I have noticed that players like Potgieter and Rose are consistently disfavored by the model this year. Almost every week I have found myself fading them in matchups (to some pain this year!). Curious if you have thought about these players or players like them in general and whether anything jumps out. This seems different from how the model is treating Koepka who is also often on the list to fade based strictly on the model but believe that is more tied to noisy data/difficulty extrapolating from LIV back to the PGA Tour. I am interested in building an overlay that filters out these types of issues.
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Just my opinion ā¦but I donāt think these are āāissuesāā.
Golf is a weird game and the chances you lose a bet are always fairly high. You have to find your own strategy but this week for example DG had Potgieter at pretty much 50/50 to make the cut. So if you bet to miss the cut, you have a 50% chance of losing your bet.
It doesnāt mean that DG is wrong on Potgieter. The guy won a PGA tour event after all.
Same thing with Rose (I havenāt fact checked, I might be wrong donāt quote me). I have also noticed that heās one of the frequently faded guys. 2 years ago he was pretty bad and then was good at the Open. Bad last year, 2nd at the Masters. So maybe he was just bad and then spiked a few times at the tournaments where he wanted to spike and built his entire schedule around.
Theyāre not the only 2. Aberg was firmly in the fade zone by DG to start this year and it paid off pretty well. Koepka 2-3 years ago could be attributed to the LIV and Major bump thing. This year he canāt. And he was bad this fall. Now heās rounding into form again and then shoots 5 over yesterday. Pretty sure lots of people stayed off his MC this week thinking āāDG is wrong againāā.
You will also observe the opposite. Few years back, a certain guy flashed green every week. Whether it was positionals, make cut, matchups, groups, this guy was value. Then in the span of a few weeks he won the Wells Fargo which I think was his first win, and then the US Open ā¦and Wyndham Clark was now a household name. Pretty much the same thing happened with Aaron Rai. Man, have I placed a lot of bets on Aaron Rai. To a degree, Russell Henley too.
But thatās juste the game we play (sports betting) and the game we bet on (stupid golf). Results are volatile ans you have to be able to objectively look at a bet and the result. Hereās an example.
Gotterup is another guy DG was high on before anyone else. I bet him a lot last year. Wednesday of the US Open I golfed with friends I hadnāt seen in a while, they asked me for my favorite guys for the US Open. I named Gotterup and then he finished 23rd and then 3rd at the Open few weeks later. My friends had no clue he was that good and theyāre pretty big golf fans. Now heās won 2-3 times since and if youāve been with DG for a while you for sure made money on him before the casuals even heard his name.
But idk if youāve seen, heās now a guy I faded a few times. Took his MC at the Players. Did he miss the cut? No. He was 3 over after 35 holes, then chipped in for eagle on 18th friday to move himself in the cut line. Am I happy I took the bet even if it lost? For sure. Was it a good bet in my opinion? For sure.
Wyndham also a guy in the fade zone. Knapp was for a while ā¦Rickie was for a while and now heās been in the green zone for a while.
Thatās just the game we play.
My opinionā¦ doesnāt mean Iām right.
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Rose and Potgieter are both examples of players that have shown a lot of upside relative to their average performance recently. Rose in particular has shown up at big events in the last couple years, which makes the market love him at certain events. Potgieter has his prodigious length plus heās won before, so the market really jumps on him during bomber-friendly weeks (like this week).
If you are seeing big -EV on these guys every week (I donāt think Iāve really noticed that with Potgieter in matchups, or even Rose that much in 2026), I think that is just because the market tends to like / overvalue players who are āprovenā winners in general. I think this is one of the fundamental differences between the market and a model, and there is probably some value in the market opinion on these players.
I think itās fine to blacklist some guys that you just donāt want to bet against, but it can be overdone for reasons Sam outlined above. A middle ground that I usually take is siding with the model but limiting my exposure to a couple betsāI donāt want my success this week to depend only on being right about Potgieter, for example. (Or Koepka the last couple weeks.)
Not completely related (as its more focused on outright markets), but I wrote this about Rose in the live blog at the Open last year.
edit: just looking at Potgieterās results this year, seems like fading him would have been a good strategy. Although, the one week he did play well (Riviera) was at a course that favours bombers.
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