Bucket List Courses...but Another Pro-Am

Recapping a fun Farmers and previewing Pebble Beach

Farmers Recap

Max Homa earned his 6th career Tour victory at Torrey Pines, his 4th in California. On Sunday, when it mattered most, he was miles better than the field. He gained a whopping 8.15 shots on the field in the final round, one of the largest closing round splits I’ve seen. Outside of this one event, Homa has clearly reached a new level over the past year, and I think will be deserving of shorter odds moving forward. (Before yesterday, he was 50/1 to win the US Open (at LA Country Club), but now is more in the 30-35/1 range)

Torrey Pines played tough like usual, separating the better players as difficult courses often do. Keegan Bradley played just as well as Homa on Saturday, but started too far behind. Morikawa, Sungjae, Rahm, Day, Sahith, Finau, and Hideki all populated the Top 10 - pretty strong! Over the course of the season, we see more easy courses than tough ones. Part of the problem is how good the modern golfer is with current equipment, but I love the weeks where the course stands up to the test like this.

Homa won this after starting the final round 5 shots behind Sam Ryder. Ryder’s been a decent player over the past year, someone who pops up on models in smaller fields. That being said, I feel like anyone watching this could feel the shoe dropping any minute. We see it almost every week, to much more accomplished players than Ryder - closing out a win worth that much to your career (and of course that much money) isn’t to be taken lightly.

How’d We Do?

Really well! Not having Homa on the outright card after seriously considering him stings, but that’s part of betting on golf. Our reads of the course and field were spot on though, and we came out positive in nearly every market.

The bad: Rahm was no where near the lead after round 1 and missed the Top 5 by one shot. Poor time to start adding him, but he was hard to resist here and now. Montgomery finished in 31st, narrowly missing a Top 30 (a market that I have struggled in so far this year, something for me to monitor). Finau and Day both played great, but were not really threatening Max at any point Saturday.

The good: Finau hit Top 10, all three Top 20 bets won at plus odds (Homa, Sungjae, Day), and the matchups were up across the board. I ended the event up around 6 units, earning back some of the previous few weeks’ losses - I hope anyone that followed some of the plays found themselves up as well, would love to hear in comments or replies.

What Did I Learn?

It’s important to take notes on what worked and did not work for you in betting - tracking yourself I believe is the best way to improve in this game. With that, some bullets I leave Torrey Pines with:

• The stats I value for this course are the ones I should be using. Tough events are usually more predictive, and the read we have is repeatable here.

• The trends all stand true too. I posted 4 winner’s trends in last week’s preview post, Homa fit all of them.

• Jon Rahm is still only human. He’s the best we’ve seen on Tour this year (Rory coming soon though), but there are still going to be struggling moments. His awful round one was partially due to poor decision making in my opinion. That being said, he still logged another Top 10.

Pebble Beach (AT&T) Preview

• Purse: $9 million

• Course(s): Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, Monterey Peninsula CC

We’re staying in California, marking the halfway point of ‘The West Coast Swing’ by visiting the most famous public course in the country, Pebble Beach. The purse is slightly larger than The Farmers, but we’re going to see a much weaker field.

Unfortunately, this is another Pro-Am week…and another week split across three courses. Yuck. By Sunday, everyone will be playing Pebble Beach, but the first 3 rounds will see guys stop at each course once. The cut is then made after the 3rd round. Additionally, these first three rounds will again be taking well over 5 hours.

I’d like to see Pebble Beach be given more respect by the Tour schedule. I know that AT&T is a huge sponsor, and this is where they want to be, but it’s such a nice course to be used for a Pro-Am. It’s that Pro-Am element that necessitates the rotation of courses too. From a handicapping perspective, I’ll base a lot of my angles on Pebble Beach, as we at least see it twice per guy.

Before covering previous winners and trends around them, I wanted to take this chance to include my favorite picture ever taken of a golf shot. Last year, Jordan Spieth’s drive on the iconic 8th hole came VERY close to the canyon that separates the two sections of the hole. He hit the shot, cleared the canyon, but immediately afterwards said it was a mistake to try it. Seeing the picture, I agree with that assessment:

The stones on that guy. Anyway, this is a course/event that has rewarded past history more than many. I have the list of past winners below:

• 2022: Tom Hoge

• 2021: Daniel Berger

• 2020: Nick Taylor

• 2019: Phil Mickelson

• 2018: Ted Potter Jr.

Not a ton of star power above, but I found some trends on the past decade+ of winners that are going to help us narrow down our selections this week:

• 14/14 logged a top 16 in one of their last 3 starts in this event

• 15/16 had a prior win in the PGA career

• 12/12 had at least 120 starts in their PGA career

• 13/13 had played this event at least twice before

Those trends above are pretty resounding. I’ll never advocate for following trends too religiously, but I do believe in re-visiting them after you’ve looked at the field from a more statistical point of view. Tom Hoge in 2022 was the sole winner without a prior win, so he works as a good example where a bit of flexibility around these is wise.

