GOLF

Gdula's Golf Simulations and Betting Picks: BMW Championship

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 BMW Championship, according to the models.

Golfer FanDuel
Salary
Win% Top-10% FanDuel
Sportsbook
Win Odds
Jon Rahm $12,000 11.4% 52.7% +600
Patrick Cantlay $10,700 3.8% 28.8% +2200
Xander Schauffele $11,700 3.7% 29.9% +1800
Jordan Spieth $11,500 3.7% 26.4% +2000
Viktor Hovland $10,300 3.4% 26.9% +3100
Cameron Smith $10,900 3.3% 26.9% +2200
Collin Morikawa $11,400 3.2% 28.0% +1800
Paul Casey $10,100 3.1% 25.9% +3400
Justin Thomas $11,600 3.1% 27.0% +1600
Dustin Johnson $11,200 2.9% 23.0% +2000
Bryson DeChambeau $11,100 2.8% 26.0% +2000
Daniel Berger $10,200 2.7% 25.6% +3300
Tony Finau $11,000 2.7% 23.7% +2200
Louis Oosthuizen $10,600 2.7% 24.4% +2200
Scottie Scheffler $10,400 2.5% 24.9% +3100
Brooks Koepka $11,300 2.4% 22.2% +2200
Corey Conners $9,600 2.4% 21.1% +3300
Abraham Ancer $10,000 2.3% 20.6% +3400
Webb Simpson $9,900 2.1% 21.2% +3400
Hideki Matsuyama $9,800 2.0% 21.5% +3400
Joaquin Niemann $9,400 1.9% 18.8% +5000
Rory McIlroy $10,800 1.9% 20.9% +2700
Harris English $9,700 1.7% 19.3% +4100
Cameron Tringale $8,800 1.5% 15.8% +6500
Sam Burns $9,300 1.3% 15.1% +5000
Shane Lowry $9,500 1.2% 14.7% +3400
Sungjae Im $9,200 1.2% 14.7% +5000
Jason Kokrak $9,000 1.2% 13.3% +6500
Keegan Bradley $8,700 1.1% 14.0% +7000
Russell Henley $9,100 1.1% 13.7% +6500
Brian Harman $8,300 1.1% 12.7% +10000
Charley Hoffman $8,500 1.0% 13.6% +10000
Ryan Palmer $7,500 0.9% 10.5% +12000
Talor Gooch $7,400 0.9% 11.5% +15000
Sergio Garcia $8,600 0.9% 13.3% +8000
Kevin Na $8,900 0.9% 12.1% +6500
Kevin Streelman $8,200 0.9% 12.3% +10000
Max Homa $7,600 0.8% 10.8% +12000
Emiliano Grillo $7,600 0.8% 10.9% +12000
Alex Noren $8,600 0.7% 10.5% +7000
Stewart Cink $7,800 0.7% 9.0% +12000
Branden Grace $8,000 0.7% 8.4% +12000
Jhonattan Vegas $8,000 0.7% 9.8% +10000
Billy Horschel $8,500 0.6% 9.6% +8000
Maverick McNealy $8,200 0.6% 10.7% +10000
Chris Kirk $7,200 0.6% 9.5% +21000
Carlos Ortiz $7,400 0.5% 9.2% +15000
Patton Kizzire $7,100 0.5% 8.2% +21000
Harold Varner III $8,400 0.5% 7.9% +8000
Aaron Wise $7,300 0.5% 8.0% +15000
Sebastian Munoz $7,900 0.4% 7.9% +12000
Mackenzie Hughes $7,800 0.4% 7.0% +12000
Erik van Rooyen $8,300 0.4% 7.9% +8000
Cameron Davis $7,700 0.4% 6.9% +12000
Siwoo Kim $8,100 0.4% 8.5% +10000
Marc Leishman $7,900 0.3% 6.9% +12000
Matt Jones $7,000 0.3% 5.7% +21000
Lucas Glover $7,000 0.3% 5.6% +21000
Lee Westwood $7,700 0.3% 6.7% +12000
Charl Schwartzel $7,200 0.3% 5.2% +15000
Tom Hoge $7,100 0.2% 4.3% +15000
Harry Higgs $7,100 0.2% 4.0% +21000
Robert Streb $7,000 0.2% 4.0% +32000
Kyoung-hoon Lee $7,000 0.2% 5.3% +21000
Keith Mitchell $7,300 0.2% 4.0% +15000
Kevin Kisner $8,100 0.2% 4.8% +10000
Cameron Champ $8,400 0.2% 4.5% +6500
Phil Mickelson $7,500 0.1% 3.0% +12000
Hudson Swafford $7,000 0.1% 2.6% +21000


I mean, it's kind of wild now, but Jon Rahm just is that guy. Over the past year, his strokes gained average once adjusting for field strength and recency, has him 2.55 strokes better than the worldwide average male pro golfer. Next best in the field is Xander Schauffele at 1.81. The gap is massive for Rahm, which explains why he's +600 to win outright in this 69-golfer field. He's not a good betting value, but boy, is he a lock for FanDuel cash game lineups.

With Rahm rating out as a poor expected value, we should see some positive value elsewhere.

Patrick Cantlay (+2200) falls just shy, but he's in a clear cluster in that second tier behind Rahm.

Viktor Hovland (+3100) and Paul Casey (+3400) exceeded value in the simulations by a decent margin, and both rank top-10 in my stats model for the week (Hovland is 3rd, and Casey is 8th).

Joaquin Niemann (+5000) and Cameron Tringale (+6500) are even values at their current numbers.

Though the model doesn't like him, I've got strong interest in Dustin Johnson (+2000) after a missed cut. The time off may benefit DJ after most of these golfers played late into Monday evening. Johnson also played here in the 2007 Palmer Cup. It's something, at least, at a course where most of these golfers will be coming in with no knowledge.

Hovland, Cantlay, and Johnson are my main angles this week with top-10 interest in Niemann, Tringale, Jason Kokrak, Sam Burns, and Brian Harman.