2024 American Express Data Driven Picks: Tony Finau, Si Woo Kim Among Outright Picks
(Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Pictured: Tony Finau
There's a three-course rotation, a pro-am and a 54-hole cut. What could go wrong when trying to handicap this year's American Express?
Despite all those concerns, the third event of the PGA Tour season showcases one of the strongest contests we have ever seen during its history, including World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and an additional five players who ranked inside the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings.
The betting boards took a hit for many of the reasons I mentioned, but there is still value to be found in the market. Let's dive into the outright board and find the betting value.
If you haven't already, you can find me on Twitter (@TeeOffSports). There, I provide a link to my pre-tournament model, a powerful and interactive data spreadsheet that allows user input to create custom golf rankings. That sheet is released every Monday, so be sure to check it out and construct your own numbers from my database of information.
2024 American Express Data Driven Picks
Every Monday, I take an aggregated total from a handful of books I respect and form a median outright price. None of that suggests you wouldn't be able to find better if you had shopped around, but that is a total I use to compare against a golfer's outright odds movements over the past 48 hours.
Those returns indicate where the square versus sharp money has entered the market and shows potential DFS value for those looking to round out their player pool. Let's dive into some of the shifts in the market and see how they line up with the outright bets I talked about on Links + Locks.
What Golfers Have Experienced the Biggest Market Moves?
There are a handful of things to note about the list above, starting with the substantial shift we have seen from Harrison Endycott.
Before I even get into this topic, I do want to give major props to Endycott, Chris Kirk and Grayson Murray — three golfers who have overcome alcohol addiction over the past few years and are now thriving on the PGA Tour.
You can call me the bearer of bad news, but this is as square as you can get on the board. I get that the price doesn't equate to much risk, but there is no rhyme or reason behind picking Murray other than a false narrative that the golf community has drawn up between past 2024 victories and implied future success.
From there, we do have some genuine conversations to be had about this board.
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Murray might be data-depleted if you only use an extended version of his numbers in your handicapping process. While I don't trust his floor output, which has seen him fail to crack the top 50 in five of his past 10 starts, there are upside metrics that will include two wins and two more top-seven finishes. I will not get there on him to connect on back-to-back victories, but I understand shooting for the stars.
Alex Smalley and Patton Kizzire are fun targets who have historically performed well on similar courses. Attacking them with placement wagers, or in DFS, seems to be more valuable than betting them in the the outright market, although I do tend to believe both are credible sharp movers in the space.
Tom Kim and Scheffler speak for themselves. I don't want to spend too much time on why they are two of the best golfers in the world. I've been an advocate for the past month that Scheffler should be 5/1 in any marginally reduced field because of his historic ball-striking nature. I couldn't get there this week because of his putting, but we are always a hot Scheffler flatstick away from him wrecking the board.
J.T. Poston is too shallow for me at this 30/1 price. If this price was in the 50/1 range, we could have a different conversation, but I just don't see a massive deviation in the data between someone like him and Chris Kirk, a golfer you can get at 50/1.
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American Express Data Driven Outright Picks
Tony Finau 40/1
Three golfers skyrocketed up my win equity sheet when I marginally discounted putting. The first, naturally, was Scheffler. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the best pure ball-striker in the world gets more likely to win when removing the worst part of his game. I still have trepidation about there being value when taking into account the exposure needed at 5/1 to buy into that ticket.
Nonetheless, the next two who saw the most significant deviation were Tony Finau and Si Woo Kim.
This overseeded Bermuda texture has been known to generate carpet-like returns on the greens and help yield a simplistic putting return that allows all players to make putts. Very little grain on the surface and accessible pin locations for the amateurs will further amplify that notion, which helps to explain why Finau gained with the putter here in 2023 and didn't lose more than -0.5 shots to the field during the two starts prior.
Both of those outcomes resulted in a top-15 finish on the leaderboard.
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Si Woo Kim 50/1
Only seven players in my model landed inside the top 40 of all categories I ran this week. Kim and Finau were two. Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Adam Hadwin, Sungjae Im and Kirk were the other five. That gives us the high-end talent for why Scheffler, Cantlay and Im are listed as three of the four favorites in the field and also adds four names priced at 40/1+ — who should be considered as "value options" because of their statistical profile — to the mix.
Kim has gained off the tee in 20 consecutive starts. When you blend that into his 34-spot improvement in Weighted Proximity, you all of a sudden get a player who cracked the tournament's top-five overall projected totals for the week — when putting is removed from the equation.
Top-Two Projected Win Equity Choices In My Model
Best Values To Consider At New Price (Not In Order Of Perceived Edge)
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