I Hope I Don't Suck: Introduction & Olympic Golf Edition
Stephen Keech knows his basketball, baseball, and football, but now he’s ready to take a swing at golf. Follow Keech as he uses RotoGrinders Premium PGA tools to make plays in the DFS lobby and at the sportsbook. If you haven’t yet signed up at FOX Bet, take advantage of our Olympic golf special offer below!
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I’ve always been jealous of the PGA guys here at RG. Not because they get to cover a sport with virtually no injury news or late scratches that only happens once a week, but because they know things about golf. That intimidates me. I blindly assume golf people are better than me, which is in part why I’m going to try to make money betting on a sport I currently know very little about. I hope I don’t suck at this.
It’s been about eight years since I started at RotoGrinders. While I’ve been useful in many different capacities, none of those have anything to do with golf. I’ve always felt too poor to be involved with the sport. They play in polos and khaki-ish pants at 6:30 in the morning on grass intentionally cut at various lengths. If you asked me who my favorite golfer is, I’d say John Daly. My favorite all-time golf highlight is the air horn scene from Jackass The Movie. What I’m trying to say is that I am essentially the exact opposite of a PGA expert in any sense. I’m also not good at real life golf or golf video games. But I have a burning desire to learn. I also happen to work at a place that produces PGA content so I don’t have to pay for it.
I don’t want to just blindly tail a couple of the stars at the company, Notorious and STL, so I’m going to try to make it on my own. I’m just going to try to learn as much as I can week by week. I’ll probably learn through losing more than anything else, but I’ll also be using the Premium PGA tools we offer here and hopefully this article that will likely result in a net loss financially for me will be helpful in some way to someone else with an itch to gamble on golf. I’ll be playing single-entry tournaments on DraftKings and will also be firing various bets off, and yes I live in Tennessee so it’s not illegal. I’ll post my lineup and any wagers here pre-tournament each week and just keep a running tally of how I’m doing in both DFS and sports betting.
Both Notorious and STL were kind enough to give me a few golf tips and bullet points as to what I need to look out for as I start my journey. This may be the only piece of valuable information I’m ever able to share on this topic, so this is where anyone trying to enter high society should pay attention.
- Recent form (6-8 weeks) – STL did not elaborate further on this as he is a busy man, but I’m assuming it means I should know how each of these guys have done recently. This is probably a bad sign ,but I feel like my gut instinct is to do the exact opposite and play guys who should be good but have been bad. I will fight that instinct for now.
- Course history (at that venue) – Pretty straightforward here. I’d think I should look into tournament winner longshots or top 10 bets on guys who have had success at a course in the past but seem to have odds that are too long. I’d apply that to DFS in the same sort of way while also being cognizant of ownership (more on that later).
- Targeting specific skill sets at certain courses – I’d imagine if I write this weekly that I’ll spend plenty of time digging into this one and sharing that data here. I’ll need to figure out which golfers are good at certain things according to Notorious. I do know that Bryson Dechambeau drives the ball far because I’ve heard people say that a million times. I also know I don’t really like the cut of his jib or his Kangol hats. I am team Brooks. My guess is that I want guys who drive the ball far on long courses and guys that putt well on courses with really hard greens or something along those lines. I’ll need to figure this part out quickly.
- Fading the cheap chalk – I’d imagine cheap golfers aren’t that good at golf for the most part so trying to zig off of popular golfers who aren’t regularly succeeding makes a lot of sense. Thankfully we have PGA ownership projections to captain the ship in this regard and while I won’t take them as gospel they will certainly be involved in my decision making.
- Always play Brian Harman. This is a Notorious special. I really don’t know why he said this. Not sure how he expects me to do that if this fellow isn’t even in the field this week. I guess I’ll try it next week, but not making any promises beyond that. I assume he won Noto some money.
Given that I’m attacking single entry DFS contests, Notorious also had a couple pieces of advice centered around that.
- Try to keep max total ownership below 90%. If you aren’t familiar with LineupHQ or don’t use it to its full potential, this is a setting you could apply to ensure you don’t end up with what is projected to be a very popular set of golfers.
- Don’t be afraid to find pivots off the real high owned golfers. I’m sure there is some balance needed here, but it does seem to be harder for the field to get away from chalk in single entry compared to MME.
Let’s get into this week’s action. Interestingly enough I’m starting with an Olympic event and hopefully that’ll add a little extra randomness and give me a better shot to succeed. According to Notorious, the fairways here are made of zoysiagrass. I did not see that one coming. Zoysiagrass. Wow. Apparently that makes approach shots easier so being accurate off the tee and in the fairway should be important, but it seems to me like that will always be the case. Notorious also included the word agrostology in his Core Plays article this week. I was wondering how horoscopes played a role in his research but then I looked at the word another few times. I’m playing the $40K Dogleg Single Entry tournament on DraftKings at a $33 entry fee. I’ll post the full lineup next week to recap, but I’ll go through most of the guys I have rostered currently and this will likely hold true through lock unless news breaks.
At the top, I’m rolling with Justin Thomas over Morikawa and Xander. To my uneducated eye these guys seem relatively close and Thomas has longer odds to win the tournament than the other two, so I’d imagine he’ll end up as the least popular of the three while holding the same ceiling. I’m rolling out the recency red carpet for Mito Pereira and Jhonattan Vegas – I had longshot bets on both (courtesy of blindly tailing Notorious’ bets to have a weekend sweat before I dove in) and while neither got there, they each had a chance and outperformed expectations. Does that mean it’ll carry over to an Olympic tournament in Tokyo? We shall see. They also both project very well relative to their price tags according to our PGA projections, so that doesn’t hurt either. I’m also on the Si Woo Kim train this weekend. Winning a medal in this event would exempt Kim from an otherwise mandatory military service, so I’d say he’s got plenty of motivation. There is some Olympic experience with this squad as well.
Olympic Betting Picks
The golf betting card is going to remain relatively small until I feel like I have more of a handle on things. My unit sizes will be $100. If you are going to blindly tail someone, it shouldn’t be me so don’t bet these thinking I have an edge, but small wagers to root along or hope I run into beginners luck aren’t crazy. Here it goes..
Justin Thomas +1100 to win outright (DraftKings Sportsbook) – .35 units ($35 to win $385)
Si Woo Kim +5500 to win outright (DraftKings Sportsbook) – .15 units ($15 to win $825)
Si Woo Kim +1000 to finish in the top 5 (DraftKings Sportsbook) – .15 units ($15 to win $150)
Mito Pereira +10000 to win outright (DraftKings Sportsbook) – .1 units ($10 to win $1,000)
Mito Pereira +1600 to finish in the top 5 (DraftKings Sportsbook) – .1 units ($10 to win $160)
Thomas projects very similarly to Morikawa and Xander yet his odds are greater than 10 to 1 to win the whole thing, so I’m taking a shot. I’m also probably buying too heavily into the military service narrative with Kim, but I’m hoping his back issue isn’t actually a problem but more of an excuse to get ready to roll here. I’m playing favorites a little with Mito, but 100-1 seems way too long for someone playing as well as he is.
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No one here forced me to write this and I have no idea where it’s going, but I know that I want to know this sport well enough to make money wagering on it and share my progress along the way.
Each week I’ll try to touch on a few new things I’m learning so that any other novices out there can learn along with me. I may try to get into some different things with betting like matchups when I get a better feel for the field and become more educated on what leads to success on different courses, in different conditions, etc.
I’m excited to finally jump into the PGA streets. I’ll be back next week with a full recap of Week 1 and a betting card/lineup for the St. Jude Invitational.
Image Credit: Imagn