Genesis Preview

After a year away, we get to see Riviera again

Hey golf fans!

Chalk up another 2nd place finish. Akshay had a good lead for us on Saturday, then everything stopped for him - putts did not fall again, irons were sloppy. By the bad weather late Saturday and into Sunday, all I saw was a 90 pound man reaching for his hand warmer like he needed it to survive. Mental note, we cannot back Akshay when the temperature is below 60 degrees.

Sepp Straka was actually who finished 2nd for us, just not enough to keep up with Morikawa. For Collin, this was so needed. He’ll be one to watch in most events from here, possible the dam breaks open and the near-misses of the past two years start landing. I’ll still be skeptical to back him outright, but that could change by early summer.

Many of you likely heard about the LIV event, even if you did not watch it. Anthony Kim completed the most improbable comeback story and got his first win since the decade-long hiatus. More than getting a win, he chased down both Rahm and Bryson to do it. Look, AK is not going to become one of the best golfers in the world again, but his hot streak is real at this point. I don’t actually care who wins LIV, but have to admit this was a best-case scenario for them. So many of us remember when AK was the hot shot on tour - so much time has past, his face now looks grotesque from the drug abuse, but really cool to see someone pull off this big of a comeback.

One last thing…I posted some single round bets in the Substack chat each day of the past event (went 7-4 overall). I don’t really like posting on Twitter, it’s a cesspool I prefer to watch and not wade into, so I tried using this app for them. If interested, installing the app is easy, then you will see a “chat” icon. If you subscribe to this email, you’ll also see any chat threads I create. I can’t guarantee I do them for every round, but will plan on posting whenever I’m placing some single round bets.

Stats to Value

Riviera opened in 1926, the same year this event was formed (purely a coincidence). We’ve seen courses playable by any of us on Tour recently, but this is definitely not one of those. LA is home to some of the most exclusive clubs in America due to the cost of the location. Riviera is located in the Santa Monica Mountain Canyon, surrounded by the Pacific Palisades community. If you’re a Hollywood bigwig, this is likely the club you belong to.

Editor’s Note: I often struggle to find membership details for places like this, but Riviera made it quite easy: Initiation fees are $250K and yearly dues about $50K; two current members need to vouch for you and show that they’ve known you for over three years. Members include Tom Brady, Jack Nicholson, Adam Sandler, and Mark Wahlberg - so that gives you an idea of how hard it would be to get that member invite.

That’s a really famous clubhouse you see in the image above, you might recall seeing it in just about every Tiger Woods video game. He loves this course and I’m going to start our preview this week with a quote from him about Riviera. Few know it better than he does.

“There’s no faking it around this golf course, especially if the greens are up to speed. It puts such a premium on putting the golf ball in play and hitting the ball high. You’ve got to hit the ball high into any of these greens and really control your spin…put your ball in the right spots because getting up and down here, as we’ve all seen, is not easy to do.”

Of course Tiger is correct, the stats and course details profile a stern challenge.

Riviera boasts the lowest GIR% of any course on the schedule. Approach shots are difficult, obviously, but the reason for this low GIR rate really starts on the tee box. We’ll see some of the hardest fairways to hit all season this week. They’re narrow and firm with quite a few doglegs in this classical course design. Sometimes we value fairway finders in situations like this, but they are so hard to hit consistently here that it’s actually better to deploy a “bomb and gouge” strategy. Everyone will end up hitting from the rough, so I’d rather have the guys at least closer to the green.

After valuing distance off the tee, we’ll put our usual emphasis on approach game. 76% of approach shots will come from 150 yards and further, something I’ll likely add to consideration. We’ll see intentionally firm and fast greens again.

Good approach play will get you birdie looks, but everyone is going to need to scramble this week. ARG will be higher than usual, more akin to a major model. I want to target good ARG players and will use overall Scrambling stats as well. There is zero water on the course, but a ton of deep bunkers - I’ll perhaps include Sand Saves in models to try to plan for this.

