The Betsperts Golf crew breaks down the full Open Championship field, covering the sleepers worth backing, the names we're fading, and the best bets we're making heading into the week. We go through course fit at Royal Birkdale, links form, historical trends that matter, and where the value is sitting in the market right now. Whether you're playing a tournament winner, building a DFS lineup, or hunting for props, this breakdown covers every angle before the first tee shot at one of golf's four majors.
00:22 - British Open or Open Championship?
01:35 - Careers peaking and Scottie's missed cut
04:46 - Betting approach, live betting, and conditions
08:01 - Royal Birkdale setup: fescue, firm-and-fast, penal bunkers
12:27 - Finding a comp: St. George's, St. Andrews, and 2017
17:27 - Weather, distance, and Andy's simple model
21:19 - Walking the model: Victor Perez, Si Woo, Henley
25:41 - Tommy Fleetwood's price and the Fitzpatrick bet
30:00 - Weighing recent form and the Bobby Mac bet
33:00 - Chris Gotterup, top American at 18-1
34:34 - Xander's slump and fading the miscuts
45:58 - Where's Bryson's head at?
48:24 - Andy's card: Morikawa, Hovland, and Rose
54:29 - Henley and long-shot each-ways
57:24 - Corales Puntacana quick picks
59:38 - Next week: the 3M Open
2026 Open Championship Betting Guide: Best Bets and Sleepers
Hey everyone, and welcome back. Betsperts Golf, more Open Championship, more British Open. Andy, what's your thoughts? Are you a British Open or Open Championship guy? I posed this to Ron at the top of yesterday's show. I mean, it's been long enough where it's fine if you want to call it that. It's more confusing for SEO and search, it is like when you search something for the US Open and you get tennis stuff. It's like, yeah, no, US Open PGA, US Open golf, I need that instead. So I'm fine with whatever you want to call it. It's cool, it's the oldest major, it's the best trophy of the four majors. Not a million percent the best trophy across all golf tournaments, but it's the best trophy. Sounds like an off-season show. Yeah, trophy ranking. I did do that for the John Deere, I did look at a trophy tweet, right? I gave it an eight point one, that one's a deer, that one's pretty cool. But yes, Claret Jug, very coveted.
A cool course, we've been here before. This is a lot of the cases when we're over there. I'm sure you guys talked about 2017 yesterday on the first-look show. It was a different time, and it's something we should talk about today because it's weird. You see those tweets where it's like, one day you'll take your final Jagger bomb and you won't even know it, you won't know that's the last one you'll ever take as you drift into middle age. That's the same kind of thing. When you're a really good golfer and you're on the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, and you're winning tournaments, there is going to be a time where you are at the best you'll ever be over like a three-month stretch, this is my peak. We don't know when it's happening, you don't know when it's happening. And when you talk about peak Spieth, we didn't think that was ever going to stop, like this guy's going to win ten more majors before he's thirty. And we did the same thing with Scottie. And just a little hiccup here, a little hiccup there, and suddenly, it's not like Scottie sucks, the guy's amazing. Yeah, he missed the cut last week, I'm going to give him some grace to do that one out of every eighty tournaments or so. But you just take a little step back and, boom, maybe your peak was that stretch in the spring and summer two years ago, and we're just never going to get back to that. And other people fill in, other people win tournaments, you'll win a couple a year, you're just like Rory of three years ago, you're good, you're good, you're good, but you're not that guy. Because we did that with Rahm. Rahm was that guy for a little while, obviously, took a different path.
So it'll be interesting to see over the next, into next year. Because Scottie has like three more tournaments left in him this year, man. Well, he's playing this, the 3M, and the playoffs, so that's five. No offseason stuff unless he does the WGC thing. I don't think Scottie's showing up at the Good Good. Do we have a Presidents Cup this year? We have a Presidents Cup this year. All right, I'll play that. And that's it. So it's not going to be a huge sample size. But yeah, it's one of the headlines this week. People pinning it on like, hey, he's a little longer, is this value? It's the butterfly meme, is this value? Yeah, six to one rather than five to one, you're getting this huge boost on his odds, they're still not giving you an inch. So maybe it's a DFS question, probably some value there as they lower the price a little bit. But anybody who built around him last week has to have a sour taste in their mouth. I mean, there were some guys that missed the cut, man. Xander, Xander, yeah. So I don't know, kind of a weird headspace coming into this one because of the conditions. It's crispy, there's going to be a little rain, but it's not going to be enough to really do anything.
Seems like it's going to be fun. I think it's going to be fun, and I do think the way it plays, it's not a week to go dumpster diving. There's some value in the middle of the board, but man, I'm not going too deep, and if I do, it's like, hey, I love this guy, here's a top-twenty bet on him. That's all I can really stomach for this. And it's not the without-Scottie market, because as I said, I've never feared the man, I've been adamant about not being afraid of the guy for most of the spring and summer. The wussing-out bet on those guys is top-twenty. If it's a really crazy name, some deep, deep shot, maybe it's a make-the-cut bet. But yeah, I have two bets. One is the one that everybody made that shortened, and one is, I don't know, just a guy who played well last week that I think the number's big enough for. So I took it pretty easy. And yeah, the dumpster diving. Are you done, or do you think you're not? I don't think I'm done, I think I'm going to be live betting. I get the live-betting bug because I've been playing on Kalshi, not that you can't do it on sportsbooks too, but I'm working on some.
