GOLF
Gdula's Golf Simulations: TOUR Championship
With a starting score of -10, does Dustin Johnson warrant betting on this week on FanDuel Sportsbook?

Volatility is the name of the game in golf, and picking winners isn't easy. With fields of 150-plus golfers sometimes being separated by how a putt or two falls each week, predicting golf can be absurdly tough.

We'll never be able to capture everything that goes into a golfer's expectations for a week, but we can try to account for that by simulating out the weekend and seeing what happens.

The Process

Over the hiatus, I made some tweaks to my original golf model, which used a combination of the OWGR's field strength numbers and datagolf's field strength numbers to adjust each golfer's score relative to the field (on the PGA Tour, the European Tour, and the Korn Ferry Tour). The ultimate goal was to place a score from the Waste Management Open, the BMW International Open, and the Knoxville Open on level playing fields. This adjusted strokes metric lets me see how golfers are performing across all tours. From there, a golfer's adjusted stroke data is combined with their round-to-round variance to see how the field is likely to perform when playing out the event thousands of times.

I liked it, and it worked, but it didn't isolate out tee-to-green and putting performance enough, so I made some alterations, this time leveraging strokes gained data and adjusting that for field strength.

After using an average of those two models, I've now swapped to the newer model, which has fared better and is capable of easier course-level adjustments.

Here are the simulation results for the TOUR Championship. (Starting score is in parentheses.)

Golfer Simulated
Win%
FanDuel
Sportsbook
Win Odds
Golfer Simulated
Win%
FanDuel
Sportsbook
Win Odds
Dustin
Johnson (-10)
26.7% +175 Jon
Rahm (-8)
23.6% +250
Justin
Thomas (-7)
16.7% +550 Webb
Simpson (-6)
7.8% +1200
Bryson
DeChambeau (-4)
3.5% +2000 Rory
McIlroy (-3)
3.0% +2000
Collin
Morikawa (-5)
2.8% +1800 Xander
Schauffele (-3)
2.7% +2700
Daniel
Berger (-4)
2.7% +2700 Hideki
Matsuyama (-4)
2.1% +2900
Patrick
Reed (-3)
1.2% +5000 Scottie
Scheffler (-2)
1.2% +8000
Sungjae
Im (-4)
1.2% +10000 Harris
English (-4)
1.1% +5000
Tyrrell
Hatton (-2)
0.8% +10000 Tony
Finau (-2)
0.8% +5000
Sebastian
Munoz (-3)
0.4% +15000 Lanto
Griffin (-2)
0.3% +32000
Brendon
Todd (-3)
0.3% +10000 Joaquin
Niemann (-2)
0.2% +15000
Abraham
Ancer (-1)
0.2% +21000 Kevin
Kisner (-1)
0.2% +12000
Billy
Horschel (E)
0.2% +21000 Viktor
Hovland (E)
0.1% +21000
Kevin
Na (-1)
0.1% +42000 Ryan
Palmer (-1)
0.1% +32000
Cameron
Champ (E)
0.0% +42000 Cameron
Smith (E)
0.0% +42000
Mackenzie
Hughes (E)
0.0% +42000 Marc
Leishman (-1)
0.0% +50000


These odds -- both the sims and betting odds -- account for the strokes that these golfers are spotted based on their FedEx Cup ranking.

Dustin Johnson starts this week -10 and is red hot. The +175 odds on Golf odds are wild and imply a 36.4% chance to win. For that reason, I'm out. Jon Rahm was second in my win sims last week, but I didn't see enough value, unfortunately. The same can be said this week, as he should be around 28.6% likely to win at +250 odds but falls short of that.

It's Justin Thomas that interests me most at the top. He starts -7 and is getting a lack of respect at +550 in the 30-man field. He outperformed those odds and has finished top-seven here four straight years.

We'll have to track the status of Webb Simpson (+1200), but he's priced appropriately, based on the sims. The same can be said for Harris English (+5000), Tyrrell Hatton (+10000), and Sungjae Im (+10000).

Because of the starting strokes, it's a tough week to find significant value, but Thomas is my early interest this week. If we forgive the search for just positive value, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele draw my attention.

I've bet Justin Thomas and Sungjae Im to win.

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