The 150th Coffee Golf
The Open Championship | Stats, Trends & Things You Don't Need To Know
St. Andrews (Old Course)
Par 72 - 7,313 Yards
Everything Is Bigger In St. Andrews
There are seven double-greens at The Old Course, meaning that most greens feature two pins for different holes. That makes the average putting surface 22,267 square feet (not a typo!). That’s nearly 3x the size of the next largest greens on TOUR, the Plantation Course at Kapalua — 8,722 square feet.
Golfers will have lengthy putts that they’ve likely never seen before and Tiger Woods has been emphasizing lag putting and how important that skill is at St. Andrews. There are a few ways to look at golfers in this lens. I’m going to combine Approach Putt Performance and 3-Putt Avoidance. I’m going to call it Total Lagging
Success At Comp Courses
Every week, Andy Lack writes two articles for RickRunGood.com. His Course Breakdown article (available now) has been so helpful to learn who might find success at a course and why. I won’t spoil the entire article but he uses Augusta National and Kapalua (Plantation) as two course comps. Including the Old Course, here are the best players on the trio of tracks.
Projected One & Done Ownership
With $2,500,000 to the winner and only a few events to go in the regular season, this is shaping up to be a critical One & Done spot. Here is how the most popular picks are shaking out to this point:
Rory McIlroy: 14.2%
Matt Fitzpatrick: 10.8%
Jordan Spieth: 10.0%
Xander Schauffele: 8.6%
Shane Lowry: 8.5%
Major Championship Lead-In Form
Lead-in Form, or how the golfer is playing immediately in advance of an event, is always a fickle game. How recent is too recent? How any rounds is too many rounds? I decided to actually put my data where my mouth is.
I looked at the (3) previous Major Championships and ran a correlation model to see if I could find any trends. Long story short, I compared Last 12 Rounds, Last 24 Rounds, Last 36 Rounds and Last 50 Rounds to every finishing position for those events. The Lead-In Time that performed the best…
Last 36 Rounds
In fact, it was a clean sweep for L36. It was the highest correlated lead-in stat for each the Masters, PGA Championship and U.S. Open. So, using Last 36 Rounds leading into the Open Championship, expect the Leaderboard to look something like this:
Wise Guy, Eh?
As much as I would love it, Aaron Wise is probably not going to win the Open Championship. He’s probably not going to finish inside the Top 5 and he’s unlikely to finish inside the Top 10. He’s basically unbettable and unusable in most fantasy formats. Except for Jock MKT, where he dominates:
Over his last 20 starts, he’s turned you a profit in 60% and he’s given you a 24.5% ROI. No other golfer has turned you a profit more frequently.
That’s because Jock MKT is stock market DFS and with guaranteed payouts based on finishing position, golfers only have to beat their expectations. That might be 11th or 32nd or 55th — it doesn’t matter. Seemingly the industry isn’t super-high on Wise who routinely outperforms his expectations.
Great game, sign up and play. There’s a massive market for the Open Championship.
Use code RICK for $100 deposit match
The Open Hits Different
While we rotate courses on an annual basis, the Open Championship offers similarities every single year. Links style golf with a star-studded field playing for the highest of stakes. Here are the best Open Championship players dating back to 2008:
Bankrupt PrizePicks
My never-ending quest to bankrupt PrizePicks continues this week with a massive slate of props. There’s just so many things that are mispriced:
Birdie or Better Matchups
These have been printing money the last few weeks. Blindly taking the overs has resulted in a 33-17-12 record last week and are 124-83-37 in the last four weeks. That’s without picking and choosing some of the more obvious ones:
Fairways Hit
In 2015, the average fairways hit was 11.75 — and that’s all golfers who made the cut. PrizePicks has set every line between 10.0 and 12.0 and that’s for the best players in the field! Doesn’t add up!
Billy Horschel has the 5th highest driving accuracy rate in this field and his line is 12.0 — basically asking him to hit the average from 2015 (of all golfers)
Collin Morikawa is has the 9th highest driving accuracy rate in the field and his line is also 12.0.
These are some of the easiest fairways to hit in the world and these numbers are just too low.
Greens Hit
If you thought fairways were bad, the lines for greens are even worse. The average number of greens hit in 2015 was 14.0 and every line is set from 12.5 to 14.5. It’s not really much of a stretch to think the best golfers in the world can hit more greens than the average.
Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Will Zalatoris are all inside the Top 10 in Greens In Regulation this season and these are the largest greens they might ever play!
Holes Played
“Holes Played” is basically “will the golfer make the cut?”. If you think yes, take the over. If you think no, take the under. There are three golfers who are favorites to make the cut on Bet365…
Tiger Woods -138
JT Poston -150
Lucas Herbert -163
You could put them together and try to win 5x on your money OR add a 4th golfer and try to 10x your money.
Use the code “RICK” at PrizePicks for an instant deposit match up to $100 and help me bankrupt them.
Weather
This could change any moment — but for now, the weather looks quite fair to all tee times over the first two days.
Random Guys
There’s a ton of guys in this field who you may not know a lot about. Here are a few nuggets:
John Catlin - American playing on the DP World Tour. Finished T4 at the Irish Open and has (5) Top 25 finishes in his last 10 starts.
Joohyung “Tom” Kim - had already qualified for Open prior to 3rd place finish at Scottish Open last week. Has played 14 events worldwide in 2022, earning (1) win, (2) runner-up finishes and (1) third. He’s also added in three more Top 10s.
Sam Horsfield - Ranked 87th in the world, won the Soudal Open in May. Now a member of LIV where he’s finished 5th and 11th in their two events.
Good Luck!
Rick