2024 Masters Data-Driven Pick: Back Fitzpatrick, Fade Reed on Sunday
(Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images) Pictured: Matthew Fitzpatrick.
It was a smooth sailing play for us Saturday at Augusta National, as Tyrrell Hatton made easy work of an ailing Tiger Woods to move this week's total for in-tournament wagers to 3-1.
The head-to-head bet for Sunday is grading as my least favorite look over the four rounds because of the heightened juice and only 3.5% implied probability edge. However, this is a golfer I mentioned to be worth a fade if you wanted an additional wager in that Tiger article for round three, and I will jump back into the mix here with an official target against him to close out the event Sunday.
Good luck to everyone with your tickets in round four, and let's hope to squeeze out a little extra profit.
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.
For more on Tiger Woods' odds, Masters market movements and the latest information from oddsmakers/risk supervisors, check out Patrick Everson's Masters Odds and Betting Trends article on Vegas Insider.
2024 Masters
Matthew Fitzpatrick -130 over Patrick Reed (DraftKings)
Here is the one problem with the wager tomorrow before we get into the edge that my model found.
While my numbers loved Matthew Fitzpatrick entering the week and bet him in multiple facets of the market to build exposure across the board, I wouldn't say this has been an ideal showing for him because of the struggles he has produced with his irons.
We entered this week talking about how Fitzpatrick had added a four-gram weight to his driver and had forgotten to remove it for almost a year. The results turned around quickly after that error was found at the WM Phoenix Open, but more equipment struggles have popped to the forefront of the equation at Augusta after the Englishman complained that his current set of irons didn't get optimized for this week's test.
I don't necessarily love any of those answers after deciding to lay -130 juice on a bet, but Patrick Reed continues to be the biggest overachiever in my model through three rounds of golf and likely will close 30+ points higher than this when we see the market push us up the board.
The 7.6 shots Reed is overachieving from his baseline score this week inside my model when adding in his baseline short-game metrics to his actual ball-striking isn't exactly correct since my data is under-evaluating his skills. However, even if I used his totals during the year he won the Masters in 2018, we are still looking at a 5.85-shot overachievement for him on the greens, which presents trouble since he has lost 2.55 strokes to the field off the tee.
Fitzpatrick doesn't possess the perfect answer himself when examining his 2.65-shot discrepancy. Still, it meant something to my model when I added to the mix that Fitzpatrick was a favorite in round four at other shops against Tyrrell Hatton and Will Zalatoris, while Reed was a 'dog to Cameron Smith, Byeong Hun An and Adam Scott.
That return only gives me a small percentage of my calculated weight, but Fitzpatrick beating two top-20 golfers in the market in comparative price did shift this into that 3.5% edge for Sunday.
Without that boost, consider this a fringe bet that barely would have met my typically needed three percent threshold to recommend a wager in this article.
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