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.

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Given that I’m attacking single entry DFS contests, Notorious also had a couple pieces of advice centered around that.

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.

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

About the Author

SBK
Stephen Keech (SBK)

Stephen Keech (aka SBK) is a Penn State graduate from the city of Champions. He is a Projections & Alerts Manager at RotoGrinders, monitoring player news, projections, and lineups for NFL, MLB, and NBA. He is currently the #1 ranked NBA expert on the Action Network app. Follow SBK on Twitter – @StephByronKeech