Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
Heading to Harbour Town Golf Links this week, it’s time to unwind after the PGA season’s first major, which certainly lived up to the hype.
If you feel exhausted from watching so much coverage last week, just imagine how some of these big names feel after being in contention over the weekend at Augusta National and then a few days later getting ready to do it all again at the RBC Heritage.
You could say with near certainty that fatigue will be a factor for some golfers but it’s impossible to guess which ones, so that is not an angle I want to include in my handicapping.
Instead, let’s dig into the course details and see what names stand out from a course-fit perspective.
Course Fit
The host course this week is Harbour Town Golf Links.
This Pete Dye design is a par 71 that plays to 7,213 yards from the tips. It’s known for its claustrophobic fairway corridors and tiny greens.
It’s very much the opposite of Augusta National which features much wider fairways and larger, undulating greens. These greens at Harbour Town are relatively flat and feel even moreso after taking on Augusta National.
That said, both courses require you to stay in position and manage your misses to help make the scrambling that much easier. Course experience can help with knowing when to step on the gas and when to lay back and play conservatively.
The conservative approach is pretty common here as there are a lot of less-than-driver holes with trouble coming into play if you try to pound one over 300 yards.
This isn’t a course where it’s easy to go extremely low but with a bogey or worse rate of just 16.2%, you could still classify it as an easy test. For comparison, the bogey rate of the last 10 courses played this year has been 18.9%.
One other course-fit angle I’m looking at is past performance on coastal courses. Grounds crews have to deal with a lot of the same agronomy issues when dealing with a coastal course and it’s also rare to get a calm day by the coast so this angle factors in the ability to deal with coastal wind gusts.
What names stand out when looking at the key split stats (short courses, easy courses, coastal conditions and less-than-driver courses)? Here are the top 10 in the field when it comes to overall split stat performance compared to their baseline:
Sungjae Im
Tony Finau
Jason Day
Jordan Spieth
Cam Davis
Justin Rose
Keegan Bradley
Taylor Moore
Emiliano Grillo
Russell Henley
These 10 golfers combine for a plus-28 course monster score so their strong fit only adds to the evidence of real results.
Smart iron play and strong around-the-green play seems to be the main theme of the list.
Head over to the splits stats page to see how the entire field stacks up in these categories.
Outright Odds
Here’s what the top of the board looks like on DraftKings Sportsbook:
On paper, Scheffler deserves this market price but will he bring the same will to win and full attention after having just slipped on the green jacket while knowing his wife will be going into labor any day/week now? He finished T-11 at this event last year, which was his tourney debut.
RBC Heritage Bets
Now that we’ve laid out the course characteristics and split stats fit, what names stand out on the betting board?
Emiliano Grillo Top 20 Finish (+260)
The Argentine found his way onto the splits-stat list above that shows he’s a solid fit for this short, less-than-driver test.
His adjusted top-20 worthy rate is also over 30 percent when comparing to this week’s field.
Add in a trio of top 20s in six tries at Harbour Town, and the +260 prices looks more and more appealing.
Keegan Bradley To Win (80-1 each-way for 6 places)
Bradley was one of just 11 golfers to sign off last week’s Masters with a sub-70 round. I like his chances to keep the ball rolling this week at Harbour Town.
Looking at his baseline upside, he ranks 18th in the field in top-5 worthy weeks (9%) over the last year. He’s even better when looking at the split stat angles specifically, posting a 10% top-five rate, which is 10th best in the field.
For comparison, he ranks just 27th in top-40 worthy performances so his range of outcomes are skewed more toward the big finishes which is what we like to see in an outright, each-way bet.
Cam Davis (+130) over Akshay Bhatia — Tournament Matchup
The first thing that stood out here was Bhatia’s shoulder injury that popped up at the Valero. Combine that with his recent comments about playing for majors, not regular Tour events, and there is the potential for him to let off the gas early or even WD if he starts slow.
We don’t need to rely on that injury narrative though because looking at the data, Davis has the edge over Bhatia in crossover rounds in the last year (Davis winning 57% of shared rounds to Bhatia’s 43 percent). Instantly, we see the wrong golfer may be favored here.
The last piece is course history with Davis boasting three top 25s in three tries at the Heritage while Bhatia missed the cut in his lone appearance. Combine it all, and this becomes my favorite matchup bet of the week.
Those are the first two bets that caught my eye this week but Alex has already tossed out an outright in the Discord, as well. Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.
