Wyndham Championship Betting Preview | 2026
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39 min
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Aug 4, 2026
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Tue, August 4, 2026
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Full transcript
Episode Transcript
0:00On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.
0:05I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.
0:12I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.
0:20I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility.
0:24Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:29I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
0:33You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
0:37Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.
0:43You're not hired just to fill time and space.
0:45You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:54Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town.
1:02Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land.
1:05We need cities on a shining hill. This is Our Town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the
1:12site of a social experiment and fights back. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you?
1:19Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:24Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast?
1:27We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by.
1:31The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel.
1:35I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today?
1:40I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it.
1:45Oh, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more.
1:49And I guess I can share that, uh... No way.
1:52Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:58The Action Network Podcast. Better than most. Better than most.
2:02Better than most. Winner, winner, chicken, dinner! Four! You got real talent.
2:05Don't concentrate on golf. Welcome to the Action Network Podcast.
2:08I'm Mike Calabrese, and I'm joined today by Spencer Aguiar to break down the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina.
2:15This is the last tour event before the FedEx Cup playoffs.
2:18It'll be hosted at the Sedgefield Country Club, and you can expect some low scores there this week.
2:24The golfer to take down this tournament in the last decade has finished with an average of 20 under par.
2:30And with rain on the menu Tuesday through Saturday, these greens are going to be very soft, so something to keep an eye on there.
2:38As for the track itself, this is Donald Ross' design.
2:41And at least by modern tour standards, this is a pretty short track.
2:45Its fairways are narrow. The Bermuda Rough can be tricky.
2:48It's about two and a half inches. But outside of that, this is a player-friendly format and layout.
2:54The defending champion, Cam Young, is priced at 8-1, followed by breakout star Jackson Koivin at 20-1.
2:59After that, a major payday awaits for any better who can nail the outright winner, though, because we have four golfers clustered in the 20-1 to 20-30 range.
3:08And then the outright from there just rockets up.
3:11You've got 30 golfers on the board between 50 and 100-1.
3:14So, Spence, talk to me about this course. First, do you think Cam Young can run it back after his dominant performance
3:21last year, where he totally ran away from the competition, winning by six strokes?
3:26Or do you think we're going to see more of a clustered Sunday at the top of the board?
3:32I mean, I'll answer the question like this to start.
3:35Cameron Young is the number one player in my model.
3:38He has the highest win equity of any single player on the board.
3:42It doesn't necessarily mean that I want to bet him at single digits, and it's something that we can talk about as this show moves forward with it.
3:51But it's a good course fit for Cameron Young.
3:53There's a reason why he won it, and one of the metrics that is interesting to look at.
3:59And there's a name on my outright card that doesn't even necessarily fit this threshold.
4:04So, you know, take it for what it's worth here.
4:07But one of the things that I've noticed about this course, and it's very predictive when it comes to Bermuda putters that have been able to thrive.
4:15It does not mean that it's necessarily only good putters, though.
4:19So if you look at Lucas Glover, who won a couple years back, not necessarily the person that you would lead off
4:26of a list, that's a good putter. But one of the interesting returns that I had in my model for Glover that
4:33week is he saw this exponential increase with the flat stick on Bermuda greens.
4:37And you talked about this at the very beginning part of this show.
4:41Average winning score of 20 under par over the last handful of iterations of this tournament.
4:46It's one of the most predictable venues on tour each year for rollover performance.
4:51That's something that you can expect pretty much any time that the data starts shifting you into these buckets of production.
4:57Eight par four holes that are going to stretch between 400 to 450 yards.
5:01A little less than 80% of approach shots that come from 125 plus yards.
5:06You really get that increased bucket from 125 to 175 if you want to hone it down even further.
5:12Those are all nice answers to give on a show.
5:15And it's very simple for us to talk about what all of that means.
5:19Where it becomes more complicated and where I think that there's actually a little bit tougher of a handicap here than sometimes people anticipate.
5:27Rollover predictability is good. But one of the things that rollover predictability does is it makes it easier for sportsbooks.
5:33It makes it easier if we want to talk about DFS with gamers that understand what the course looks like.
5:39It makes it harder to separate and find an advantage in a lot of these spots.
5:44And one of the things that I have noticed with sportsbooks in particular this week is they are very either quick to
5:51move as soon as action has hit the market on a player.
5:55Cantlay pulls himself out of the tournament. You're always going to have a natural overcorrection of the market.
6:01We kind of got it a little bit larger in some spots than other, which is what's going to make this a
6:08tough handicap for us to talk about today. But we also saw odds suppressed from the very beginning.
