PGA Betting Guide for the Butterfield Bermuda Championship
Picking winners of a golf tournament is hard. Doing it consistently is downright impossible. However, finding value is something all bettors must practice in order to give themselves the best chance to make hay when the day finally comes that they select a champion.
Below, we will cover the best bets for the Butterfield Bermuda Championship based on current form, course fit, and -- of course -- the value of their odds over at Golf odds.
Hideki Matsuyama made us winners last week, along with a nice top 10 from Cameron Tringale to cap off a great week. We'll look to stay hot this week in an alternate field that is normally opposite the canceled WGC-HSBC Champions in Shangai. And so we have a very thin top of the market that we'll skip altogether as we build out our card.
With just a couple of editions of this event and two vastly different conditions, we are still flying pretty blind with what to expect from the course.
What we think we know is that a short course prone to wind will favor golfers who are accurate rather than wild, both off the tee and on approach. We have a very mixed field of European talent, Korn Ferry graduates or exemptions, and PGA Tour stalwarts, and finding comparable statistical profiles can be tricky.
Without the world's elite soaking up any win equity, the already highly variant game of handicapping golf tournaments is made even trickier this week. Proceed with caution.
For more info on Port Royal Golf Course, along with this week's key stats and comparable courses, check out the numberFire course primer.
At the Top
None.
Value Spots
Chad Ramey (+3100) - This new PGA Tour member has improved from a missed cut, to T63, to T14 in his first three PGA Tour events, and now in a field closer to what he was used to on the Korn Ferry Tour, there's no reason to think he can't sustain that level of improvement. He's gained in approach in all three starts according to stats from Fantasy National Golf Club, and last season on the KFT, he was third in greens in regulation percentage and fourth in driving accuracy. He had just two finishes outside the top 20 in his final 13 KFT events dating back to mid-May, including a win at the Live and Work in Maine Open. The field has some known commodities but of the unknown variety, Ramey is right at the top of the list. Given the recent strong run, we'll add a Top 20 Finish (+190).
Stephan Jaeger (+5000) - Jaeger is something like the equivalent of a "quadruple A" baseball player: dominant in the minor leagues but ultimately unable to break through in the Big Show. Jaeger was second, fourth, and fourth in his final Korn Ferry Tour events prior to re-earning his PGA Tour card. He was number one in the regular season and combined points standings at the end of the Korn Ferry Tour season, and he is one of the winningest players in the KFT's history. For all that success, he's never cracked the top 10 in a PGA Tour event. The win equity is low, but we are lured by the 50/1 number as he takes on many of the same golfers he beat week after week on the lower circuit.
Long Shots
Jason Dufner (+6500) - The schedule has been pretty light closing out last season and starting back up in 2021-22, but Dufner has been pretty solid of late, with finishes of T42, T24, T28, T26, and T18 in his last five events dating back to the John Deere Classic in July. Nowhere near his major championship form of a decade ago, Dufner still maintains a serious experience advantage over the majority of this field. With slim pickings the further down the board we go, Dufner has a tee-to-green advantage over almost all of the golfers in this range.
Mark Hubbard (+6500) - It's been a long stretch of quality golf from @HomelessHubbs, who has just one missed cut in his last 13 PGA Tour events. He was 19th in driving accuracy on Tour last season, and above all, he seems like he's enjoying himself out there, always a quality we look for among the Tour's lower-middle class of grinders. The immense pressure of playing on the PGA Tour and the wide chasm between the world's top golfers and the fringe professionals can discourage anyone, and those who keep a positive outlook and still have fun stand as good a chance as any to survive. But you need to contend as well, and a strong finish here could signal Hubbard is ready to level up.
Brandon Wu (+12000) - Wu has the pedigree of a young star, only without the results to prove the point. The former Stanford standout has been lapped by his college rivals -- Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, and Matthew Wolff -- and his most notable career achievements thus far include getting his college degree at the U.S. Open, winning the 2020 Korn Ferry Championship, and holding the 36-hole lead at last year's Puerto Rico Open. That win in the KFT finale didn't earn Wu official PGA Tour status until this year, as the 2020 and 2021 seasons were combined with no graduating class in 2020 due to the pandemic-shortened season. He's finally arrived at the top of the sport and promptly missed cuts at the Fortinet Championship, Sanderson Farms Championship, and the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. We're backing the pedigree here at long odds in a weak event.
