairway, and less-than-driver courses) and see how golfers have historically fared.
If we weigh all of those split stats, here are the names who show the biggest increase in performance over their baseline.
- Emiliano Grillo
- Ryo Hisatsune
- Andrew Putnam
- Jordan Spieth
- J.J. Spaun
- Michael Kim
- Eric Cole
- Adam Svensson
- Lee Hodges
- Cam Davis
When I glance at this list, I see a list full of golfers that lean on their iron play or short game. No overpowering the course this week.
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:
Alex and I both have the leader in win equity this week being around 5% so the market is heavily inflated on Sungjae at the top. It’s true that his recent performance is likely best in the field, but he doesn’t separate from the pack in the same way we see the usual superstars like Scheffler or Schauffele.
Wyndham Championship Free Golf Bets
Keegan Bradley over Davis Thompson (+120)
Bradley didn’t quite find the top-10 list above when it comes to overperformance on similar courses, but he wasn’t too far behind.
Keegan ranks sixth in the field in low-round rates on courses with similar splits. His boost over baseline in roughly 10% when playing less-than-driver layouts and courses with a big penalty for missing the fairway. Just from the eye test, we know he’s very confident with the driver and on less-than-driver layouts that often gives him an edge on a few holes where he can squeeze in a driver instead of laying back.
Thompson is playing some solid golf right now but for plus-120, I like the Bradley side here.
Ben Griffin to Win (70-1, one-fourth each-way for 5 spots)
If you are attacking the less-than-driver angle with a de-emphasis on traditional driver performance, Griffin really stands out. Over the last three months he ranks 37th in strokes gained tee-to-green despite being 103rd off-the-tee.
When you look at events where he’s spiked in the past, nearly all of them have on short, less-than-driver courses or down in the Southeast. It makes sense given he’s a Sea Island member.
This each-way comes at Bet365, which gives us +1750 for the top-five portion, much better than the +1250 market consensus.
Andrew Putnam Top 20 Finish (+375)
Taking it to an even more extreme than Griffin, Putnam could use a break from the driver. Over the last three months he ranks 32nd in approach, 12th around the green and 49th putting. Get your barf bags ready though because he’s losing more than 3 shots off-the-tee over the course of 72 holes. That is seventh worst in the field over that time.
Over the last two years, there are only five golfers in the entire field with a better low-round rate on bermuda (Detry, Im, Zalatoris, Harman, Griffin). Despite his Northwestern roots, he does a lot of his best work on these bermuda tracks which often feature a more fitting tee-to-green test for his play style.
When you look at his top 20s this year, they’ve come at comp courses like Waialae, PGA National, and Harbour Town. Currently just outside the top-70 FedExCup bubble, I like his chance of playing his way into the playoffs.
Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.