6:13And I think Cameron Young is one of those prime examples of we're just not going to mess around with Cameron Young if we're a sportsbook this week.
6:22We're going to put them in single digits and it's like, hey, if you think you got value, they're betted.
6:28If you don't, you know, like if he beats you, he beats you.
6:32And I think that these tournaments are sometimes really tough from a handicapping perspective, even if the data tells a story that should be extremely straightforward.
6:41So it's kind of that ebb and flow that I go through of how can we actually find value on a board
6:47where the rollover predictability is as high as you're going to see all year.
6:52Now, you don't have any head to head plays here.
6:55You believe that the numbers have moved too much moving away from you in terms of value.
7:00With that in mind, for particularly for, you know, more of the casual bettors on the PGA Tour, there's a million ways to get involved in these tournaments.
7:09There's all kinds of exotics. Yes, there are head to heads.
7:12There's the leader after round one. You can go for overall birdies.
7:16Will there be a hole in one? You can kind of attack it in any way, shape or form.
7:22Do you find yourself gravitating a bit more towards that or spending a little time?
7:27Seeing potentially if one of those smaller markets aligns with your model or is it just I usually allot this much to my head to head.
7:35I don't have anyone that I'm comfortable with. I kind of just spread it out evenly over the rest, whether it's placement wagers or outright winners.
7:43I don't have a specific amount that I am trying to fit into a card every single week.
7:49I think that's a very dangerous game to play for a couple of reasons.
7:53I think on the one end of it, you can force plays because you're trying to get to some allocated amount that you've preset in your head.
8:02On the reverse end of that, I think you can leave good plays off the board on a tournament where you may have a ton of value.
8:10So I approach every single tournament as its own separate entity with it.
8:14As we talk about markets on this show, the thing I like the most about this program, whether it's Kyle and I
8:21or myself or you chiming in with a lot of the bets that you throw in, we talk about a lot of
8:28information on this show that is not just outright heavy.
8:31I've always been a very big proponent. I came into this space eight years ago as a professional bettor.
8:37I've always said hitting an outright is tough. It's not necessarily where professionals make their money.
8:42It can help to boost up a bankroll. But where my money comes into play and where my exposure is going to
8:49land is always going to be in matchups, the in-tournament plays I can find.
8:53Outrights once the tournament starts, I think there's live ads where you can leave some bullets in the chamber and be able to fire there.
9:01One of the things that I noticed, and maybe this is more of when I used to do action shows three or
9:08four years ago, placement markets were really soft for a long time, whether that be top 20s or I specifically like top 40s.
9:15They've gotten a lot more complicated. And I think as golf continues to grow, the edges are shrinking in a lot of these areas.
9:23So for me as a bettor, I'm always trying to find different avenues and outlets to be able to extrapolate out numbers and to fire edges.
9:31And like if everybody has listened, I understand it didn't go so well last week.
9:36It was kind of like the one bad week I've had in the made cut market.
9:41But that's an area that I've been trying to exploit recently.
9:44I think some of those numbers tend to be low sometimes.
9:48And as far as head to heads are concerned, just to kind of circle back and wrap a nice little bow on this.
9:55I say this a lot. People that listen to the show will know I'm always trying to find an opponent to fade
10:02more so than a person to back. And there are a lot of golfers in my model this week where either because
10:09the market moved too quickly, maybe the prices were not good to begin with.
10:13There's a lot of different factors that can come into play for this answer.
10:17And it doesn't mean that people out there cannot find value.
10:21But like I'm going to give a couple names that I was trying to fade.
10:26Maybe that this can be helpful to somebody who has a different matchup than I have available.
10:31Michael Brennan was a name I was trying to figure out.
10:34How do I take him on? Maverick McNeely, if you're looking more at the top of the board, I was trying to
10:41figure out, can I get a Ben Griffin at a reasonable price against him?
10:46Can I get a Hideki Matsuyama? I think Rasmus Hoigart after the performance last week is kind of a nice fade candidate.
10:52Somebody who really ended up shooting up the leaderboard on the weekend, almost wins the tournament.
10:57There might be a sell-off spot there. There's a lot of names to consider, you know, as we rattle through.
11:04And that's kind of what I'm trying to do.
11:07Myself specifically this week, I will throw out one of the bets that has moved just to kind of explain the process of what I'm trying to do.
11:15I think it might be beneficial for everybody out there listening.
11:19So I ended up fading who is one of the sharpest movers in the market right now, Michael.
11:24Like I understand that's not really a great answer to give to start this whole takeaway here.
11:30But Rio hits Satsune. A lot of people are backing him this week.