I watched that guy, speaking of hitting, just an easy Ernie, L's. How did the ball go that far? Barely looked like he swung, that was so sweet. That guy, I don't even know his name, from St. Louis in the home run derby. I had some Schwarber, that was my bet. Once he started hitting balls, I'm like, he's never going to get tired, he's barely swinging and they're flying out. I ended up betting him, which was a good hedge because he did win. I'm probably going to be doing some live betting, we'll see how the conditions look, how it's playing, how some of these people are taking advantage. If there is a lot of clubbing down, I think that's an interesting thing to be watching, how they decide to play some of these longer holes, because they're going to get so much run-out and you don't want to end up in the gorse. There are varying levels of missing here. It's like, oh, it's just this light feathery heather, I can hit out of this. And you get a little worse, and it's, oh, it's knee-deep. And then you get in the gorse and the junk, and you can really find some problems if you're inaccurate off the tee. Obviously, the bunkering here is quite different from what we're used to, a little tougher than at the John Deere. I guess I'm going to see how certain players adapt their playing style to this course once we get going, and probably do some live betting. Just two for me so far, and kind of gave the first one away. Yeah, I think I know who it is, but I'm not sure, so maybe not. Listeners are still on the edge of their seat waiting for that. You paid for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge.
Yeah, I think it is going to be fascinating. Again, we don't have the ShotLink data from 2017, just didn't have it then. If you do some of the baseline data, you saw a pretty low fairways-hit rate. We touched on this on the Monday show too, where it was really important, like you just can't have foul balls, to your point, right? There are going to be graduated rough, and I do think the first cut, which appears to be sizable, or larger than it normally is, but I think it is a playable place to be when each ball runs out and just kind of rolls into the first cut, I think players will be able to handle that no problem. It's just you can't have the Spieth-on-thirteen shots, and you can't have the Wyndham Clark, some of the stuff that we kind of said at Shinnecock, right, you just can't have foul balls, you need to keep it in play. Shinnecock does have some links-ish traits, so that was something we drew upon. I think we will hear as well, I think it's going to be firm and fast. I think you see a significant amount of less than driver off the tee based off of what we're hearing from the course so far, especially with it being firm and fast and baked out, because these guys are really incredible. I still haven't seen a guy who's like carrying, like we're not quite there yet with the technology, where I can just plant it at the spot where I carry it and it stops. So you've got to make sure you are carrying, your roll-out and control, because to your point, there are fewer bunkers on the course, but they are, especially fairway bunkers, extremely penal from what we're hearing, like almost a full shot, like a half-shot-to-shot penalty. If you are in the fairway bunker, some of those are just, you cannot go at the pin or the green from them. So that's, I think, what we want, a really interesting challenge, controlling your ball, using the ground, all the elements of the Open Championship.
You are an early bird. I typically will wake up to a message from you. Will you be up earlier than normal to take in Thursday, Friday golf? Probably just like four, I'll get up at like four. I can't do the... Pretty early. Yeah, I know, but some of these people that are like, I'm getting up at one a.m. and I'm going to watch everything. It's like, yeah, but then what's your day look like? You must not have kids or responsibilities, because that's a lot, man. So I'll get up a little early. It is the one tournament where you make sure, and last week too, I guess, you make sure you star your guys before the tournament starts. You don't do it that morning because you want to wake up and see how they're doing, look at it on the course, and be like, oh, you got a couple of guys popping. And they do have their own app, it's not terrible. If you're the kind of guy who likes your scores a little quicker, for some of the guys who maybe aren't on the broadcast that you're watching, I would download the Open Championship app. It's faster than, it's just like all these other majors, the PGA app is going to have the scores, but it's not as fast, it's going to be a little delayed compared to what you're going to get on the actual Open app. So I'd download it, it's pretty decent. Live leaderboard also very quick. I think, honestly, that would be pretty quick too, I would use the live leaderboard. We're going to work on some improvements on that, I'm really excited about getting together a new cut-line tool, try to do some cut-line estimations, some wind-probability estimations, live-betting value estimations on some of these guys. We're going to work on some cool tools over here, especially as we get through the meat of the season. It's funny how I will just rip on the playoffs every year, because they're not that fun. I hopefully Rolapp has something up his sleeve to finally make them exciting, because they just fall so flat compared to some of the bigger events.
I did want to ask you about comps, and you kind of brought up a good point. We have 2017, we don't have great data because it was just being pre, however you want to say it, pre-ShotLink, pre-getting some of that at some of these events. Not full pre-ShotLink, but ShotLink at some of the non-PGA events, as this is an R&A-run golf tournament. Comps, did you look at other Opens and try to find a good comp? I am leaning a little on Royal St. George's as far as conditions, scoring, and all that. I'm not going and being like, hey, I'm going to bet Collin. But it was also kind of weird because we were still in the midst of, like, the COVID run was over, but I kind of think that's what we're going to end up for a score here as well, in that fifteen range and less. It's looking like we could get a little more wind now on the weekend as the weather starts to firm up. And we're going to need quite a bit, if some of these guys are able to club down and still get quite a bit of run-out and end up with easier shots into these greens. These greens aren't going to have a ton of break from what I'm understanding, there's not huge undulations, I don't think, it's a different kind of, yeah. So I feel like the score is going to be mid-range like that, but lower than the Masters. Did you run into any other comps? I guess that's where I've settled with that.
