Gdula's Golf Simulations and Betting Picks: Sanderson Farms Championship
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 years, I have made plenty of tweaks to my original golf model, which uses 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 is 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.
In addition to that long-term adjusted form, I factor in course-level adjustments for course fit.
I run a second model that uses more granular strokes gained data, which allows me to very easily adjust for course fit. The results are averaged out.
I let the data do the talking and don't make many tweaks -- if any. Golfers with a small sample get regressed to a low-end PGA Tour player to round out their samples. Data points are weighted more heavily toward recent performance.
Here are the most likely winners for the Sanderson Farms Championship, according to the models.
Golfer | FanDuel Salary |
Win% | Top- 10% |
Made Cut% |
FanDuel Sportsbook Win Odds |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Corey Conners | $11,500 | 4.8% | 27.2% | 75.3% | +2400 |
Sam Burns | $11,900 | 4.2% | 24.9% | 72.9% | +1800 |
Will Zalatoris | $11,800 | 3.9% | 24.4% | 72.9% | +1800 |
Sergio Garcia | $11,600 | 3.7% | 24.6% | 72.9% | +2000 |
Cameron Tringale | $11,000 | 3.3% | 20.8% | 70.2% | +3600 |
Sungjae Im | $11,700 | 3.2% | 22.7% | 71.6% | +2000 |
Charley Hoffman | $11,200 | 3.0% | 20.2% | 69.8% | +3600 |
Keegan Bradley | $10,800 | 2.2% | 17.1% | 66.5% | +3200 |
Kevin Streelman | $10,500 | 2.0% | 14.9% | 64.1% | +4500 |
Chris Kirk | $9,100 | 1.8% | 13.6% | 62.8% | +9000 |
Emiliano Grillo | $9,800 | 1.8% | 14.3% | 62.9% | +6000 |
Aaron Wise | $9,900 | 1.7% | 14.4% | 63.6% | +6000 |
Patton Kizzire | $9,700 | 1.6% | 13.8% | 63.0% | +7000 |
Taylor Moore | $7,000 | 1.5% | 14.1% | 63.5% | +10000 |
Carlos Ortiz | $10,100 | 1.5% | 13.3% | 62.1% | +3300 |
Doug Ghim | $9,300 | 1.5% | 12.1% | 60.4% | +7500 |
Harold Varner III | $10,600 | 1.4% | 14.8% | 64.5% | +3500 |
Siwoo Kim | $11,100 | 1.4% | 14.4% | 62.9% | +2800 |
Lanto Griffin | $8,900 | 1.4% | 11.6% | 59.9% | +13000 |
Cameron Davis | $10,700 | 1.4% | 12.8% | 61.0% | +3300 |
Chad Ramey | $8,800 | 1.4% | 11.6% | 60.7% | +11000 |
Seamus Power | $10,400 | 1.4% | 13.7% | 62.8% | +4500 |
Zach Johnson | $9,100 | 1.1% | 9.2% | 56.6% | +7500 |
Kyoung-hoon Lee | $9,000 | 1.1% | 11.2% | 59.5% | +8500 |
Gary Woodland | $9,900 | 1.0% | 10.3% | 57.7% | +4500 |
Brendon Todd | $9,800 | 1.0% | 9.5% | 56.4% | +9500 |
Guillermo Mito Pereira | $10,900 | 1.0% | 10.8% | 58.5% | +3200 |
Mackenzie Hughes | $9,400 | 1.0% | 9.8% | 57.3% | +8000 |
Matt Wallace | $9,000 | 1.0% | 10.1% | 57.4% | +7500 |
Luke List | $8,900 | 1.0% | 10.9% | 59.0% | +7500 |
Lucas Glover | $8,700 | 1.0% | 9.6% | 57.1% | +10000 |
Stephan Jaeger | $8,800 | 1.0% | 9.7% | 56.9% | +15000 |
Alex Smalley | $7,900 | 1.0% | 8.7% | 54.3% | +15000 |
Lucas Herbert | $8,700 | 0.9% | 10.4% | 57.8% | +8000 |
Taylor Pendrith | $9,700 | 0.8% | 10.9% | 58.1% | +6000 |
Joel Dahmen | $9,000 | 0.8% | 8.7% | 55.7% | +10000 |
Sebastian J Munoz | $10,200 | 0.8% | 10.5% | 58.9% | +4500 |
Adam Hadwin | $8,500 | 0.8% | 8.5% | 54.5% | +15000 |
Matthias Schwab | $9,500 | 0.8% | 8.2% | 54.4% | +6000 |
Patrick Rodgers | $9,600 | 0.8% | 9.6% | 56.5% | +6500 |
Joseph Bramlett | $9,200 | 0.7% | 9.7% | 56.3% | +7000 |
Dylan Frittelli | $8,400 | 0.7% | 7.8% | 53.6% | +15000 |
Michael Thompson | $7,000 | 0.7% | 6.4% | 51.2% | +20000 |
Sahith Theegala | $8,400 | 0.7% | 8.0% | 54.0% | +13000 |
Brandt Snedeker | $9,600 | 0.7% | 6.7% | 51.4% | +13000 |
Aaron Rai | $8,600 | 0.7% | 7.4% | 53.7% | +9500 |
Nick Taylor | $8,600 | 0.6% | 6.9% | 52.2% | +10000 |
C.T. Pan | $9,300 | 0.6% | 8.3% | 55.3% | +7500 |
Roger Sloan | $8,400 | 0.6% | 7.1% | 52.1% | +20000 |
Adam Schenk | $8,400 | 0.6% | 7.7% | 54.1% | +16000 |
Ryan Armour | $8,500 | 0.6% | 6.4% | 50.8% | +13000 |
Vincent Whaley | $8,000 | 0.6% | 7.4% | 52.7% | +20000 |
Tom Hoge | $8,300 | 0.6% | 6.7% | 51.5% | +15000 |
Nick Hardy | $7,800 | 0.6% | 6.9% | 52.3% | +15000 |
Matthew Wolff | $10,000 | 0.6% | 6.6% | 50.5% | +4500 |
Scott Stallings | $9,500 | 0.6% | 8.4% | 54.6% | +6500 |
Russell Knox | $8,000 | 0.6% | 6.3% | 50.8% | +15000 |
Brendan Steele | $8,300 | 0.6% | 6.3% | 50.2% | +13000 |
Martin Laird | $7,900 | 0.6% | 5.9% | 50.2% | +15000 |
A lot of variance should be expected this week (i.e. cut odds for the favorites are relatively low), and the win odds are low for just about everyone.
Corey Conners (+2400 on Golf odds) rates out as a positive expected value. Conners has concerns putting on bermuda greens, but he has concerns putting everywhere. Conners has a runner-up and a 17th here in the past three years. Conners is first in my combo model, which accounts for recent stats and form.
Charley Hoffman (+3200) is part of the trio I like between 24/1 and 36/1. Hoffman rates out seventh in my stats and form model for the week and also outperforms his win odds in the simulations. He has finished 23rd and 6th here the past two years.
I can't quit Cameron Tringale (+3600). He's better than the odds indicate, and he has made four straight cuts here. Tringale rates out fourth in the combo model.
As for some sleeper-level picks, ones that pop are Aaron Wise (+6000), Patton Kizzire (+7000), Chris Kirk (+9000), and Taylor Moore (+10000). We can also lump in Lanto Griffin (+13000) and Chad Ramey (+11000) on that list.