Rocket Mortgage Classic! For many, a final prep before the Open Championship. Not quite as strong a field as I thought considering the timing. I guess several players are either taking extra time away from competition or playing in the Scottish Open next week. Also three top players got appearance money to play in Europe (McIlroy, Lowry, Fleetwood).
Time to back the bombers? Last year Bryson DeChambeau finished off the best stretch of his career with a 3-stroke victory over Matthew Wolff, who likewise was in the best stretch of his career. Let’s see if they can make a comeback!
Bombers to watch:
Bryson DeChambeau - the favorite
Will Zalatoris - When will we finally see win #1?
Jason Kokrak - Great season so far, does it continue?
Garrick Higgo - He had 2 bad tournaments in a row, does this course fit his game better?
Keegan Bradley - I guess he’s not “back” yet? Needs a W at some point
Matthew Wolff - Still waiting for a breakthrough, this is as good a place as any
Bubba Watson - Lost his swing in the back 9 on Sunday, he can bounce back though
Several good non-bombers (Simpson, Reed, Matsuyama, etc.) so let’s not forget about them. Should be a great week for scoring, winning score should be in the -20 to -25 range.
My understanding is that McIlroy and Lowry aren’t taking appearance fees for the Irish Open. No doubt their Irish based sponsors will be paying bonuses as a result though. More likely to be meaningful to Lowry.
Mount Juliet is a lovely course and resort but Irish Open really missing a trick by not having it on a links course to entice a stronger field for Open prep. The tournament is most likely dependent on the host contributing to the cost though. Unlikely that a top level links course can compete with Mount Juliet or K Club etc. Doonbeg is toxic in PR terms with the Trump ownership (not a comment on politics just the divisive nature of his brand).
Actually Trump was a controversial brand even before the politics
The golf courses and the setups were absolutely first-rate. Tough as nails and provided top-shelf entertainment but the players were dying. They complained like heck because they’d rather shoot -15 and finish T-40 than shoot -5 and finish T-10.
Never understood why the players criticized tough setups. You get paid based on your position on the leaderboard and the sponsors pay you based on the exposure you get. If I was in their position I’d complain if a setup was to my personal disadvantage but wouldn’t care otherwise.
i hope they don’t release the data until all the odds have come out. It seems that for match up odds, the books having been copying them decreasing any EV in the markets
Seconded, I would prefer it if the odds were released on Tuesday/Wednesday, after the odds were released and after the field was more settled following the Monday Qualifiers and the withdrawals.
Prefer asap to be honest.
I don’t believe this model has any direct impact on UK books, and the markets are already forming now. A delay means the other golf models are getting a time advantage in the market.
And if any book were copying datagolf odds would they not do so as soon as released anyway?
I don’t think that’s true, given that the Irish Open pays out $3 million, compared to the Scottish Open next week paying $8 million and being a Rolex Series event.
The PGA event this week pays out $7.5 million as well.
We will be posting around 5pm EST today. We want to start posting later, both because it’s easier from a work standpoint for us and also due to bookmakers copying us. I know 5pm doesn’t resolve the copying issue, but we’ll start there and see what feedback from users is like.
I would prefer data to be released prior to this as living in UK however understand it for regular tour events. However for majors and events like the TPC when all markets are out much earlier I really would think it beneficial if the data be made available much earlier.
@TR72 good point about the majors. @matt_courchene in a couple weeks for the open champ when odds should be posted very early (prob Monday morn at latest) do you plan to run model a little earlier? Thanks
Yes, for majors we can post earlier. I mean, we are happy to do whatever most folks want. I think there are probably two pretty distinct camps amongst our subscribers. We do want to move away from forcing ourselves to update the site by Monday morning (which in practice means updating on Sunday night) simply because it can be burdensome. But still, we could have updated today by noon EST if we wanted.
Interesting that our course fit profile for the Detroit Golf Club says it doesn’t favour bombers (or anything really, for that matter). Our model will be compressing the skill distribution. Is Bryson single-handedly driving (pun intended) the narrative that bombers do well here?
personally noon or between 4-5pm EST would be perfect as long as I know when then I can work with it. Ultimately the bookies will see it when we do anyway and there isn’t much of a way round that is there. Impossible to keep everyone happy no doubt.
Noticed Betonline has not posted any h2h’s yet. as they probably waited all day for data golf to update. pinnacle hasn’t posted any yet too, waiting for data golfs update as well. Last week pinnacle posted over 100 h2h… all very in line with data golf. Usually they run their own odds…
Totally agree. I’m very surprised that Bombers don’t have an edge here. Wolff and DeChambeau are definitely giving me recency bias, but when they both do well it really seems like it’s somewhat related to course fit.
2020 US Open, 2021 US Open, 2020 PGA Championship, 2020 Rocket Mortgage.
At a guess, they’ve held this tournament twice, and in the first year Lashley (146th in driving distance) won by six. Of the top eight players that year, Niemann’s the only one in the top 100 players for driving distance on the PGA Tour. It’s been a really easy course for the two years they’ve played it.