Yeah, it's so tough because it's such a unique test. We just don't see a lot of hybrid links, and even those are unique tests, so you're really pulling on such a small, four-round-a-year sample for a lot of these guys. You could default to saying that I like maybe someone that has a little bit more DP World Tour experience, they're just going to run into some more link-style golf on that tour than they would stateside, and I think that's probably fair. I think it's more of a golfer-archetype skill-set thing for me than any comp-course thing, right? Because I think I can extrapolate skill set into someone that could play well on those courses. I think you see some correlators between it. So I didn't lean too heavily, I think I have it in my model, but I think it's like five percent, looking at a combination of links and hybrid links over the last, I think I did like maybe thirty-six rounds. Such a weird, noisy sample. Yeah, and I don't even know if I wanted comp courses, I wanted a comp event, because we do this like two weeks ago, we look at, hey, how did the John Deere go last year, because we played at the John Deere. You can't do that because they played, you know, a Portrush last year, we can't look at last year. Exactly, it's links golf, it's kind of similar but it's different. So I was maybe not even looking so much for a comp course, but like an event that played similarly. And then it's tough because the further back you go, you're running into like, that was a different Collin Morikawa as well. And I don't know, maybe he's starting to find his way back. So maybe a bit of a fruitless effort, but I tried to find something to lean on a little bit here. St. George's.
Well, I mean, look, you had that Collin victory in 2021, Spieth tried to hunt him down, was very much in the mix. That bodes well for Spieth winning here in 2017. I haven't done a bunch of, Mayo does a lot of good work with that, typically looking at overlap between past leaderboards to try to grab that data. Again, it would be something that I would think is probably statistically noisy but better than nothing, we're trying to find anything to make a case or exclude someone from your player card. So yeah, I think that's probably true. I think the one, more than anything, I just kind of want to throw out St. Andrews for many of it when I'm trying to think of Open Championships, because it's such a unique experience. The ball on the ground can move a lot, but we're talking about landing a plane on some of those fairways. There are nuances to that. It's not like that one got away where someone was winning in the mid-twenties, but there were a lot of guys up towards the top. It's interesting to think of winning score versus score relative to par for the field. Score relative to par for the field at St. Andrews is low because you can get a lot of guys fired off. Here we have, to your point, benign conditions, a little soft, no wind. I think it was that Saturday morning, round three, Branden Grace goes out and shoots a 62. It's out here for them if the conditions are a little bit soft. But I don't think we're going to get that this week, which is just part of why a lot of the 2017 data to me is somewhat irrelevant.
Yeah, and I think we've touched on the weather a couple times, but that has to be in the conversation for how you think some of these guys are going to play. There are those years where we get to the Scottish, where we get to this, where if you're just doing other DP World Tour stuff, there's these events where it's like, hey, you need a low ball flight, you need to be able to cut through this wind. It'd be a lot cooler if it was going to be really windy. In general, it would be more fun to handicap this if, and I mean, it's just like St. Andrews and any of these spots where, hey, guess what, if the wind doesn't kick up, these fairways are so big and they might be dry and they're running out, and if you hit it in the middle, it's going three, baby. It doesn't have a ton of defense if you're able to play the kind of game where you take the bunkers out of the equation by clubbing down, by playing it safe on some of these spots.
I made a pretty simple model. I wanted some distance because I still think everyone is down on distance this week, and I get it. If you had to lean one direction or the other, you're definitely in advantage, but again, it is always an advantage. So I went with total driving, and for anyone who doesn't know, that's like right down the middle, that's half distance, half accuracy. But then I also added accuracy and weighted those two the same, so I got like a two-thirds accuracy, one-third distance, which is what I wanted. And then it was just like mid-wedges, one fifty to two hundred, bogey avoidance, staying out of some of the trouble. And maybe, I think I went with greens in reg as just a bit of a placeholder on who's good with their irons. And for the most part, it popped up a lot of the names that you think you would.
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Let's look at the model that Andy is referencing. Kept it pretty simple. We talked about not having ShotLink and strokes-gained data, but Andy went back to 2017 using driving accuracy and greens in reg. Just kind of keep it simple, stupid. Vic Perez got top-twenty out of it. Perez, incoming. Yeah, Victor Perez is tough because that's a small sample size, with live data. Was he another one that was DP World Tour? Yeah. That's how he ended up getting to play, because I don't think he was in the field prior to last week. I believe he qualified based on a good finish at the Scottish Open, as did several other names. So similar to, well, Scottie and Hatton got all the headlines for, hey, these LIV players are going to play on the Scottish Open because of the deal they made with the DP World Tour. I think Perez was in that bucket, don't quote me on that. I'm going to dig in on him. When the model pops a name, it isn't just like, well, all right, Victor Perez to win the Open at any price, give me that for a hundred and fifty to one, I'll take it. But I am going to look into it, because some of this data is going to encompass the other bigger events he was able to play, it's probably not a big sample size, but we'll see. Maybe a first-round-leader bet, Victor Perez is good for a random 64 once a tournament, right? It's just a matter of, can you suss through the 75 that comes on the other side of it? But he's capable of going low, and you can see here in your data set, keeping bogeys off the scorecard too. This is a nice little Victor Perez pop.