Course Preview: Pebble Beach (Mostly)

A week after playing the best municipal course in the country, we’ll see the best public course in the country (or ‘one of’, but at least a contender). Spyglass and Monterrey are both insanely pretty in their own right, but Pebble Beach is the showcase.

Pebble Beach first opened in 1919, so she’s now over 100 years old. The course today has been remodeled so many times that I’m sure only the natural characteristics resemble the initial design. It’s playable by anyone reading this, but it won’t be cheap. Prices reflect it’s ranking in lists of the best courses in the world, and getting a tee time is going to take some planning ahead. However, it’s firmly atop many recreational golfer’s bucket lists. If you go, definitely make time to play the other courses too.

Since this is a Pro-Am, we’re going to see the difficulty dialed way back. The rough is going to be pretty simple to get out of, and pins are not going to be far from the center of the green. I’ll factor this into the stats I pull for models this week. Each course plays easy compared to most Tour stops, but Monterey Peninsula will be the easiest. I want to find course details that apply to all three courses this week, and easy scoring is definitely going to be one of them.

Another thing they all have in common is their distance. Each of them fall under 7000 yards, qualifying as one of the shortest on the schedule. Pebble and Spyglass both heavily feature doglegs and other forced lay-ups, so distance is almost completely neutralized. Normally I would say this favors fairway finders, but with the rough kept short, it’s a case of off-the-tee game just being de-valued. No one is winning this due to their OTT game.

Where winning this will be dictated is in approach game. It’s always the most important to stat to consider, but even more so this week. Pebble specifically is set up to funnel a lot of holes into 100-125 yard approach shots, so I’ll definitely be including stats from this proximity range in models. Approach skills become an obvious asset when we look at the size of the greens.

A usual PGA stop has around 6,200 square feet of green, but Pebble Beach features a measly 3,500 square feet, a massive difference. In an event where the winning score will push -20, you need to give yourself enough birdie looks to contend - earning birdie putts will be key. With the green size, I also think we need to include some ‘around the green’ stats in our models. Even for the eventual winner, greens will be missed with the small targets.

Once putting, we again see Poa greens on all three courses. It’s Poa very similar to Torrey Pines last week, where we saw past success quite predictive of future outlook. They will not be as fast as Torrey, but you can expect me to include Poa putting stats/splits in models this week.

According to Datagolf, Pebble Beach has a slightly above average correlation between past history and future success (somewhat illustrated in our trends too). With that, I’ll include course history from that course and Spyglass only - Monterrey is too easy to have much impact on history.

For comparable courses, I want to include performance on similar short courses over the past couple years. Sea Island, El Chameleon, Colonial, and Waialae all jump out. I’m also going to look at tee-2-green performance across all courses under 7200 yards.

Adding this all up, the player we want to target is someone with excellent approach stats, specifically from 100-125 yards out. We don’t care how far they can hit, but do care how they’ve been on Poa greens the past couple years. I want them to be comfortable in ‘around the green’ situations, but do not need them to be elite. These players should have a few years of Pebble experience with at least one prior top 15 in this event.

I expect Maverick McNealy to be the trendiest pick this week. He knows this course better than anyone and has a great history of finishes. The small greens and short distance fit his profile perfectly, as does the geography and grass types. He’ll be like Homa last week - a very public pick with some ‘home cooking’ narrative at play. Mav is no where near Homa’s level, but if he is going to win on Tour, it will be on a course like this.

How to Watch

We have a lot of streaming opportunities now, but I still want to know the TV schedule (all times EST).

• Thursday: 3:00-6:00pm, Golf Channel

• Friday: 3:00-6:00pm, Golf Channel

• Saturday: 1:00-3:00pm, Golf Channel; 3:00-7:00, CBS

• Sunday: 1:00-3:00pm, Golf Channel; 3:00-6:30, CBS

Closing Thoughts

We’re finally getting to the weeks where golf does not have to go head-to-head with football. Other than the Pro-Am element, there is no better place to start being a bigger part of TV schedules than at Pebble Beach. I imagine a lot of you reading this can picture multiple holes here, be it from watching past events, playing it yourself, or from the countless video games this course has been in. No matter how you know it, I’ve found that familiarity adds to the enjoyment of watching golf on TV.

From a betting standpoint, this is a week where it’s good to reduce your total action a bit. We’re going to have bets on who wins of course, and some of the other markets, but volatility can be high here. Other than the reasons already noted in this post, we have the coastal winds to consider. The best read on an event can be turned on its head with winds picking up at the wrong times.

We’ll be back on Wednesday with our usual breakdown of the stats and some plays that stand out to me this week. Until then, best of luck with all your bets.

Matt / Ziggy

PS: Ziggy Golf has seen a good deal of growth so far in 2023, thanks to readers sharing this with friends they think could enjoy the golf/betting commentary. If you know anyone who might enjoy these too, please forward this along to them - I appreciate it.