Finally on the green, guys will see Poa once more before we leave town next week. I’m going to reward Poa putters again like we have been. Interestingly, Riviera has a relatively low made putt % from inside 5 feet. That stat, combined with the large greens (7,500 square feet, average is 6,000) makes me lean towards adding some weight to guys with good short putting stats. Bogey avoidance is the name of the game this week.

I did have a bunch of winner’s trends saved from the past too:

• 28/31 had a prior Top 22 finish at The Masters

• 14/16 had 3 or more career wins before The Genesis win

• 16/18 had played in at least 4 prior Genesis events

• 14/18 had a prior top 12 Genesis finish

• 18/22 finished top 35 in most recent start coming in

• 14/16 were 29 or older

Putting this all together, our ideal player is in the top third of the field in driving distance. He has a good approach game, specifically hitting into firm and fast greens. We’ll need him to be in the top half of the field in around the green, scrambling, and sand saves. I want someone whose best putting history has been on Poa and who’s played this event at least a few times. It’s a bonus is they have a couple wins under their belt already somewhere in their PGA career.

Editor’s Note: it speaks to how cool of a course Riviera is for how many times I saw a quote from a former or current professional who said Riviera is their favorite course in the world.

Model Result

Link to the model is here, results below:

Form Fit

Ryo Hisatsune is having an amazing last few weeks: 2nd at Farmers, 10th at WM, 8th at Pebble. On all of these, he’s putting way above his baseline average and driving the ball further and more consistently than last year. Irons still have been strong, as they were last year, but with the more well-rounded game taking shape it’s easier to see him contending…I think not this week though. I’ll look his way on some of the shorter courses with weaker fields, but I expect he’s going to be overmatched at Riviera for the first time.

Course Fit

Going to talk about Patrick Cantlay here - I do not think it’s wise to try to pick your spots on him getting an outright win, but I felt the same on Morikawa, so maybe take it with a grain of salt. My thinking is more around avoiding ‘chasing’ someone - if we had been picking Cantlay and Morikawa repeatedly over the past year, it would be substantially a losing proposition, even if we were on Collin last week.

So I say skip Cantlay outright, but for sure you should consider in other markets. I went 2 units on a finishing position bet with him to be Top 20 - main reason is his history at Riviera…in 7 trips, he has finished in order: 4th, 15th, 17th, 15th, 33rd, 3rd, 4th. So 6/7 were top 20 finishes, a good starting point for the bet. Recently, he’s gaining shots on approach in every event in 2026. I think win equity is low, but the derivative market here is not adjusting odds on his finishing position, something I think should be much more juiced.

Skill Fit

Scottie checks basically every box this course asks you to check, true most weeks though. The weirdest thing about Riviera I could find was that zero of Tiger, Rory, or Scottie have ever won here - bizarre for such a historic course. I believe that changes this week, the uptick in course challenge is destined to help Scottie even with the loaded field.

The course success overlaps with Riviera include Augusta and Quail Hollow - two places Scottie has won in the past 18 months. For what it’s worth, Quail Hollow is Rory’s best career course as well. I’m going to dip into the ‘without Scottie’ markets this week, mostly due to feeling like this will be the year Scottie crosses Riviera off his list.

Total Fit

• Scottie - think we need to fear him more this week than previous

• English - great in models, likely strong value play

• Cantlay - has a winning problem but incredible history

• Fleetwood - weaker fit than last week, but still high floor

• Xander - cannot trust he’s all the way back yet

• Henley - not a good fit at Riviera on paper

• Hisatsune - first trip, easy skip despite good form

• Burns - not a serious contender anymore

• Hideki - good finishes keep piling up, most recent winner at Riv too

• Morikawa - will the floodgates open for more wins?

My Plays

I’ve commented a number of times now on the concept of betting into the “Without Scottie” market for outright bets. Most weeks I don’t think it’s worth the sacrifice in return, but this week I am leaning the other way.