Si Woo, third in your model. Russell Henley, Matthew Fitzpatrick. Some of the names here in the top five, I think, make sense, especially from a modeling standpoint. All the same guys that model well, because I used approach, I used greens in reg, it's the guys that have played well. And I guess Henley pops, but Si Woo, all year, doesn't matter what you do, he's going to model pretty highly if you use basic stats. Putted well last week too, he was probably a finishing-position-type bet for me, I'm not betting he would have won the Open Championship, but he's been ball-striking his face off all year.
I didn't catch everything you did with Ron yesterday. How much weight are you putting into Scottish Open finish for some of these guys? Because for some of the guys it's like, hey, they had this, they had that, maybe they didn't have all the pieces I wanted to make a bet on them, but if they gained a bunch of strokes in certain categories or just overall played well last week, sometimes it gives you a bump up, like it's a little bit links-ish. Yeah, it's a combination of links-ish, it's a little bit slower, they're saying the greens aren't going to be that slow. I'm interested to see, because typically because of the weather, exposed to the wind and nature, you typically see links golf, Open Championship, fescue run a little bit slower. It's going to be on the slower side relative to what we see in a lot of other major championships, but I don't think it's going to be really slow. But again, maybe we'll get some more information from the course, putting on fescue a little bit. So it's a combination of the layout, links-ish, but also just recent form, right, you came over here and played pretty well last week. I mean, we would like that anyway, right? That's kind of the M.O. that we have in a lot of weeks, especially major-championship weeks, is these are typically not spots where you find it, we'd like you to kind of bring it, especially when you need to pack it overseas, finding your form here is a tall task and not something I'm really looking for. But some interesting names here, Molinari on the list. Greens in reg is really nice for Molinari, you got both. Didn't he just have a good week last week? He did, that's the whole driving factor, I think, for him.
You got Rickie and European Rickie inside the top twelve, with Rickie Fowler and Tommy Fleetwood. Can we talk about Tommy's price in the outright market? It's a bit much. I get that he's lived here in the past, still does, apparently calls Southport home still with all of his kids. And yeah, it's a wild number, dude, it is a lot. It's a lot. I would love to make the case for him, he's a lot of fun to cheer and root for, but man, it's rough. It's a rough price, especially when he tells you how much it means to him. Sometimes like that, some guys, I think you're going to get up for it, and then some guys I'm like, oh, he makes me a little bit nervous about you that you care about this one so much. Again, I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, because I'm betting on another guy that I think has been articulating how much this one means to him, but he's kind of shown up in those spots and done it, where Tommy, it's just really not, it just doesn't win golf tournaments. For him to be sub-twenty is kind of insane.
Anyone here that's in your top ten? Are those the guys that have made the card? Just one. Is it? It is not. Okay. Is it Viktor Hovland? No, although I like him a lot, and I've liked him a lot recently. But it is Matt Fitzpatrick, and that was an early click, I got a better number than is available. There's places, well, there's places that are down to like sixteen to one, which is probably more fair. But honestly, I'm just kind of coming into this week, even last week I was just thinking about that, I didn't even think about the whole, hey, you can bet on majors way earlier, you can bet on him now because it's a major and the odds are up in most places. I didn't think to bet him last week, because last week I was just saying, as I got to thinking about Birkdale here, it's like, I think Matt just wins, and it's so good between the form and what he's put together so far this season and the fit here and the fit on just links courses and the conditions we're going to have and some of the accuracy he brings. It's like, all right, I'll just bet him whatever it comes up to be, and ended up getting around twenty. I think best price right now is about eighteen-fifty if you shop around. But like I said, there's places that are down to sixteen to one, which, I applaud that, that's correct. So it should be twelve on Caesars, if you. Yeah, don't do that, don't do that. So, yeah. I think he's a good chalk. It is, especially the rest of the guys.
Yeah, I took Rory last week, and Jesus, what could have been if he didn't play golf Saturday. Oh my God, me too, what were you doing Saturday? He was so good for three days, I was so excited to turn the golf on on Saturday, and he just, like, his miserable hour and a half of eight holes of, like... And Fitz dog-walked him. Like, Fitz ran out and just... Yeah, it was funny that they actually kind of came back to each other on Sunday, because Rory played great and Fitz did not, but yeah, it was painful having the Rory piece, because it looked pretty good. But I agree with you, I think that if I'm making a short-of-twenty, even really short-of-thirty stab at it, it's probably Fitz. The price is still a little short, but again, if you go back to some of the ways that I think you have to think about it, the way we often talk about it, we know that the whole of this market is insane, it's relative to his peers, essentially. So you're basically telling me that Scottie and Rory have twice, and in some instances, Scottie numbers, maybe three-X win equity on Fitz, and that's, I think we both agree, a bridge too far. I did not bet Fitz, but I think it's a good play, especially at twenty. More than fair. Yeah, first click, pretty easy first click for me.
And then, as I mentioned, how much do you put into last week, how much do you take into account what happened last week, or just in general, late form? And the best number I could find on my other guy is thirty-six to one, I'll let you guess on that one. Best number you can find, or that you did find? Can find, bet him today. Ty Hatton? Oh, I thought about it, close, he's right next to him. Bobby Mac. It is Bobby Mac, okay. And I mean, yeah, poke holes in that one, I dare you, because it's another one where he's a European golfer. What was his total strokes gained last week? I think you get a solid week, he's right there in the mix. Let's see where we get. It's funny how he didn't model all that well. Yeah, but some of the stuff you're using is not going to do well for him, his irons have been better, but if you're pulling larger samples, his irons were rough there for a little bit. Yeah, and maybe I do need to look at a bit of a shorter sample size on some of these guys for this week. Yeah, but look at the trending line for approach, it's been really solid for the last twenty-four rounds. So he makes a ton of sense. Gained across the board basically, has done that almost in two straight weeks. Approach numbers electric last week.
