Gdula's Golf Simulations: RBC Heritage
Volatility is the name of the game in golf, and picking winners isn't easy. With fields of 150-plus golfers sometimes being separated by how a putt or two falls each week, predicting golf can be absurdly tough.
We'll never be able to capture everything that goes into a golfer's expectations for a week, but we can try to account for that by simulating out the weekend and seeing what happens.
The Process
Over the years, I have made plenty of tweaks to my original golf model, which uses a combination of the OWGR's field strength numbers and datagolf's field strength numbers to adjust each golfer's score relative to the field (on the PGA Tour, the European Tour, and the Korn Ferry Tour).
The ultimate goal is to place a score from the Waste Management Open, the BMW International Open, and the Knoxville Open on level playing fields. This adjusted strokes metric lets me see how golfers are performing across all tours. From there, a golfer's adjusted stroke data is combined with their round-to-round variance to see how the field is likely to perform when playing out the event thousands of times.
In addition to that long-term adjusted form, I factor in course-level adjustments for course fit.
I run a second model that uses more granular strokes gained data, which allows me to very easily adjust for course fit. The results are averaged out.
I let the data do the talking and don't make many tweaks -- if any. Golfers with a small sample get regressed to a low-end PGA Tour player to round out their samples. Data points are weighted more heavily toward recent performance.
Here are the most likely winners for the RBC Heritage, according to the models.
| Golfer | Simulated Win% |
Simulated Top-10% |
Simulated Made Cut% |
FanDuel Sportsbook Win Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dustin Johnson | 6.7% | 34.9% | 81.7% | +950 |
| Webb Simpson | 5.2% | 30.5% | 78.5% | +1300 |
| Daniel Berger | 4.5% | 30.3% | 78.4% | +1900 |
| Matthew Fitzpatrick | 3.9% | 26.7% | 76.4% | +3200 |
| Tyrrell Hatton | 3.5% | 24.4% | 74.6% | +2300 |
| Patrick Cantlay | 3.5% | 23.3% | 74.0% | +1700 |
| Collin Morikawa | 3.0% | 22.6% | 73.9% | +1700 |
| Corey Conners | 2.6% | 21.1% | 71.3% | +3400 |
| Russell Henley | 2.6% | 25.8% | 76.3% | +6000 |
| Harris English | 2.4% | 19.9% | 71.3% | +5000 |
| Abraham Ancer | 2.2% | 16.9% | 68.4% | +3200 |
| Paul Casey | 2.2% | 17.8% | 69.0% | +2800 |
| Will Zalatoris | 1.9% | 17.2% | 68.8% | +2800 |
| Sungjae Im | 1.7% | 15.7% | 67.1% | +3400 |
| Brendon Todd | 1.7% | 15.7% | 66.9% | +9000 |
| Cameron Smith | 1.7% | 15.2% | 66.4% | +2800 |
| Christiaan Bezuidenhout | 1.7% | 15.9% | 67.8% | +6500 |
| Sergio Garcia | 1.6% | 14.3% | 65.3% | +4300 |
| Kevin Kisner | 1.6% | 15.4% | 67.0% | +7500 |
| Brian Harman | 1.5% | 15.5% | 66.5% | +3400 |
| Kevin Na | 1.4% | 13.9% | 64.3% | +3800 |
| Billy Horschel | 1.2% | 13.3% | 65.2% | +6500 |
| Si Woo Kim | 1.2% | 12.4% | 63.0% | +5000 |
| Charley Hoffman | 1.2% | 13.1% | 64.1% | +4300 |
| Sam Burns | 1.1% | 11.9% | 61.3% | +9000 |
| Kevin Streelman | 1.1% | 11.7% | 61.9% | +8000 |
| Chris Kirk | 1.1% | 12.2% | 62.6% | +7500 |
| Zach Johnson | 1.0% | 11.5% | 61.4% | +14000 |
| Tommy Fleetwood | 0.9% | 8.0% | 56.4% | +4300 |
| Shane Lowry | 0.9% | 9.8% | 59.8% | +5000 |
| Matt Kuchar | 0.8% | 9.2% | 58.1% | +7500 |
| Matt Wallace | 0.8% | 9.0% | 58.3% | +7000 |
| Ian Poulter | 0.8% | 9.1% | 57.6% | +8000 |
| Lucas Glover | 0.8% | 8.7% | 57.8% | +9000 |
| Harold Varner III | 0.8% | 8.8% | 57.4% | +15000 |
| Sebastian Munoz | 0.7% | 8.7% | 56.6% | +11000 |
| Emiliano Grillo | 0.7% | 8.0% | 56.2% | +7500 |
| Carlos Ortiz | 0.7% | 8.5% | 57.3% | +8500 |
| Mackenzie Hughes | 0.7% | 9.1% | 57.5% | +13000 |
| Henrik Norlander | 0.7% | 7.7% | 55.8% | +25000 |
| Lee Westwood | 0.7% | 8.0% | 55.8% | +6500 |
| Denny McCarthy | 0.7% | 8.6% | 57.6% | +19000 |
| Jim Furyk | 0.7% | 8.1% | 56.3% | +19000 |
| Cameron Davis | 0.6% | 7.9% | 55.4% | +9000 |
| Patton Kizzire | 0.6% | 8.8% | 58.6% | +22000 |
| Adam Hadwin | 0.6% | 8.2% | 56.7% | +13000 |
| Michael Thompson | 0.6% | 7.6% | 56.0% | +14000 |
| Doug Ghim | 0.6% | 7.8% | 56.1% | +14000 |
| Charles Howell III | 0.6% | 6.7% | 53.6% | +14000 |
Dustin Johnson is the class of the field, yes, but the course setup isn't particularly great for him, which dings his win probability. This course de-emphasizes driving distance and rewards driving accuracy, thus mitigating Johnson's edge to a degree and keeping a larger portion of the field in contention. More golfers in the mix increases variance, so I'm out on Johnson (+950 on FanDuel Sportsbook) despite his three straight top-30s here.
Webb Simpson won here last year and has four straight top-16 finishes at a course that suits his game. Despite that, the win models don't particularly view him as a positive expected value at his opening odds.
Daniel Berger is coming off of a missed cut at Augusta, but it's a very different setup this week, and he finished T3 here a year ago. There isn't actual value on him, but I still am considering betting him.
A huge outlier is Matthew Fitzpatrick at +3200, who is rating out fourth in my win simulation model. There is pretty heavy value on him at that number.
Russell Henley is generally a model favorite because of his great stats and long-term form, and at +6000, he's another positive value. The same can be said for Harris English (+5000).
Longer shots could be in the mix this week, and some names that pop initially are Brendon Todd (+9000), Zach Johnson (+14000), Kevin Kisner (+7500), and Christiaan Bezuidenhout (+6500).
I have outrights on Fitzpatrick, Collin Morikawa, Corey Conners, Henley, and Todd as well as a top-10 on Sebastian Munoz, Zach Johnson, and Bezuidenhout, and a top-20 on Mark Hubbard.