11:34He's made a million cuts in a row. A lot of the statistics from a ball striking perspective like him a lot.
11:41My model doesn't necessarily disagree with any of that.
11:44But what I was trying to find very early on in the week is if my numbers are lower than the market
11:50appears to be and clearly than what the public is.
11:54I posed a question on Twitter yesterday. Fire off a handful of names.
11:58I'll tell you my thoughts on them. Five of the first six questions were about who's Satsune.
12:03It kind of shows that we're kind of all clustering into the same spots right now of what this looks like.
12:10So I ended up taking Davis Thompson against him at minus 120.
12:13That number has moved out into minus 140. I don't think there's value there in that price.
12:19But it's kind of my mindset that I'm trying to do is you're zigging when others zag.
12:24You're finding value where others don't see it. And you're trying to figure out projections where you can be different than the market to find value.
12:32So yeah, I mean specifically for this show, Michael, I'm not going to give an official play as a matchup.
12:38Sorry. I don't think there's value at the numbers that we currently have.
12:42But as I said, when you run numbers and you have a model, you can always see where the fades land.
12:49And that's going to always be the blueprint in the bucket that I'm trying to locate.
12:54Speaking of firing on edges, we've got market movers right here on the podcast.
12:58And the best way to get their bets instantly is to sign up by Action Pro.
13:03You're not going to have to wait 30 minutes.
13:06You're going to get them as soon as they're logged in the Action app.
13:11Plus, you're going to get access to all of our pro projections, whether that's the PGA, Major League Baseball, the WNBA, college
13:18football and the NFL right around the corner. The best time to jump in is right now.
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13:26That's code POD20 for $20 off a year of Action Pro right now.
13:30Go to actionnetwork.com slash pro to get in on this offer so you can be the smartest better you can be.
13:37On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.
13:42I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.
13:49I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.
13:57I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility.
14:01Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us.
14:07Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is
14:14and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or
14:21wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your
14:28first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
14:34I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
14:38If you know me, you know I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
14:43So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people.
14:48Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.
14:54You're not hired just to fill time and space.
14:57You're hired to fill the space with you. You have something in your guts.
15:01You go with it. And Shawn Johnson recalled the moment she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one.
15:07He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood.
15:10He hadn't been on a plane before without his family.
15:14It was so pure. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:21Our town is small taters by most standards, right?
15:24But to the people who grew up here, it's everything.
15:27What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America?
15:33Developers with right wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area.
15:37The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia.
15:41But they weren't just planting houses. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life.
15:48Stop right there. Is that normal? A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment.
15:55God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back.
15:59Do not use my hard work to sell your bull.
16:02They're not just opposing what's being planned for here.
16:05Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration.
16:10Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you?
16:15Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:20Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network.
16:26Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a.
16:32the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.
16:37Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show.
16:43We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman.
16:46Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this?
16:49How about we flip it on his head? How about we flip the script?
16:54What if the surprise woman, who actually you think is the straight man, is actually the one who's acting weird?
17:00Adam Scott. This entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show.
17:05I would never expect. Let go of that. I have.
17:08I would never set expectations for something like that to happen.
17:12It seems like you did. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it.
17:18I'm always going to accept. Okay. Danny McBride, fine.
17:20Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you.
17:27I was like, is that weed? Nope. It's fragile masculinity.
17:30Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is.
17:37You know what I mean? Like, oh, what's the state?
17:40Everyone's so dumb except for you. And fake. Right.
17:43Fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life.
17:47I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us.
17:53Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on
18:00every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
18:07Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast?
18:11We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by.
18:14The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel.
18:18I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what, are you going to be singing today?
18:24I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it.
18:28That's probably why. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more.
18:32And I guess I can share that, uh, no way.
18:35Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
18:42All right. We talked about why the head-to-head market wasn't quite right, but let's get into some placement wagers.
18:48Top 20s. You have two of them here, Lee Hodges and Christian Bezadenhout.
18:52Let's start with him. Plus 300 here. Bezadenhout has three top 20s and a tie for 21st at the ISCO Championship on his resume.
18:59He did finish 62nd here last year, but his approach stats indicate that he could be a great fit for this course.
19:06So you don't necessarily want to be scared away, and it appears that you are not.
19:11Explain why 3-1 is the right price point for Bezadenhout.
19:14I believe I brought him on the show for the 3M Open as a top 20 play.
19:20Ended up landing right in 20th place to be able to cash that ticket.
19:24I went through this week, you know, I think I've talked about this before, but I wrote an article last year.
19:30It was more of a DFS piece than it was an actual betting return.
19:35But one of the things I was trying to find in DFS contests is how did the sharps view specific players versus how squares viewed specific players?
