3 Tiger Woods Props to Bet at the Memorial Tournament
The PGA Tour has been back for a few weeks now, but it's been missing something: Tiger Woods.
Woods, though, is back in action for the Memorial at Muirfield Village, an event that he has played in 17 times and won 5 times.
Given the occasion -- and given that it's Tiger Woods -- FanDuel Sportsbook has posted quite a few Tiger props for this week's event.
Which ones look best to bet?
To Make the Cut
Tiger is -310 to make the cut on FanDuel Sportsbook, odds that imply a 75.6% probability. With 135 golfers and 65 (plus ties) making the cut, under half of all the golfers in the field will play the weekend, but we know that Woods is better than a field-average golfer.
Our projections put Woods' odds to make the cut at 73.49%, and my model's output pegs him around 70.0%, so yeah, there's probably some value on the under.
That being said, Woods has never missed the cut at the Memorial and has finished top-25 in 13 of his 17 starts. We should be wary of such an efficient line and with putting stock into data from 10-plus years ago. However, betting Tiger to make the cut makes sense. He's been able to wait to play until he's ready, and we've seen dominant tee-to-green showings from him at this course.
Longest Drive
There's a prop on Tiger's longest drive in the first round with even money on the over and under at 320.5 yards.
Last year at Memorial, Tiger had only one drive longer than 320.5 yards, when he went 339 on the par 4 13th on Saturday. His other three drives on that hole were 311, 307, and 311 yards. Overall, he averaged 284.1 yards per drive in the 2019 Memorial.
The last time we saw Woods (at the Genesis in February), his longest drive was 335 yards, but that was his only drive longer than 321. He averaged 288.0.
It's very easy to recommend the under on 320.5 here, especially when we're looking only at the first 18 holes before Tiger may need to ramp it up to catch the top of the leaderboard.
To Make an Eagle
Woods is listed at +134 (around 42.7%) to make an eagle during the Memorial, and we project him for 0.42 eagles made. He made none last year or in 2018.
Via FantasyNational, the par 5 15th yields an eagle on 2.9% of results, and the par 5 5th clocks in with a 2.7% eagle rate. The other eagle chances come on the other two par 5s (naturally; that's where eagles can be had), but that means four par 5s on this course -- and eight shots at an eagle if Tiger misses the cut and 16 if he makes it.
Still, only 26 eagles were recorded at Muirfield last year, and it ranked 12th-toughest by eagle rate among all courses on the Tour in 2019.
At -164 odds, we should be looking to bet Tiger not to score an eagle.
