MLB Best Bets – Free (Wednesday 7/24)
Josh Gross
The PGA Tour heads north of the border for this week’s RBC Canadian Open.
The Canadian Open is played across a rotation of courses and this year’s edition will be hosted by Hamilton Golf and Country Club. It was last seen in action at the 2019 Canadian Open, won by Rory McIlroy. The course has undergone a complete restoration since then with the work getting completed in 2022.
Let’s dive into the course fit details and then see if any names pop off the page when looking at the odds sheet.
Course Fit
The host course this week is Hamilton Golf and Country Club. This is a classical, tree-lined design that allows you to club down on a fair amount of the tee shots and has also undergone a recent restoration.
Sounds a lot like last week at Colonial, right? Success in one tournament is never a true sign of “form” but if someone popped last week in Fort Worth, it may be worth jumping on for the ride as they head to a similar style of course this week.
While Rory McIlroy ran away from the field here in 2019, if you look at the rest of the top 10 it was loaded with names that consistently crush on the classical courses like Sedgefield, Harbour Town, Waialae and Colonial.
Played as a par 70, this course stretches to just 7,084 yards from the tips. There are four par 4s under 410 yards and just two over 460 yards. That puts it in the short course bucket, which means lots of wedges and short irons.
The course lists V8 creeping bentgrass as the putting green turf. However, there is bent-poa mix from tee-to-green. When looking at the grass splits, I’m using the bent-poa column this week because this turf is going to be more similar to other courses used in Canada or Northern United States.
When finding a course fit, I prefer to look at split stats and this week I’m honing in on less-than-diver performance, history on bent-poa grass, while also looking at past success on short courses.
If we factor in all of those split stats, then here are the names that show the biggest increase in performance over their baseline.
Hayden Buckley
Daniel Berger
Matt Kuchar
Chez Reavie
Brandon Wu
Matt NeSmith
David Lipsky
Nick Hardy
Robby Shelton
Pierceson Coody
There are a lot of similarities on the list this week compared to last week’s Colonial list. That makes sense, considering there is a lot of overlap in the course characteristics between Hamilton G&CC and Colonial CC.
Last week it was Davis Riley who topped this over-performance list and he lived up to that top spot, could Buckley or another name near the top follow suit 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:
Scheffler isn’t in the field this week, but we’ve got a Scheffler-like price at the top of the board with Rory McIlroy being just +360 to repeat at Hamilton.
RBC Canadian Open Free Bets
Rory’s price implies a 22% win rate while the FTN Model has him around 16%, so let’s look elsewhere when finding outright options.
Daniel Berger Top 10 Finish +650
I liked him last week at Colonial and while he swallowed too many bogeys over the weekend, he maintained his consistent driving. Berger has now gained strokes off-the-tee in 13 straight measured rounds.
The FTN Model is picking up on those breadcrumbs and suggesting a 17% top-10 rate while this +650 price implies just 13%. Add in his appearance on the split stat list above, and that is enough for me to take another shot on Boog.
David Lipsky Top 20 Finish +900
He arrives with some hot irons, gaining strokes on approach in six straight rounds.
That strong iron play helped him secure a top 10 at Colonial and now he heads to a similar venue at Hamilton. The ability to club down off the tee appears to be the key ingredient for Lipsky. He’s just 91st in two-year baseline performance but ranks 20th in the field in top-20 rates on less-than-driver courses.
We’ve seen a lot of clubbing down in the past at Hamilton and with these restorations they like to add bunkers or pinch in fairways based on ShotLink data to keep up with the modern game. So, I would expect a fair number of irons and woods off the tee again this week, which means Lipsky is back on my radar.
Chez Reavie to Win (275-1 each-way, 8 places)
The short knocker has hit this top-8 marker just once in his last 25 starts. This is a low-probability play but one that is still plus-EV over the long run.
What do I like about Reavie here? He’s a short hitter and he really requires a specific type of course to contend at this stage of his career. When we look at two-year baseline performance, he is just 66th in the field but when we isolate to short course performance over the last two years then he pops as 10th-highest golfer in top-five-worthy weeks.
When was his last top eight on Tour? That would be a T-4 at last year’s Travelers, another event played on a short course with bent-poa turf. He has seven career top-8 finishes when playing courses I marked as potential comps to Hamilton. So, at 275-1, I think this is worth a nibble.
Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.