19:43And how did the performances end up returning based off of those results?
19:47And I ran this through from a five-year sample size for every single tournament.
19:52So to find that answer, all I did, and it's not a perfect science.
19:56I'm not taking whoever the sharpest DFS player is and saying, hey, give me your entire player pool and finding whoever the squarest person is.
20:04But we can extrapolate out numbers in the sense that I can look at what ownership is in a $1 contest where there's 100,000 people.
20:12And I can look at where ownership is in a $550 or $1,000 contest and see where the largest disparities come into play.
20:19And I did this for a couple of reasons.
20:22The bigger overarching theme of it is I wanted to see what tournaments did sharps find more success at year over year?
20:29Because I do think it's predictive for betting markets also to kind of try to figure out, does it align with where I am struggling?
20:37Does it align with some of my numbers in areas?
20:40Am I losing here because it's a consistent tournament where sharp movement goes in the wrong direction?
20:45Am I overachieving in a tournament? I think that there are certain metrics that mattered there.
20:50And so I looked specifically at the Wyndham. And I say all of this for one very specific reason about Pazade and Hout.
20:57This was a tournament. We talked about rollover predictability.
21:00We talked about it being a tough tournament to handicap.
21:03Sharps at a higher rate were able to pinpoint the best players that performed.
21:08And if you look specifically last year of these big changes, I'm going to skip number one who's Pazade and Hout, who you talked about coming 62nd.
21:16Aaron Rye, who came fifth. Victor Perez, who came 38th.
21:19Davis Thompson, who came 11th. Hideki Matsuyama, 19th. JT Post in 11th.
21:23Sung J.M., who I think is kind of an intriguing name once again this year, 27th.
21:28Alex Noren, third. This continues for quite a bit of time.
21:31The one outlier there ends up being Pazade and Hout.
21:35So if we want to just like go to the past, Pazade and Hout was a name last year who was extremely sharp in the market.
21:43Doesn't perform. I looked in my model. Pazade and Hout was a top 20 player for me last year.
21:4962nd place finish is underachieving there. So, you know, I know everybody wants to talk about course history all the time.
21:55And it's not that it doesn't matter. There is some sort of a significant value that comes into play with those answers.
22:02And I don't want to sit here and say that it doesn't matter.
22:06But like for me, the bigger theme that really comes into play is how was somebody playing entering the tournament?
22:13What was the public sentiment behind them as they entered that event?
22:16Does my model agree with what happened or didn't happen?
22:19Did they overachieve or underachieve? And when I looked at Pazade and Hout, massive underachiever on the board last year during that 62nd place finish.
22:27I think the ball striking returns specifically from the approach play are trending in a really nice direction.
22:33And I've kind of given up betting Pazade and Hout to win golf tournaments.
22:37The upside is never as high as what my model believes it to be.
22:42But that doesn't mean that there's not value to be had in a top 20 market.
22:47So I thought at 3-1 for a top 20, very similar price to what I took a couple weeks ago.
22:53I'm going to go back to the well here and try to see if we can find a little bit value once again on Pazade and Hout.
23:01For your second one in the placement wager bucket, we have a top 20 for Lee Hodges.
23:07And the obvious pushback right away is he's only made 7 out of 10 cuts.
23:11He has just won top 10 in 2026. So by no mean is he coming in with a ton of momentum.
23:18But maybe this is because I come from the college football and college basketball world.
23:23They do a lot of the blind resumes where they'll just throw up the stats, the wins, the strength of schedule, and say, you go ahead and pick.
23:31Because there's a lot of bias in the college community about those name brands.
23:36You end up paying that premium for it. He kind of moves in the opposite direction because when you look at it,
23:43he's in just a handful of players in this field that rank above average in all 10 key categories that predict success.
23:50So he's in a very similar bucket with Cam Young, the defending champion, and Jackson Koivin.
23:55So to get him at 9-2 to finish top 20, that seems like a bet that I want to tail.
24:01Anything else that I left out while you like Lee in this spot?
24:0515 players to kind of double down on your point, ranked inside of the top 60 of my model in all seven categories that I ran.
24:13Three of those names are outside 100-1 if we're just looking at outright odds.
24:18Lee Hodges, Ricky Castillo, Christopher Ventura. I think all of those names are options that you can consider in different iterations of the market.
24:25For Hodges specifically in this spot, I almost gave this as a top 10 at 10-1.
24:30Kind of for the reason of what you spoke of.
24:33It is a very boomer bus profile from him with the returns we have seen this season and even from within my model.
24:40A fringe top 30 player overall. So this is not a golfer that necessarily cracks the top 20 for me.
