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Betting the Golf PGA Tour
In real life, golf is a very difficult sport to play. Try as you may, your chances of ever becoming a scratch - or
zero handicap - golfer are practically, well zero. From a gambling perspective, however, golf is surprisingly easy.
How can this be? Easy. Golf is a very predictable game.
As is the case with other sports, there is a wealth of statistics associated with golf. These statistics cover such
things as money won, greens in regulation, putting and driving accuracy. These are not necessarily the statistics
we want to know. For a very down and dirty primer on golf betting we need only look at tournament winners by starting
odds. This method has been around for a long time, but many people are yet to discover the easy money to be made.
Now it's your turn to learn and earn.
Contrary to popular belief, Tiger Woods does not win every golf tournament. It just seems that way. As good as he
is, you will not make money betting on golfers like Tiger Woods. Fortunately, there are many golf tournaments that
are won by golfers with starting odds that are very high. In some cases, these odds are astronomically high. Below
is a table that illustrates this point.
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Odds/1
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2004
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2003
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2002
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2001
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2000
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20 &
less
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16
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16
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12
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10
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15
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21-49
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9
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12
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11
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15
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12
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50-99
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9
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14
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10
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12
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17
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100 & up
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12
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4
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13
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8
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3
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These results are fairly typical over time. Players with odds of 50/1 and up clearly win their fair share of tournaments. Of the 12 winners whose odds were 100/1 and higher, 8 of them won at odds of 150/1 and up, while 4 won at odds of 200/1. Clearly, there is value to be found in betting the PGA Tour. Even better, as we noted before, the PGA Tour is actually very predictable.
Keep in mind when betting on golf, that we are concerned with winning money over the course of the PGA season. Picking the winner of one tournament is a crapshoot - many favorites do win. We are concerned with long-term profits. Recognize that many favorites and near-favorites will win tournaments (35% in 2004). The way we offset this and find our long-shots is to look at positive factors to predict who will win each week.
There are many statistics available for the analysis of golf. It would be easy to get bogged down with numbers while trying to master golf betting. Instead, we will focus on just two important statistics: Current form and course form. Current form is how well a golfer has played in the past few weeks leading up to this week's tour stop. Course form relates to how well a golfer has played on the course and in the tournament in prior years. An analogy would be the horses-for-courses angle in horse racing. Ideally, we want to find players who have both current and course form.
We have laid out some simple rules to follow to identify players who meet our form requirements. Bet on any players (yes, that's plural) who meet any of the following rules:
Rule #1 Identify players who rank in the top 15 of the week's field for both current and course form. You want to back only players who have their golf swing in good form, are making cuts, and who have played well at this week's course in the past. Keep in mind that a newer player, a newer tournament or a tour rookie can make evaluation difficult for this rule. What constitutes course form is subjective. Obviously, winning a tournament is good, but finishing in the top 10-15 is also very good.
Rule #2 The top 3 players based on current form for this week's event, and who have made at least 2 cuts in the last 8 weeks.
Rule #3 The top 3 players based on course form and who have made at least 2 cuts in the past 5 years at this course. These don't have to be world-beaters, but they at least have a chance based on the 'golfers for golf courses' angle.
It is really pretty simple. Find the golfers who are playing decent golf heading into this week's tournament, and who have had some measure of success at this week's course. Where do you find this information? We like Tour-Tips (www.tour-tips.com) for all of golf statistic needs. If you run the above 3 rules at Tour-Tips you will see just how few golfers make the short list of contenders each week. The goal is to whittle the week's contestants down to a manageable number. This method really works for just that purpose.
So what kind of number are we looking at if we bet on this simple system? Keeping in mind that these results are back fit to the system, we are still impressed with the results.
- A 1 unit wager on all weekly qualifying players resulted in a profit of 139.50 units over the course of the season.
- A 0.5 unit each-way bet on each weekly qualifier resulted in a profit of 75 units over the course of the season.
- Out of 46 PGA tour events, the system found the winner in 21 of them - a 45% hit rate.
- The lowest priced winner was Vijay Singh at 4/1 in the Lumber Classic.
- The highest priced winner was Zach Johnson (who?) in the BellSouth Classic at odds of 66/1.
What all of the above shows is the golf is the epitome of a game where you can successfully wager if your have a sound methodology and you search for value. It is true that you will lose more bets than you win, but if you insist on getting good odds (price) to offset your risk, you will come out ahead in the long-term.
The best part of this method is that you don't need to know the difference between a bogey and a birdie, or own a pair of plaid slacks to win at golf betting. All you need to do is follow the charts at Tour-Tips, or better yet, compile your own data.
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