2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational Data-Driven Picks: Final Round Predictions
(Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images). Pictured: Grayson Murray.
It was a good Saturday for us at the Arnold Palmer Invitational after our round three play of Si Woo Kim -120 over Erik van Rooyen gave us our second consecutive head-to-head victory in that market.
The wager ended up being a little closer than it should have been because of van Rooyen's 2.53-shot inflated performance around the green versus his baseline projection, but I will never have complaints when a wager is able to cross the finish line.
We will see if our Scottie Scheffler 7/1 pre-event ticket can continue the recent run and give us our second outright win of the year (Wyndham Clark, 100/1 at Pebble Beach). However, the week has already escaped full-blown disaster because of a quality effort with some of these in-tournament bets.
As I always say, you don't have to be perfect in every market to find success. You just need to find one area where you excel during that event to reach a profit. A solid close tomorrow would give us that answer, regardless of what happens with the Scheffler ticket.
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 Arnold Palmer Invitational Final Round Predictions
Grayson Murray +130 over Taylor Moore (DraftKings)
Just like some people in this space have gotten infatuated with the number of outright winners they hit in a year, even if they got to that total with way too much exposure weekly, we have entered a similar zone with these head-to-head bets regarding win percentage.
Don't get it twisted: An edge will pay off in any spot long-term, regardless of how much juice you are laying. However, my goal has always been to show a profitable ROI at the end of the year. The actual win percentage of these bets is less vital to that story, although over 59% through 1000 bets still will tell that account of success in a much different way.
My model had Grayson Murray projected to win this bet 50.98% of the time after increasing his head-to-head rating from 61st pre-event to 36th after three quality rounds that believed he should have been 2.42 shots better than his even-par total. That output surpassed what we have seen from Taylor Moore, a golfer who started 55th for me when I ran this Monday-Wednesday but could only push up to 49th after three days of golf.
It is funny because these two have never been larger than a -106 edge one way or another throughout any of the four times I have run the data, which is why I don't understand where this massive shift has come from since the duo is technically (1-1-1) if comparing them over all three rounds. That coin-flip answer is much more indicative of where things should be sitting entering Sunday.
I don't promise this wager will hit the window because we are still talking about a virtual coin-flip, but a 7.5% edge is about as large as you will get for a head-to-head that stretches from an underdog in price to a projected favorite inside my model.
As long as we aren't flipping a coin that is controlled by Two-Face, I will always take that edge in every spot when my model has the wrong man favored. 
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