Valspar Championship | Stats, Trends & Things You Don’t Need To Know

Copperhead Course (Innisbrook)
Par 71 – 7,340 Yards
Fairways Hit: 58.64% (20th hardest out of 51)
Greens Hit: 57.25% (6th hardest out of 51)
Birdie or Better: 17.79% (11th hardest out of 51)
Scoring Average: 70.96 (20th hardest out of 51)

Big Boy Par 3s

Maybe the most unique feature of the Copperhead Course layout are the (5) Long Par 3s. Every single one is over 195 yards on the scorecard and they played a combined 0.51 strokes over par, per round, last year. With those holes making up 27.7% of the routing, I figured we should look at the best golfers on Long Par 3s — defined by 190 yards or longer.

1. Harold Varner III +0.119 per hole
2. Alex Noren +0.108
3. Jason Kokrak +0.102
4. Zach Johnson +0.099
5. Dustin Johnson +0.097

Note the chart below — Varner gets better as the Par 3s get longer.

Scramble Heat Check

For those of you living under a rock, Andy Lack and I go LIVE ON YOUTUBE every Tuesday and Friday for a show called The Scramble. We’ve been attempting to bankrupt PrizePicks by giving out props and we are WHITE HOT. We are on a 23-2 run of props and we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Here’s what we gave out on Tuesday:

• Alex Noren R1 Under 72 Strokes
• Bubba Watson R1 Under 72.5 Strokes
• Keegan Bradley R1 Over 11 GIR
• Justin Thomas R1 Under 12 GIR

Those lines have probably already moved with how many people are tailing so here’s one more thing that has my interest.

Hole 11 props are available, which is a Par 5 that played to a 4.722 scoring average last year. There are three golfers available who have played hole 11 before:

• Justin Thomas: 6/10 overs
• Dustin Johnson 6/8 overs
• Viktor Hovland 3/4 overs

We can wait to see the wind direction and pin location but the early lean is overs on hole 11.
Play: Code “RICK” — Link: https://bit.ly/3oxONZw

Most Improved Approach

Two golfers in the field have made significant gains in approach play recently.

Since the start of 2022, Adam Hadwin is gaining 0.74 strokes on approach, the 9th best mark in this field. Compare that with the 0.17 strokes he lost per round in 2021 and you’re looking at nearly a full stroke improvement per round in approach play.

Alex Noren played 89 measured rounds last year and lost 0.12 strokes per round during the year. In 2022, he’s gained 0.82 strokes per round! Another full stroke improvement in the approach category.

Those are the two largest year-over-year improvements in the field.

Secret Comp Courses

Andy’s new course breakdown on RickRunGood.com has really opened the nerdy side of my brain recently. He makes the case for using a few different courses as comps for Innisbrook. I won’t spoil the exact courses because Andy deserves the clicks. But here are the best players on those courses for the last four years.

Would You Be Interested?

Would you be interested if I told you a golfer in this field checked all these boxes?

✅ 2nd in SG: T2G Last Week
✅ 2nd in SG: TOT over final three rounds
✅ Played Last 2 Holes at +3, still finished 5th
✅ Took a Garbage Penalty in R2, still finished 5th
✅ Runner-up Finish at Valspar Last Year

If I told you his name was Keegan Bradley, would you still be interested?

Back-To-Back Bracket Weeks!

Next week is the WGC Match Play Event! One of my favorite events of the year! There is also some small amateur thing starting this week.

If you like that collegiate amateur thing, I used math to create the optimal bracket. I know nothing about the game and it’s one of my most popular videos each year. Weird world. Click To Watch.

Baan Breaks Record

Anirban Lahiri did not win THE PLAYERS Championship. But if you backed him in the Jock MKT (stock market DFS), you were part of history. Lahiri closed IPO last week at $1.23/share and paid out $20.00/share. That’s a 1,500+% ROI — the largest in Jock MKT History. Here are the others:

Code “RICK” Play: https://bit.ly/3mnWkdg

Rick Infiltrates The TOUR!

I was asked to join the PGA TOUR’s Twitter Space this week. We covered the course key stats, golfers to watch and a variety of other topics. The information is valuable but I also ask for your support to listen and share it. This is a moment where we can raise DFS/Betting/Data voices to a larger, broader audience. We can show the TOUR that there is a thirst for this type of content.