Absolutely no problem with Bobby Mac. These guys are going to be, for your pools or for DFS, like inflection points of what you do and how much ownership you want to run into, because they both are going to be very popular, justifiably so, and to figure out what you want to do. But looking at this little stretch here, Canada, U.S. Open, Travelers, Genesis, finishing positions aren't electric, but he's been really good, he's just playing really consistent, really good golf into last week. And then some people don't like to say it's a true links course, but it's close enough for me to feel pretty good about how he's looking right now, for sure, going back to the surfaces, that hard fescue-compound fairway. It's the best we got, right? So the putter is obviously in a spot like that too. I think Justin Ray had some stats on where guys have separated from a strokes-gained standpoint, putting has been pretty sticky at the Open Championship.
So, thoughts on Gotterup, top American at eighteen to one? Yeah, totally fair. Gotterup got beat down in the futures market after the John Deere win, so if that price is a little too rich for you, I think coming into the competition ahead of him is essentially, I mean, Scheffler is a huge chunk of that, but it's Scheffler, Xander, Wyndham, Collin, Cameron Young. And anybody else is going to be longer than him no matter where you're looking. Yeah, I don't take that at all, I think it's probably the best way, it's a fun way to approach that, for sure. It's the best way to approach it, I think, because you're looking at like, what are we looking at now, there are some thirties, thirty-threes, but you know, twenty-eight in some spots, it's just really rich. And again, shame on me, should we be pooh-poohing Chris Gotterup's ability to win and close? No, he's getting it done, this is fascinating to me. That's a fun bet, because I looked at Gotterup and I just, like you said, I just price-wise couldn't do it. I'm like, ah, I don't know about all this. A lot of collective non-US win equity that is probably not being priced in to the eighteen, so I think eighteen is probably a pretty fair number. That's, I'm going to have to look, I do like those, I don't get enough time on some of these to really get into the nationality markets, but man, that's a fun bet, that's a good bet. I think so, especially if you're a little out on Scottie at price, and obviously a little out on Xander at price. I don't know that Wyndham's out there with clothes hangers, we'll see. I like that drill. There are other, Sam Burns definitely in the mix, although who knows if he plays the whole tournament. Well, they had the baby, so, yeah, the baby came, it's not like he's going to miss, he's here, he's playing golf or getting ready to play golf.
So, look at Xander. I mean, just never see this for Xander. And again, smallish sample, twenty-four rounds, he's slightly below field average, but this is a guy that often separates this way, right? So it's not even that he's below field average, it's just the delta between his baseline, his two-hundred-round baseline, is point six four strokes, and his last eight rounds he's a full stroke below that and just kind of scuffling. I don't know what to make of Xander Schauffele, missed the cut last week. I don't know why this gave me Bobby Mac at the bottom. You just never see, miss the cut, Travelers, again bleeding on approach. Early in the year he was just frustratingly always there, not closing, and I had bet a bunch of these, but this is a little bit bleeding into the short-game stuff as well, where he's not making anything on the greens. So that one's, I've just looked at the odds board, I guess I didn't realize how poorly he'd been playing, like, God, it's such a big number. Rahm is such a big number compared to where they typically are, and I'm like, these are decisions we have to make, and it's easy to kick yourself like, oh, I should be looking at a bigger sample for Xander, I should be looking at a bigger sample for Rahm, but it's not how I like to bet golf, I'd like you to be kind of playing well.
Do you have any thoughts on like Xander, Aberg, especially Scottie, these guys that are very focused on this week and maybe less focused on last week, as far as taking that miscut? I mean, it's still, I don't think they weren't trying, it's a national, you hear these guys continue to beat us over the head with how much they care about national opens as we go into this new world. I feel like I heard some people talk about that as a reason to fade Rory last week, I didn't buy that whatsoever. I think it played itself out pretty early, like he didn't lose the bet on Saturday because he didn't care, he just played poorly, I think he went there to win. So I think the way to leverage this is in DFS, be honest, like if you think there's some bounce-back on Scottie, Ludvig, Xander, for instance, take it into the DFS streets. Yeah, for me, I don't think it's something I wanted to do in the betting space, or, yeah, maybe you could do matchups, you're going to get a better price on those three guys against other guys, maybe you want to fade towards the top guys that aren't maybe good course fits. So I think matchups and DFS versus outrights, just my personal opinion. Yeah, I guess maybe the prep just wasn't as complete, some of these guys that were also doing prep for both tournaments at once, I think, once they got over here. Because there were people that definitely had popped over and played rounds at Birkdale. And yeah, you harken back to some of the stuff you'd see on, like, Full Swing, where they get with some of these caddies, and it's fun to see that part of the caddies doing prep. If you've, we know some caddies that have looped on tour, and they talk about the prep they do to get ready for a tournament, and if any of that is just less than, I guess sometimes you just don't have as good a result. So I'm not super worried about the miscuts for these guys, I guess.
