Handicapping the 2020 Charles Schwab Challenge
Life is good in Portland, Oregon. You can enjoy clean air, fantastic food and legal online gambling. Back on March 11 and 12 of 2020, I was enjoying these liberties. Then my little world fell out of the sky like
a lead zeppelin.
On March 11 I had NBA daily fantasy sports bets down on
Draft Kings and Yahoo Daily Fantasy. NBA
fantasy sports bets involve picking the highest scoring players from the slate
of teams playing that day. NBA players
accumulate fantasy points based upon points scored, rebounds and assists. The idea is to pick eight players from all
available NBA teams on the slate, thereby accumulating the highest fantasy
point totals.
Fantasy sports are different from a traditional sports book
bet in that sports book bets are typically made picking individual teams to win
their scheduled two-team contests. Traditional
sports books focus on games and bets such as
$10 on the Portland Trailblazers
to win. In fantasy sports the focus is
on the entire slate of teams, and a gambler picks their favorite player or
players from teams -- such as Damien Lillard, C.J. McCollum and Carmelo Anthony
from the Blazers – along with players from other teams.
On March 11, 2020, things started off great. I made good picks in the early NBA games, and
I had lots of options open going into the final two games. Then it all fell apart. For unknown reasons there was a delay in
starting the Utah Jazz verses the Oklahoma City Thunder game. The players came out to warm up and then went
back into the locker room.
At about the same time, the Denver Nuggets verses the Dallas
Mavericks game was in the final minutes.
Dallas Mavericks owner Marc Cuban was sitting court-side. Cuban received a text message from the
league. Cuban’s lips made that oft used exclamation
of disbelief, “WTF?!”
Soon, announcements from the league clarified what had
happened and sports fans collectively expressed themselves in a manner similar
to Cuban. A player on the Utah Jazz had
tested positive for COVID-19. The league
had postponed the Utah-OKC and the New Orleans-Sacramento games. Thereafter, all NBA games were postponed
until further notice.
The opening round of the Pro Golf Association Players
Championship in Florida was schedule to start the following morning, Thursday, March
12, but the sports world was shaken. All
NCAA sports events were postponed (and ultimately cancelled). Opening day of Major League Baseball was just
around the corner, but soon that was in doubt. The eyes of sports fans across
the world were focused on the Players Championship and whether golf would be
played.
The Players Championship commenced, but trouble brewed
throughout the day. An announcement about
mid-day stated that play would continue on the second day but without fans in
attendance. After the end of the first
day of play, the remainder of the tournament was cancelled. The prize pool was split amongst the
contestants and everybody went home.
HANDICAPPING THE 2020 CHARLES SCHWAB CHALLENGE
Fast forward three months to the present. The Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial
Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, will be the first PGA Tournament event played
in the shadow of COVID-19. The
tournament is scheduled to be played on June 11 – 14, 2020.
Prop bets, anyone?
Prop bets, or proposition bets, are bets
made on whether something will occur during a game or event. For the Charles Schwab Challenge, a potential
prop bet would be (choose one) that 1) the event is played to its conclusion,
2) that the even will commence and be cancelled mid-event, or 3) that the event
will be cancelled before it starts.
For myself, an eternal optimist, I’m all in on scenario 1 –
the event will be played. So, let’s
handicap the 2020 Charles Schwab Challenge.
The field for the Charles Schwab is stacked. It consists of 120 of the best golfers in the
world. After three months without PGA events,
almost every player wants in on this one.
Fans are stoked, having been starved of live-action sports events for what
has seemed like an eternity.
VEGAS ODDS and TRADITIONAL SPORTS BOOKS
A good starting place for any sports bet is to look at the
Vegas Odds. The sharps in Vegas make their
living predicting what players or teams will win or lose. Because I live in the progressive state of
Oregon, I use the Oregon State Lottery’s Scoreboard app to review sports book
odds.
The standard sports book bet is to pick the winner. On Oregon’s Scoreboard the favorite for the Schwab
Challenge is Rory McIlroy who, at the time of this article, was listed at 7 to
1 odds of winning. Thus, a $1 bet on McIlroy
pays back $8 – you get back your wager plus seven additional dollars. McIlroy
is the clear favorite, and he is currently the best and most consistent golfer
in the world, having a run of seven consecutive top five finishes in his last
seven events. But note, in that 7-event stretch, McIlroy has won just one
tournament.