Remember, Live Chat is Wednesday at 6pm ET! Pushed it back this week with the late start.

Good luck
Rick

Arnold Palmer Invitational | Stats, Trends & Things You Don’t Need To Know

Bay Hill Club & Lounge
Par 72 – 7,466 Yards – Bermudagrass Greens
Fairways Hit: 55.38% (13th hardest out of 51)
Greens Hit: 52.58% (5th hardest out of 51)
Birdie or Better: 18.13% (12th hardest out of 51)
Scoring Average: 73.02 (9th hardest out of 51)

Matty FitzPatty

I’m trying to look away but my eyes keep going back to Matt Fitzpatrick. He has (2) really good things in his favor this week:

1. His ability to drive the ball — dating back to last year’s Genesis Invitational, he’s played 16 measured events. He’s gained strokes off-the-tee in 14 of them. The two that he lost were (-0.34) and (-0.08). Over his last 100 rounds, he’s gaining 0.47 strokes per round which is more than Dustin Johnson, Sungjae Im and Scottie Scheffler (to name a few).
2. He seems to constantly show up in tough fields and/or tough courses. Stick with that same stretch of golf as above, he has (8) Top 11 finishes. The average Strength of Field on this events is 509.1 (PGA TOUR average is about 448). This doesn’t include his win on the DP World Tour nor his T2 in the DP World Tour Championship.
3. Oh you want more? You want a third thing? Three straight Top 10s at this event.

Elite Course History For Rors

Rory McIlroy is really good at golf on nearly every course on planet Earth. However, he’s really really good at Bay Hill. He’s averaging 2.41 strokes gained per round over 28 rounds.

Since 2008, there are only (9) instances of a golfer gaining at least 2.4 strokes per round over 28+ rounds at a single course. Rory is on the list three times. Here are the qualifying players, sorted by SG.

(CHARLEY HOFFMAN SIGHTING!)

Last Week’s Chalk is This Week’s … Chalk?

Sungjae Im (21.4%), Chris Kirk (14%) and Keith Mitchell (17.4%) were all popular options for last week’s Honda Classic. Maybe we should consider them again this week. Behind Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy, those three have gained more DraftKings points of anyone else with multiple starts here since 2018.

Easy Does It!

The 16th hole at Bay Hill is a par 5 that has historically played as the easiest hole on the course… by a mile.

So when PrizePicks released their single-hole props for this week and I saw no. 16 was on there — I started licking my chops! Of the 22 golfers available on PrizePicks, who have played the 16th hole before, they have combined to go under 64.49% of the time! Notables:

• Scottie Scheffler unders (4/4 — 100%)
• Corey Conners unders (6/8 — 75.0%)
• Adam Scott unders (8/10 — 80.0%)
• Justin Rose unders (14/20 — 70.0%)
• Matt Fitzpatrick unders (17/22 — 77.27%)

Barring some ridiculous Thursday weather conditions, I think it’s time to smash the unders. You can play here: bit.ly/3oxONZw (Code “RICK”)

Harder Since 2020

There’s a really interesting nugget dropped by Andy Lack on this week’s Tuesday Scramble. Bay Hill hired a new Director of Grounds, Chris Flynn, in 2019. Since then, you can see a tangible difference in scoring conditions. Here’s a few notes:

If you wanted to focus research on the last two years, I think that might be more representative of current course set-up.

MORE MORE MORE!

There’s so much more content available on my YouTube Channel including a full DFS Preview, Props, Matchups, Live Chats and much more. If you’re not subscribed, what are you even doing?!

Good Luck
Rick

Genesis Invitational | Stats, Trends & Things You Don’t Need To Know

Riviera Country Club
Par 71: 7,322 Yards
Poa Annua Greens
Fairways Hit 47.24% (2nd hardest on TOUR)
Greens Hit 54.17% (3rd hardest on TOUR)

Ball-Strikers Reign Supreme

My friend and colleague, Greg DuCharme, is always suggesting new and fun data projects for me. He sees golf through a different lens and I love diving into the data at his recommendation.
Recently he asked me for a statistical breakdown for each golfer, “how they gain their strokes”. For example, if a golfer gains 1.0 stroke per round in total and 0.5 per round come from SG: Approach, that would mean 50% of that golfer’s Strokes Gained comes from Approach.
I ran this for every golfer in the last 50 rounds and the results are clear: the path to the top is with your longer clubs.