Yeah, I agree. All right, so you got Fitz and Bobby Mac, and you're shopping the board, staying loose, and Gotterup top American. I got to go see if I can get anywhere near. I mean, he's betting at Coral and Star Sports and all the million different shops over there, he just walks down the street of bookies. Yeah, I think it's a good price. I don't know, I think maybe even to fifteen, I think I'd probably consider that, I think that's probably fine.
As is typically the case, again, not right, wrong, or indifferent, we grade these things in, I don't know. Be honest, you and I probably win more than any of our peers in our modeling contest we do. We do very different, have a lot more stats, multiple ways to skin the cat, we kind of still land on some similar names. Again, Tommy modeled very well for me, there's just no way, shape, or form I'm ever betting Tommy sub-twenty, it just can't, can't do it. But Fitz was the one I did consider, like I said, some other names that we have that kind of overlap with Collin and Russ. Xander's still in there too, Bobby Mac right there, there's Gotterup. Nothing that was insanely egregious, or guys that are, you know, Cam Young actually models, relative to salary per year, poorly for me, which is painful, because to your point at the very top, you see, feels like we're ascending and then, all of a sudden, can't find water if you fell out of a boat on the greens, which is tough. But again, decent Open Championship course history, or event history.
Yeah, some good questions here. Brandon wants to know, if I wanted to model to see what players struggle to hit greens in reg and fairways in reg in these conditions, how would I go about that? It's a great question. So when you say in these conditions, that can get a little tricky, we can model wind if you wanted to go to the filter-by-condition section. And again, if you're seeing this for the first time, you're just watching the YouTube video, you're not a subscriber, first of all, thumbs up on the video, like, all those things help us, we appreciate it. Just told you a way to get it for ten bucks with ReBet for a full year, try that, do it. When data's here, it's a little noisy, would you agree, Andy? Yeah, it's tough because it can be a smaller sample size. It's not nothing, again, I'm looking at it this week, but I'm barely weighing it, it's almost like you can put it in your model and not give it a ton of weight, or weight at all, but just want to see it and use it as a tiebreaker. So if you're looking for greens in reg, fairways in reg, I think my best way to do it would be, you can go in here and look at greens-in-reg accuracy. You can just go difficult, you're going to get a pretty small sample, you can go average-difficult, basically weeding out any scenarios where you would pull out easy greens-in-reg situations. And you can make the decision based off, I maybe would run the difficult first, see what you get, see what your sample looks like, and then adjust the timeframe if you want. I wouldn't want to go back too far either. Again, there's some subjectivity in terms of how you liked them all and how you feel about it, do you want to be grabbing two years of data? I wouldn't necessarily, it's there for you, but that's one way you can go about it. And same thing, you can look at fairway accuracy being here on difficult, if you want to go average, you can do the same thing.
I think this week is a great week to look at some of these situations in here, with less than driver, mixed driver usage off the tee. I think we definitely don't think it's a driver-heavy event, and I think reading that data out of the data set would be important. It's also a spot where we have a high miss-fairway penalty and a high rough penalty. So weeding out maybe scenarios where there's a low miss-fairway penalty or rough penalty, that does often coincide with driver-heavy. But again, if you wanted to do it, you could do that there as well. If you want to look at strokes gained, you can lean on some of the spots where it's difficult to gain on approach. Because if you go into the tool section and go into the course database, this is the fundamental piece, Brandon, or anyone that's listening and modeling and doing this for the first time, this is going to give you some of the answers of how to go about it. This is difficult off the tee, and it's been very difficult to gain on approach here. So this is giving you some indicators of what you would want to do from a model-building condition situation in the Rabbit Hole. So wind is in here, if you want to go windy and moderate to get a bigger, less-noisy sample size, that's a way that you could do it here as well. You could do dry conditions. We used to have firm and soft, we pulled it out because it was a little bit noisy, we didn't love how the tour was tracking that, but I think it's a week that you can maybe look at dry. Hopefully that answers your question. But you can use the strokes-gained metrics or the basic greens-in-reg, fairway-accuracy stuff here, and that should probably be able to help you. Thanks for joining, thanks for subscribing, hope that helps.
Yeah, and that's a good spot, if you're not in the Discord yet, get in there, talk to other people who are doing this, like, what filters did you use this week for trying to match up the conditions? There's some smart people in there that have found unique ways to use some of the data tools here. Yeah, I'm using some of that a little bit. This is actually probably the biggest piece of my model this week, strokes gained tee to green, and I basically weeded out driver-heavy and I wanted to look at high rough and high fairway penalty. So getting a little clicky with the filtering, but I do think that's a little signal in terms of how the course is going to play. And when I search by who performs well in this, I do think it's a little bit of an indicator, with Scottie, Russ, Spaun, and Collin, Rory, right, the Conners, Si Woo, Fleetwood, Rai, Kitayama, these guys control the ball, right? I feel like that's a strong ball strikers list, a strong keep-the-ball-in-play list, so I think there's some signal into that.
So there's definitely different ways to go about it, and again, this is what I would recommend too, going into that expert-model section here. You could see Andy's models here, Matt Vicente's got a model, Ron's, mine, John Hasselbauer, PJ Tout, Mayo's got his model in here. You can see some stuff that other people are doing and get a sense of, open them up, click into here, you can get a sense of the filtering, any of the different things that people did, kind of wisdom-of-the-crowd stuff. We also put up our collective, Andy puts that together for us, our collective consensus rankings based off of weighting all of the models here, and I think that could be helpful too, if you just kind of want to not do the work and get a sense of what we like.