Seven to 1 on McIlroy to win is a decent straight-up bet,
but McIlroy is in no way a sure thing. There simply are no true “sure things” in
golf. However, on a positive note golf betting
offers some of the best straight-up odds in all of sports gambling. For example, here are some odds on PGA
golfers to win as listed on the Oregon Scoreboard betting app for the 2020
Charles Schwab Challenge:
Jon Rahm: 12 to 1 (ranked second in the world
behind McIlroy)
Sungjae Im: 25 to 1 (the 2018-19 PGA
Rookie of the Year)
Collin Morikawa: 35 to 1 (leads the PGA in consecutive cuts made)
Kevin Na: 50 to 1 (won the Charles Schwab Challenge in 2019)
Phil Mickelson: 100 to 1 (one of the all greats in golf)
Si Woo Kim: 150 to 1 (shot a first-round minus-7 in the first round of the Players Championship in March of 2020)
You pick a player to win and place your bet. That’s how traditional sports book betting
works. Who doesn’t love a bet that pays
150 to 1?
HOW FANTASY GOLF BETS WORK
In fantasy golf a gambler is given a budget and must pick 6
players within that budget. Thus, if you
pick McIlroy and another of the highest-priced golfers, you must have lower-priced
players in mind to stay within the salary cap.
I will use Yahoo Daily Fantasy golf for the example here, although there
are many fantasy sports betting sites.
In Yahoo Fantasy golf lineups the gambler has a salary cap
of $200 within which to pick players. Spread among six picks, the average price
per player about $33. For example if you pick McIlroy ($49) and the second-highest
player, Justin Thomas ($47), that will leave you $104 remaining in your salary
cap and the price of your four remaining picks must average no more than $26 apiece.
For Yahoo Fantasy golf lineups, expect to wager from $.25 to
over $100 per bet. There are a variety
of formats. Some formats are single
entry, other formats allow multiple entries.
A typical $.25 Yahoo Fantasy contest allows a better to enter 10
lines. So, for a mere $2.50, you can
have 10 different lineups that each have the potential of winning first place. In a $.25 per entry contest, the top prize
could be anywhere from $10 up to $100 or more depending upon the total number
of entries.
What makes golf betting fun is that if you have players in
the mix, your bets offer entertainment value for all four days of the
tournament. After the first two days of
most tournaments, there is a cut. If a
player does not make the cut, they do not play the final two rounds on Saturday
or Sunday. Their score still counts in
your lineups point totals, but a cut player will be score based only upon their
first two rounds.
To win a contest on Yahoo you almost have to pick the
winner, a couple of top 10 finishers, and a couple of top 20 finishers. Of the 6 players you pick, having all six
players make the cut is the ideal result.
However, if you have picked well, you can still do well in a contest with
five of your six players making the cut.
Strategy 1: Statistical Analysis/Cuts Made
One of the tools I like to use to handicap golf can be found
on PGAtour.com, where you can see which players have made the most consecutive
cuts. Collin Morikawa has made
the cut in his last 21 tries. Morikawa’s
streak of cuts made is currently the longest such streak in the PGA. Here’s some other players that lead the cuts-made
metric:
Webb Simpson: made the cut in his last 18 tries.
Mathew Fitzpatrick: has also made the cut in his last 18
tries.
Tyrell Hatton: made the cut in his last 13 tries.
Taylor Gooch: made the cut in his last 12 tries.
Max Homa: made the cut in his last 9 tries.
Strategy 2:
Identifying the Value Players
Value is a relative term, but basically it boils down to
this – based upon price, is a player a good value?
With a budget of $200 to spend, the average price you will
pay for player is about $33. On Yahoo,
Kevin Na’s price is currently $31. So,
for less than the average price per player, you can pick last year’s Schwab
Challenge champion. In my opinion that’s
a good value.
Something to understand is that all of the 120 players in
the Schwab Challenge are PGA Tour players.
This is the major league of golf.
Every player in this contest has a history of amateur, collegiate and
professional success. Every player has a
chance to win and lower-priced players sometimes do win. That’s what makes it fun.
However, even the best players have off
days. Rory McIlroy last
missed the cut eleven tournaments ago at the 2019 British Open, which was
played in McIlroy’s home country of Ireland.
Golf is hard. Good
players have bad days. The buzz
surrounding McIlroy before the 2019 British Open was deafening. Then he went out on the first day and shot an
8-over-par 79. He battled back valiantly
in the second round but ended up at +2, missing the cut by one stroke. Still,
at this writing, McIlroy is generally considered the best and most consistent
player on the PGA Tour.