The outrights you see listed for me above and detailed below are both placed in the “without” market. I saw Rory at 14/1 on Draftkings Monday morning in the regular market, then 12/1 in the “without” market by Monday afternoon. For only two points, I felt like that was a fair trade. Really, this comes down to me only backing couple guys this week - in cases where I am rolling out a 5 man outright card, it’s going to feel more noticeable to reduce the payout across all of them. For this week though, it took a 9x card down to an 8x card (the “x” being return on investment should any of my outrights hit).

If you do not have these markets offered, or if you only see prices much different to what I am showing, then I would go to the usual ‘outright’ bets with these should you tail my plays.

Outrights

Let’s start with Rory, the guy I was backing here all along in 2026.

Rory’s Pebble experience was up and down across the bag:

• -0.09 OTT

• +6.81 APP

• +1.22 ARG

• -0.39 P

The encouraging part is the APP stats. The driver is largely neutralized at Pebble Beach, so it’s harder for Rory to gain as consistently there - not worried about that stat looking bad last week. ARG is different from Pebble to Riviera, so would not read into that or putting, where the slow greens of Pebble are unique.

Rory’s history at Riv is good but not great: 4/7 top 10, 3/7 top 10. It’s not Cantlay-esque here but it certainly fits the winner’s trends I noted earlier. When we look at past winners at Riviera, two courses jump out most as other successful events: Augusta and Quail Hollow - both are long, require elite driving and good long irons, difficult putting on fast undulating greens. Rory just won at Augusta last year and owns Quail Hollow (3 wins on that course).

Riviera is a course that will demand all shots be hit - there are just so many guys with a hole in their game, I feel this is a good time to back one of the elites of the field. If he had been priced at 8/1, I’d skip and look for other guys who have a path to win. But with his price being 12/1 in the ‘without’ market, I felt there was no better win equity for the price.

With the pricey option now on the books, I had room for someone in the 30/range to add on - this led me to Matt Fitzpatrick.

Fitz does not have the history Rory does here, but he still fits our trends. His 5 trips have seen finishes of 30th, 5th, MC, MC, 49th. That’s more bad than good I realize, but I really only needed to see at least the one spike week at Riviera for me to buy-in that it’s possible to win this thing.

The main reasons I like him though are good recent approach and a history of playing well on hard courses. Starting with his recent approach stats:

• WM: +4.26 (8th in field)

• Pebble: +7.78 (3rd in field)

These are far higher than his career norms with irons. He had a fantastic fall playing Euro Tour events, winning their Tour Championship - I don’t have SG data from those events, but know he had to hit it well to contend as often as he did. Marry this up with his history of excellent scrambling and we have a real path to victory.

He’s an excellent ARG player, someone I trust to get up-and-down more often than not - side note, this is why I often end up playing him in finishing position bets when we get to majors. He’s also a career plus putter on all surfaces, yet losing in all 3 PGA events this year so far. I expect the putting comes around at some point soon, and if we time it to be this week then I feel we have real win equity with Fitz.

Just like Rory, I played this in the “without” market. If you cannot find better than 25/1 in that market, I’d look to play as a regular outright.

Finishing Positions

I mentioned Cantlay Top 20 above in the data section - it’s my favorite bet of the week, would use caution on playing any bets but this is the first 2 unit play for me in 2026.

After Pat, I like Hideki to finish top 20 yet again. He’s done it 4 out of 4 times in 2026 so far, we had bets on it in 3 of those. The APP stats are staying super high, driver got maybe a little better last week but still concerning. If he were driving it well, I’d be on him outright - with that risk though, I skipped outright and settled on Top 20.

History is not as rosy as Cantlay’s, but still good enough to think he’ll have a high floor with familiarity and iron play alone.

Cutline

We do have a cut this week, but those coward sportsbooks did not give any options on this market.