Hopefully that helps. I know Brandon was in Discord and I did direct him to the live shows, because we do a little bit more screen sharing, so I think he joined us today, we appreciate that. Is very keen on Bryson. I don't know where Bryson's head is at. Somebody else asked, Nick asked about Bryson. Music Man Twenty-three says Bryson's going to bounce back and finish top three. I don't know if this is a great course fit for him, which again, Bryson's been such a puzzle to try to figure out. Now he's running a very competitive forty-yard dash, I don't know if you saw that this week. Yeah, I really don't know. Super focused on actually winning these events, he's missed every cut at the majors, going for the golden sombrero this week. When he was at the top of his game, he was such a good putter, obviously he always had the distance, always had the club speed, he can fight through this rough if he needs to. I don't know, I'm going to be Bryson agnostic. I think if you want to take a stand on him in DFS, one way or the other, that's maybe a really good leverage piece if you feel strongly, because it feels like he could go real hard either way. But for now, again, you just don't get to see him play enough golf outside of DFS. You know, chipping into a plastic cup in his mansion, or I can try to hit a ball over his house, trying to break fifty-nine at a goat track, it's just strange. Yeah, it's just strange to try to handicap the guy right now, so your guess is as good as mine.
Yeah, I don't think he's bouncing back and finishing in the top three. But again, I think the best way to leverage that thought, if that is yours, as is this gentleman in the chat, I think DFS is the best way to play that out. Again, it's not going to cost you a lot to double down on that in the outright market, but I think leveraging that against the field, where I'd imagine he's pretty lightly rostered, I have not looked at anything DFS-related yet as we record here on Tuesday, but I would imagine he is not going to be anticipated to be highly owned. So not for me. Yeah, just go double the field's percentage in your player pool, see where he gets you, if he plays well, you're going to win some events, you're going to win some contests.
I'm going to rattle off mine, I have six bets. I'm actually still a little bit under my normal weekly allotment, which, I usually do a little bit more for a major, so I have a little room. I don't know, I might just sit out, and might do what you're doing and just see if there's a live wave advantage. I like to get into the futures market, I don't do it a ton or as much as some others, but this is the one that I don't really, because of the weather situations, because there isn't really a wave advantage here, because everyone goes off of one. You usually just have someone teeing off every ten minutes for ten hours. But you definitely can get caught in a wave disadvantage here, in terms of not a standard wave. So, with you, I sat out a lot of the pre-stuff, and the one bet I wanted to make a couple weeks ago, and I'm like, I'm just going to wait, still was available for me this week, so I didn't feel bad about it. But my first click was Collin.
Fifth in the model, as you saw. He's playing really good golf. I'm looking at distance from the edge of the fairway, ball-striking stuff that I just have up on the screen here. Just a lot of good calling numbers. His putter's been really hot, he's gained strokes putting in four straight, he's been inside the top ten in putting when it's difficult to gain putting, and he's putted well here in Europe. Actually fourth in strokes-gained ball striking in windy conditions over the past twelve months, which is better than I thought, and again, not something I'm weighing a ton, but just looking at it and going, okay, that helps, he's not like a hundred and tenth so then maybe a little bit more nervous. So I don't, he's just playing really good, was competitive last time out at the Travelers. I think the number is really fair for Collin at thirty-five, so that was my first click. And I liked hearing you reference, yeah, I was close on him, you know, reference Royal St. George's, so that was nice. So, again, you missed a little time, he's finished in the top ten in half his starts, I think his best career rate is like thirty-seven percent or something. So he's been in the mix a little bit, was in the mix at Shinnecock, was in the mix at the Travelers, he's been playing some pretty good golf.
Maybe I pushed you over the edge, you said you were flirting with Viktor Hovland. Viktor Hovland at forty-one was my next one. I don't think that he's all the way back to late summer 2023, but if you looked, I use our floor-ceiling model and review here on the Rabbit Hole, he's gained strokes ball striking in eighty-seven point five percent of his rounds over the past two months. It is comfortably the best number in the field. He did it again last week, he finished thirteenth, he did not putt very well, but just seems to be ball-striking it really well. And he's gained strokes putting in four of his five career Open Championship starts, so typically likes the greens here. And the one thing, again, is kind of a bugaboo historically, short game. It's actually his short-grass chipping, if you look at around-the-green proximity on short grass, it's actually pretty good. So really accurate off the tee when he takes less than driver, which again, a lot of these guys are, but I think he's like third. So Hovland, I think north of forty seems super fair to me. And then, real quick, didn't mention that when we did my model, but that was the one I couldn't remember. And I'm sure you saw it on the screen, but I did put in some around-the-green from the short grass, because if you miss these greens, you're not usually rolling into a deep-grass situation where it's going to either bury your ball or hold it up a little, you're chipping off the short stuff, which I am not good at, which is very hard. The tour pros will tell you that much, a lot of them, at least the not-great-short-game guys, would think they would much rather have those thick chops through it. So Hovland, I like north of forty. I don't know if that's available at all anymore, to be fair. Thirty-five Bovada, domestics look like thirty-three on DraftKings, so I still think that's within range, Pinnacle's kind of right in that range too. So don't hate that on a Viktor Hovland.
