Winners are grinners @ Club 20 ahead of WGC Match Play

Winners are grinners at Club 20 this week after hitting Matt Jones for First Round Leader at the Honda last week @ 67-1 each-way.

Sadly (stupidly), we didn’t bet him to win the tournament as well, which he eventually did, but we can’t be too sandy as we look to our balance sheet that says 261.7% POT since we started back up at Bay Hill a month ago.

That’ll do Stats Insider Golf model, that’ll do!

We’re flying without radar this week due to the model having a week off due to this unique format, so lets get into it.  

We’re in Austin, Texas this week for the WGC World Match Play at Austin Country Club which starts tonight, an event where 64 players will go mano-e-mano for 3 days before the top seed of each of the 16 groups continues into Saturday’s quarters. 

Saturday morning the final 16 will become 8, then those 8 will become 4 on Saturday afternoon. 

The two semi finals will be played Sunday morning, then the final and also the match to determine 3rd and 4th will be played Sunday afternoon.

Course and Weather

Pete Dye design Par 71, featuring Bermuda greens, 3 Par 5’s that any player will be able to have an eagle putt on with two good shots, and a drivable par 4 (13th). 

The Par 3’s aren’t long here either, and all of the longer holes can be attacked to shorten or managed – it is a great Match Play course that will reward the player who can execute.   

This is the fifth year we’ve been here and any course where Jason Day, Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson and Kevin Kisner have all won shows us that any skill set can win here

The course is not forecast to be affected by much weather at all, a little breezy on Thursday but given its Match Play over 3 days, there is no real advantage to be gleaned weather wise. 

Instead, we are looking for guys who will hang around, guys who have great iron and wedge game or who can nail their putts to halve/win holes when needed. 

We are also, given the volatility of the format, looking at a few guys who have been largely dismissed by markets as having stuff-all chance of advancing.  

Da Bets

Rory McIlroy EW @ 21.00

He has not been playing great but he hasn’t been bad either, just got spewed out at Sawgrass which happens to everyone. 

The form hasn’t been terrible, just not ‘best in the world’ which is our benchmark for Rory, but he has pulled the trigger on a new swing coach who has him focused more on his downswing rather than the backswing which I think will instantly improve his wedge proximity (his biggest problem). 

Really I think Rory is just struggling to give enough of a shit to be as elite as we expect, which is common with a lot of these guys when they have kids for the first time – DJ went through it before his kids got abit older and last few years the fire has come back to him tenfold. 

But back to Rory, this is the perfect format for him to forget about how relatively unimportant golf is, and intently focus on destroying one man at a time for five days.  

His bracket is soft, despite the media adding ‘match play expert’ to Ian Poulters name, Poulter, Cam Smith and Lanto Griffin should not get near Rory. He won’t be this price after he walks off the 16th green 3 and 2 tomorrow morning. 

Shane Lowry EW @ 111.00

No one is talking about Lowry this week, mainly because he is in a group with John Rahm, and should he get out of that group, has to go past potentially Rory and Patrick Reed to pay that each-way. 

Well this tournament tosses up those crazy outcomes every year and I actually really like Lowry this week. His change in putting grip will have him back to peak up-and-down confidence around the greens, which will only further sharpen his approach game. 

Solid off the tee and is coming off two really good iron / around the green weeks with a resurgent putting confidence AND gets probably the best draw – Ryan Palmer first up, then John Rahm in some Thursday afternoon wind, then Seb Munoz who is every chance to not give two shits about that match on Friday. 

Lastly, these WGC points are HUGE for Lowry, who is chasing a Ryder Cup berth – he will grind every single hole on every single day. 

Will Zalatoris EW @ 46.00 

Will Z has drawn the softest pod so that’s a plus straight away, with Tony Finau, Jason Kokrak and Dylon Fritelli. 

He is being written off here largely for his putting, but its not that bad at all and more than that, Zalatoris has something these guys don’t – he is clutch.  

He will make the putt when he has too, which is a huge advantage in this format, one which he has much more recent form than the other three guys. 

Marc Leishman EW @ 111.00

Found something off the tee at TPC Sawgrass after a god-awful month of driving which was holding back his otherwise solid form. 

Leish has drawn DJ’s group which along with back-to-back missed cuts has ballooned his odds, but this pod of 8 he is in is pretty weak if you take out DJ, which Leishman must to advance. 

His pathway to payout is beating DJ, Sungjae Im and Tyrell Hatton but at these odds, with Johnson’s fickle carefactor, Im’s wayward irons I think he is well worth a flutter.

He is an excellent Match Play player with an uncanny ability to break opponents with his around the green feats – no reason he can’t see Saturday this week at great odds.

Euro Golf

The Kenya Savannah Classic snuck up on us with a Tuesday afternoon (AEDT) start time but we got an EW bet on Callum Hill at 34’s.

Come join the Twitter party @Club20 for our most up-to-date bets

Hedge

Cruelly denied sporting glory due to recurring shin splint complaints and an aversion to warm-up laps, Hedge now spends his days golfing, fishing the leaves out of the Club 20 pools and identifying value plays in PGA, AFL, AFLW and T20. All you really need to know about him is he's more than comfortable taking 3I off the tee on a Par 5, and more than capable of pulling driver off the deck second shot.

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