While I play
McIlroy in a high percentage of my golf betting lineups, as illustrated by Rory
at the British open, there is no sure thing in golf.
Lower priced players who consistently make the cut offer
good value. In my opinion these players offer a low price in conjunction with a high probability
of making the cut:
Matthew Fitzpatrick: Yahoo DFS price $31
Max Homa: Yahoo DFS price
$29
Taylor Gooch: Yahoo DFS price $20
Betting Strategy 3: Course History/Shots Gained
For information related to this strategy I relied upon
Datagolf.com, where I reviewed which players had played the most rounds at
Colonial Country Club and their shots gained over the field during those
rounds. Here are two players I
identified from these statistics:
Zack Johnson: has played Colonial 56 times and has a 1.5 sg
rating. (Yahoo DFS price $20)
Jim Furyk: has played
Colonial 46 times and has a 1.2 sg rating.
(Yahoo DFS price $28)
What I like about these statistics is that Johnson and Furyk
are familiar with Colonial and have a history of doing at least a stroke better
than the field in each round they play there over multiple rounds.
That doesn’t mean they will win, but it shows that they have what it
takes to compete at a high level on this course.
Course history and experience, however, doesn’t always
translate into winning rounds of golf.
Tiger Woods, perhaps the greatest golfer of all time,
and his history at Riviera Country Club in California might serve as an example.
Riviera is located a short distance from Tiger’s
childhood home. It was the site of his
first PGA Tournament start, where he played as a 16-year-old amateur in
1992. He has played this course as a
competing professional 10 times, but he has never found a way to win on this
course. In his last outing at Riviera at
the 2020 Genesis Invitational, he finished last, 68th, out of
the players who made the cut. Yet his
connection to Riviera is so strong that he was the tournament host of the 2020
Genesis.
Strategy 4: Managing
Positive/Negative Bias
I love some of the PGA players, and I don’t love other PGA
players. Since I started betting on golf
about a year ago, I have watched every PGA event closely and I have a good feel
for many of the pros. While I agree that
all PGA players are excellent golfers, I simply like some of them more than
others.
When the PGA last competed at the Players in March of 2020, my
lines included a couple of value players that I felt were playing good golf and
had momentum coming into the tournament.
My examples here are Si Woo Kim and Harris English, both of which were affordably
priced on Yahoo DFS for the Players. I
stacked my lines with Kim and English, and after the first day of the
tournament they were tied for second overall at minus 7. Of course, COVID-19 caused the cancellation
of the Players Championship after that first round. Going into the Charles Schwab Challenge, Kim and
English are priced at $20 and $25, respectively, on Yahoo DFS. In my opinion, both are good values.
There are also players that I like because they are excellent
golfers. On this list are Sungjae Im,
Tyrell Hatton, and Patrick Cantlay. Their
Yahoo DFS prices are relatively high, but any one of these players could win
any tournament they enter.
Sungjae Im is a top ten hit machine. He plays more PGA tournaments than any other player. He won the Honda Classic earlier in 2020.
I have a positive
bias for Tyrell Hatton because he won the Arnold Palmer Classic in March of
2020, and I had a straight up bet on him to win that paid 50 to 1. What I am trying to express is to not get
carried away with positive bias. Sure,
Hatton won me a chunk of change, but that doesn’t justify betting on him in
every line the next time he plays.
Patrick Cantlay is a fine golfer and a threat to win any tournament he enters. On a subjective level, I like Cantlay because I like his attitude. Sometimes player bias cannot be quantified in a meaningful manner, but it can lead to poor results if you allow your bias to impact your picks.
Because I am human and have subjective emotions, there are
also players that I do not like, for whom I have a negative bias. These are the PGA pros that I would rather
not have a beer with. Example one here
is Patrick Reed, who has generated some recent negative publicity. While I do not personally like Reed, I do
have to admit that he is an excellent golfer.
Monitoring bias means setting personal feelings aside and betting on the
best players because they are the best players.
Another example of one of my negative biases involves Phil Mickelson. I don’t personally like Phil and I don’t care
if he doesn’t like me, but I do have to admit that Mickelson is an excellent
golfer. He is past his prime, and I
think he is an arrogant pampered fool, so I have to temper those emotions and intentionally
put Phil in some of my lines because he can chip a ball in from the bunker on
any given hole.
(C) 2020
Mike McKenzie
Portland, Oregon