Only four golfers in the Top 20, designated with red dots, gain more strokes in their short-game than their ball-striking.

The Greatest Hole On TOUR

For my money, the 10th at Riviera is a perfect golf hole.
It’s a “drivable par-4” but in name alone. It plays anywhere from 280 to 315 yards but only 1.3% (5 of 373) of drives last year finished on the green. Still, two of those drives would go on to three-putt for par.
It’s truly risk/reward. That term is way overused in golf but it’s true at this hole. The average score last year was 3.88 with 373 golfers.
Eagles: 1
Birdies: 106
Pars: 212
Bogeys: 43
Double Bogeys: 11

There are three adopted strategies off-the-tee. 1) You can dump it in the bunker short of the green. 2) You can lay-up short and try to hit something with spin on your approach. 3) You can blast it long and left, take your chances with the angles and lies. The best part – none of them are all that great! Plenty of guys make birdie and bogey from all three locations.

It’s an absolute beauty of a hole. If you’re headed to The Riv in person, post-up behind the green and enjoy the show.

Mr. Consistent

There’s so many different ways to get it done in golf and I often spend time bemoaning about “ceiling”. Let’s switch it up and talk about floor. I took every golfer’s last 50 rounds, worldwide, and wanted to see how often every golfer gains strokes to the field.

1. Patrick Cantlay 42/50 (Gains 84% of his Rounds)
2. Cameron Smith 41/50 (82%)
3. Jon Rahm 39/50 (78%)
4. Rory McIlroy 37/50 (74%)
5. Paul Casey and Sungjae Im 36/50 (72%)

I was a bit surprised not to see Jon Rahm’s name atop that list. However, when you take the same 50 rounds and only count when golfers gain 3+ strokes per round, Rahm separates himself.
1. Jon Rahm 23/50 (Gains 56% of his Rounds)
2. Patrick Cantlay 18/50 (26%)
3. Cameron Smith & Justin Thomas 14/50 (28%)

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s only one golfer in the field does not register a single 3+ SG round in his last 50. That man is… Kyle Stanley. Every other golfer has at least three such rounds.:

Rock Bottom Rickie

Rickie Fowler is $6,600 on DraftKings this week, marking the second lowest price on him since the start of 2018 (83 events). The only time he was cheaper was the CJ Cup in October ($6,400). He would go on to score 127.5 DraftKings points and finish 3rd that week.
Now, I’m certainly not saying Rickie will finish 3rd this week, just pointing out the historical territory we are currently in

The Extremes of Riviera

Riviera is difficult. But it’s also easy. Can both be true? Kind of. The Par 5s are some of the easiest holes on TOUR, with all three ranking in the easiest 15% of holes. Number 1 was literally the 5th easiest hole (out of 918) on TOUR last season. If you throw Number 10 into the mix, that’s four holes that rank inside the 27th percentile of easiest holes on TOUR.
However — the opposite is also true. Number 12, Number 15 and Number 14 are all part of the 60 hardest holes on TOUR. The Top 8% of hardest holes if you will. There are few courses that can really boast that many holes that lie on the extremes.
With that being said, it’s a rare opportunity to get one over on the Propmakers over at PrizePicks. They are laying “Birdie or Better” props with the understanding that we will see a stout scoring average this week, but not realizing that golfers could make five birdies en route to shooting something over par. I’m focused on the following:

• R1: Sungjae Im over 3.5 birdies – He’s made 4+ birdies in 16 of his last 20 rounds and ranks 17th in Birdie or Better % this season.
• R1: Collin Morikawa over 4.0 birdies – In eight rounds at Riviera he’s never made less than three birdies and half of them have been 4+. He finished 26th and 43rd those weeks so it’s not like he played all that well.

You’ll want to secure those before the lines move (they will).

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Comp Courses

I like using Quail Hollow, Augusta National, TPC Summerlin and PGA National as comp courses for this week. There are some statistical similarities that I think are worth diving into. Here are the best players in the field, at those courses (and this one), since 2008:

Good luck
Rick