Matchups

I only found a couple of these I liked enough to click submit on:

• Fitzpatrick over Aberg - I noted Fitz above, but this play has just as much to do with Aberg being way off in 2026. Scary to fade a guy that talented, but it’s been easy money so far this year. That will end some time, but hopefully not yet.

• English over Fowler - Harris finished 2nd in my model this week and is an under-the-radar great fit. Rickie is riding high off a good Pebble, but now coming to a much more demanding course. I think this is just an exploitable play fading the household name.

Degen Corner

We have two other events of relevance this week, the Kenya Open and LPGA Thailand.

Starting with the Kenya Open, it’s without question the most unique course we’ll see on any schedule (maybe minus DLF in India). In years past, you could see giraffes, zebras, or many other forms of exotic animals. The course itself is not that interesting, it’s more the backdrop being so obviously Africa that I think is sweet.

I’m playing some hot hands and a more tenured South African. If I played only one of them, it would be Thriston Lawrence - he MC’d in his last start, but was 10th and 14th in the two before that. Over his career, he has 5 Euro Tour wins, 2 of those happening in Africa.

For the LPGA side, we’ll be in Thailand - the number one ladies golfer in the world is Jeeno Thitikul and she is Thai, so expect this to feel like a hopeful coronation. She’s priced about the same as Scottie at Riviera, but I think that’s an extreme adjustment, would certainly not bet her at those odds.

I went with Akie Iwai and A Lim Kim as my main two bets. Akie Iwai played great last week in Saudi Arabia, saw a 15th before that in Florida. Lim Kim finished 9th in Florida, but even more encouraging is that of her last 7 events, 5 saw top 10 finishes. Both of these girls have been circling contention for a while now, both also past winners. In a field with one overpriced star, a handful of real contenders, and the rest somewhat ‘filler’, having two realistic contenders seemed like a good way to pursue it.

Closing Thoughts

This is one of the weirder looking betting cards I’ve ever had for a tournament. First off, betting the “without” market is odd for me, then backing one of the top 3 shortest options also is not going to happen very often. In the other markets, I just didn’t find that much I felt confident in, so we end up with only 4 total bets outside the 2 odder outrights.

I don’t have a good reason why the bets were different this week, think outright odds were a bit shortly priced to open the week as my best guess. Then the matchups offered were slim as well, some books listing as few as 5 total options. I guess this is all a byproduct of the small field events, something I’ve been against from day 1 really.

There’s been a ton of chatter around schedule changes for the PGA Tour this past week - I hope that whatever changes they make, they re-introduce larger fields or at least a more impactful cutline than they have right now in these signature events. That has not been made clear yet, but it does sound like massive changes are coming as soon as next year.

From what I’ve heard on various podcasts and articles, the PGA will likely not have any signature events until March, then run a more condensed March-August schedule for the star-level players. They want to return to larger markets (would assume Chicago, likely NYC) for yearly events…goodbye John Deere in Slovis, IL. I understand where this thinking is coming from, important to keep in mind the new CEO comes from a career in the NFL’s front office.

I’m fine with changing some courses, or moving others around the calendar, all good. My fear is that I don’t want the smaller events to completely go away. It’s fine if they shift to different parts of the year, the field will lack household names as they do today, but it’s those events that we can find the next crop of guys to trust. If the farm system gets weaker, it’s a matter of time until that impacts the big leagues.

We’ll see what develops in the coming months, but the lower tier events are clearly going to be page 2 news. I think it’s an opportunity to re-imagine the concept of the ‘feeder tours’ or the farm system comparisson I mentioned above, maybe try to partner more with the Euro Tour to get more of a showcase on their events. Whatever the solution looks like, I think the PGA would be wise to put as much care into the lessor events and tours as they are the main stage, it’s good for player development and gets some up-and-comers more well-known before they make the jump to the majors.

Alright, that will do it! Hopefully a fun event ahead with little to no weather delays. As always, best of luck with all your bets.

Matt / Ziggy