Great, man. Justin Rose at forty-three. I never bet Rosie, he rarely models well, actually modeled decently for me. Again, I played forty-three, where's Rose at right now? High thirties, thirty-nine on DraftKings. Dude's just straight up a big-game hunter. I guess, we've done three majors, if you think of the other events on the calendar that aren't majors but you would give a ton of credence to in terms of the signature circle, probably the Players, the Memorial, maybe Riviera, kind of the next three. Let's do just, he teaches well at all these events. He's talked about how we're going to see it so much, a fairy-tale love story with Birkdale. This is where he made his debut on the global stage at seventeen, found himself chipped in from the rough on the seventy-second hole, finished T-4 at seventeen, and just kind of ascended and hasn't left our professional competitive golf ever since. I think this is very much opposite of Tommy, where he's articulated how much this would mean to him, but I think Rose is up for it, whereas Tommy, I think, is getting a little tight in the pants on Sunday if Tommy's in the mix. But I think Rose, he's like, yeah, let's go, let's get this one, I need a Claret Jug. And he's been real close, like three, four times, so I think this is more than fair for Rosie at forty-three, at almost forty-six years old.
Russell, only at fifty-five, that's not going to be sure, right? Yeah, I mean, again, we want to have FOMO on a Sunday. If Russell Henley's in one of the final three groups and I sat out, not happening. It's not even expensive for me to take the plunge. I think T-5 last year here at the Open, T-10 the year before, or maybe I have those reversed, been really competitive the last couple times at the Open Championship. Again, similar, cut-and-paste handicap to Collin, keep it in play off the tee, short game, make your putts. He just never plays himself out of things, we like him when scoring conditions are difficult. I think he just has no business being north of fifty-five.
Two longer shots I played each ways. Harris English at one-ten, solo second here last year, putts really well in Europe historically, fifth in around-the-green proximity on short grass, fifth in putting when it's difficult to gain. One-ten with eight places. Missed the cut last week, but he was, I think, among the field leaders in tee to green, distance from the end of the fairway, greens in reg, he just didn't putt well, which is never the case for Harris English. And how he played last year wins that tournament an awful lot of times, first-round leader, was in the mix all the way to the end. So triple digits and I'm getting eight places, I like it. And then right in that one twenty-five, same thing, I wanted to bet him like a couple months ago, DraftKings had like a one-fifty, there's some one-twenties, I like the one twenty-five with each way. Again, this guy won a Siggy earlier this year, a Norwegian, has a lot of experience here in links golf, good on short grass, better because around-the-green play is not great, but he has pretty massive short-grass splits that are beneficial to him. So I like it, can keep the ball in play off the tee, ball striking is great, can he chip and putt? So he really is kind of like a Hovland light in a lot of ways, and I'm hoping this is a solid week for him. And again, we're covering a bunch of places, like those prices and the each-way, so the four winners at the top, just winning, just outright, but I like the each-way markets on some of the longer shots, because as I shit on going for the long shots, I think you can, if you can get a good each-way price. Because I agree with you at the top, if you look at who's won here, it's like those guys are all alphas at the time. You've not had a random winner ever at Birkdale, it's just that that dude was one of the best golfers in the world at the time they came here and he won. Now, that changes, Kuchar would have beat Spieth for sure. So it's a little bit selection bias, but I'm kind of with you, I think a top-tier guy is winning. Yeah.
Didn't have time to get to Corales Puntacana, but if you go on the site, we have a course preview. I will be making a model for it this afternoon. I may just use an old model I use whenever they play at a, I built one I kind of like two years ago for the Sanderson, and I kind of like it here. I'll give you my top five quick, guys that model well in my simple chicken model, I call it, because it started at the Sanderson. Kristoffer Ventura, okay. Blades Brown, who is one of the favorites, like that. Stephan Jaeger, played well last week. A.J. Ewart. And Taylor Moore. Okay. I'll probably have two, I'll find two or three guys I like to bet, I got to have some sweat in the afternoon once the TV turns off for the day at the British Open. Yeah.
If you are interested in Puntacana stuff, like I said, there's an article on the site, we'll have some more content for it later on too. Yep, you can see those here, we even got some weather on the Corales there too. You can see the weather report here on the Open Championship. Again, if you want to read more about my outright selections, Mayo's got some thoughts in here, he is plus-one on Fitz with Andy here. And this is the important one too, the free Betsperts Golf subscription article, click the links, take advantage of that ReBet deal, guys, it is awesome. It's a fun platform to play on, we've done some deals with ReBet in the past, pretty easy interface, pretty good user experience over there, so check them out, take advantage, get that hundred-percent deposit match. And then you'll get an email, we're trying to speed up that process, maybe forty-eight to seventy-two hours, and they'll get you a link to get you into Betsperts Golf for no additional charge, again, for a full calendar year. So if you take advantage of it this week, you'll cover yourself through all of the majors next year as well. So check that out, let us know if you have any specific questions and we can definitely help you out. So I'm a friend, good stuff as always, get some winners.
We'll see you next week for the big one, the 3M Open. Boots on the ground again, I'll probably head up Tuesday, I love some practice rounds, that's such a chill environment, get some free pasta salad, some free chicken salad, free food, as many Dasanis as you want to drink. Oh, God. The one thing I will say about the John Deere, they had a lot of Powerade, like five different colors, that was good on them because it was hot, needed to be slamming some of those. So yeah, we'll see you next week, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Open in Blaine, Minnesota.