2024-25 FTN NBA Power Rankings: Evaluating the NBA After the Trade Deadline
Marshall Gershon
It seems like only yesterday we were watching the pros slap it around at Torrey Pines. Just three weeks ago, we saw Harris English win on a windy week in La Jolla, and now the PGA Tour returns for a second helping due to the wildfires in Pacific Palisades preventing the usual host, Riviera CC, from hosting. Mother Nature refuses to leave her name out of the story, as Torrey Pines is set to receive a lot of rain in the lead-up and early rounds.
As a signature event, the field this week is tiny (72 golfers), and it’s one of the few signature events with a cutline, so we’ll see the top 50 and ties play the weekend. With this course so fresh in our mind, we have a good grasp on what it takes to contend here but let’s recap that.
Course Fit
Torrey Pines South Course is the star of the show this week. It’s been the regular host of the Farmers Insurance Open for decades, so there is plenty of history here. During the Farmers, the golfers play one round at the easier Torrey North Course, but that won’t be the case this week.
Without a freebie round at the North Course, this becomes a true test of golf, and we should expect some very difficult scoring conditions. With that in mind, our first course-fit angle will be tracking down past performance on tough courses. We want the golfers who are perfectly content in tossing together a trio of 1-under rounds to keep them in the hunt while hoping their putter nukes for one big round to vault them into contention.
It’s a matter of patience at Torrey South but with this course measuring nearly 7,800 yards it’s also about brute strength. The big stick becomes a weapon that needs to be wielding early and often. So, our next stop in course-fit-ville is looking at past performance on long courses and history on driver-heavy courses.
Lastly, we can look at the turf and see that it’s cool-season grasses with ryegrass, bent, and poa throughout the course. While the greens are poa annua the sample for pure poa courses is too small for my liking, so I look at bent-poa instead. What this really does is eliminate the performance on bermuda or paspalum which show significant dropoff in predictive power when looking at the overall field leading up Torrey and then reviewing those expectations after the event. There are always random exceptions where a bermuda specialists pops on poa, but overall, we want the golfers that are comfortable on the cool-season turf.
Now taking those four split stat angles, here are the names who show the biggest increase in performance when playing courses with similar splits relative to their baseline.
- Viktor Hovland
- Rasmus Hojgaard
- Harris English
- Max Homa
- Andrew Novak
- Russell Henley
- Cameron Young
- Kevin Yu
- Thomas Detry
- Will Zalatoris
What in the world is going on with Max Homa? He was lost with the driver last summer but appears to have that in order in 2025. However, his approach play has been putrid to start the year. This would be a good venue for him to bounce back but the same could have been said for most of his recent starts.
The last time we were here, I talked about Detry popping on long courses that allow him to hit a lot of drivers. He definitely popped last week in Scottsdale while pounding drivers, but it’ll be interesting to see if he maintains that momentum after a breakout win or has a bit of a hangover.
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:
It’s a two-man race on the betting board with Scottie and Rory taking up a huge chunk of the implied win equity. The oddsmakers are saying that either of the big two win about a third of the time. Even with such a high percentage, that leaves two-thirds of the win equity for the rest of the field. You can check the FTN PGA Betting Model to see what our model projects their chances to win this week.
Genesis Invitational Free Golf Bets
Russell Henley Top-10 Finish (+400)
When looking at two-year baseline performance, Henley grades out seventh in the field in expected top-10 rate (31%) and that number is even better (38%) when looking only at courses with similar stats angles as Torrey Pines South. Meanwhile, his price on DraftKings Sportsbook and FanDuel Sportsbook currently implies around 20% chance of landing a top 10.
Arriving with back-to-back top 10s, I like his chances of adding on a third straight big finish.
Sungjae Im to Win (33-1, one-fourth each-way for 5 places)
He arrives with top-fives in two of his first starts this season. That includes one at Torrey Pines. That wasn’t his first taste of success at Torrey, either, as he now has finished sixth or better in three of his last four trips to La Jolla.
The result is a plus-9 course monster score, best in the field. Looking at similar field sizes over the last few years, golfers with a course monster score of 6 or better went on to win 4-of-46 times (9%) and finished top five in 29% of their starts. The each-way here implies a 3% win rate and 11% top-5 rate so there is a lot of cushion in between.
Viktor Hovland to Win (55-1, one-fourth each-way for 5 places)
The youngster has tinkered his way to confusion early in his career but even for a guy who claims to be confused, his ball-striking stats are still top notch.
His adjusted off-the-tee numbers have been positive in 13 of his last 14 starts and he’s lost strokes on approach in just three of those events.
Over the last two years, his performances on courses with similar split stats has been worthy of a 12.5% win rate, tied for second with Rory McIlroy, behind only Scottie Scheffler. So, despite his decline in confidence, this is the style of course that has allowed him to still thrive from tee-to-green.
If he were to arrive in full form, we’d likely be seeing him priced around JT and Morikawa in the mid-teens or low 20s but instead we have him way down at 55-1 so I want to buy the dip here on a golfer with World No. 1 type upside.
Keep an eye on the PGA bet tracker for more plays. Hop in the Discord to get those bet alerts.