24:47But those upside metrics from the statistics that I cared about really liked his fit for this course.
24:5214th at strokes gained under 7,200 yard courses. 11th when you take comp courses, which is going to take some of that yardage.
25:00It's going to also expand from that metric. And then inside of the top 20 for weighted scoring, which is just a
25:06re-encapsulation of all these holes and how a golfer is projected to perform on these specific distances historically.
25:12So there are a lot of high-end returns here for Hodges.
25:16The floor is low. The floor is the string of missed cuts that we consistently get from him.
25:21The floor is him not being in the top 40 of this tournament over the last three times of playing it.
25:28I just think specifically for this bet and for the price that we are getting it, whether it's a top 20 at
25:35four and a half or we push it even further up the board and try to get it at 10 to one for a top 10.
25:43I'm shooting for the upside on this number. Understanding that the floor is extremely low and a miscut is in the range of outcomes here.
25:51So it's not one of those wagers where I'm going to tell people like, hey, take this if you want some safe
25:58bet that's going to be there for four days.
26:00But I will tell everybody, take this bet if you're looking for a player who can skyrocket up the leaderboard, find himself
26:07in the top 10 with a real chance coming Sunday.
26:10If everything breaks right for him. So that was kind of where the mathematical breakdown came through with that.
26:16Let's not turn to your outrights. You're bringing four to the table, including Lee Hodges.
26:21But let's start first with Jackson Coyven, 20 to one, tied for fifth year in 2025 as a sponsor exemption and knows the course very well.
26:29But he hasn't finished better than a tie for 10th all season outside of his 3M open win and was, I believe, tied for 31st.
26:37Yes, that's right. At the last week in Detroit.
26:40His talent, though, is undeniable. It's the reason why he's the second favorite here on the board.
26:45And some of the downside or when people are nitpicking, we're still talking about a very small sample size for the 21-year-old.
26:52I think that's honestly like the exact reason why I'm going down this well with this bet.
26:57The sample size is so small for him that it's really difficult to even say what kind of a player he is.
27:04We know he is a pristine player when it comes to talent.
27:08But what kind of a course best benefits his game?
27:11Like we have four or five tournaments that we've talked about just like specifically this year.
27:16If you're pulling in data over the last couple of months, if you do this blind resume test and we try to
27:23do this in like the college football terms and you remove names from the equation.
27:28And let's go a step further and say we don't know who's in this golf tournament.
27:33And we just run numbers at the most raw basic way that we can for this event.
27:38I hesitate to even give this answer. But his numbers return as if he is Scotty Scheffler in a normal field.
27:45It is ones across the board. When I go through and I add some weight for this small sample size and I
27:52add some weight of understanding when there's a win on the resume, there has to be things have to move in reverse.
27:58He cannot be as good as he is showing on paper, even if he ends up becoming the number one golfer in
28:05the world over the next five years. There's regression that takes place.
28:09Nobody averages to win a golf tournament every five tournaments unless your prime Tiger Woods is winning every other event.
28:15Or I mean, I guess Scotty as of like last year before this year came around.
28:20But I think the unknowns of what Koivin actually can do and bring to the mix is intriguing here.
28:26We saw Tom Kim a couple years ago come up to this fiery pace where I believe he won three times in
28:33the first handful of tournaments he played. It's not uncommon for a golfer to be able to get hot fast.
28:40This is the best amateur golfer potentially of all time.
28:43So the unknown variables here on Koivin are very intriguing for me.
28:46We have seen this number drop at a lot of sharp locations.
28:50I shop around, find the best number you can.
28:53I believe you can still find 18 or 20 if you search around.
28:57This is as low as 11 or 12 at locations that a lot of people respect.
29:02And that's kind of the skewing away from bets that I've talked about throughout this episode.
29:07I just think the upside here for Koivin is unknown.
29:10And that unknown variable is very interesting for me here.
29:13Next up on your outright card, Ryan Gerard. 32 to 1.
29:17The strongest form of the four players that you're bringing into the outright market.
29:21He's coming off a tied for ninth finish at the Open.
29:25A tied for eighth last week at the Rocket Classic.
29:28Started the year with back-to-back runner-ups. Has gained strokes in every facet of his game over the last three months.
29:34So that's the kind of, you know, form that you want to see and momentum coming in here.
29:40He's also in that elite above average in every key category group at Sedgefield.
29:44And that fit that I talked about earlier in this episode.
29:48So the hot form plus the genuine course fit.
29:50I was a little surprised to see him above 30 to 1 in a field that doesn't have that many heavyweights to really be scared of on Sunday.
29:59What gives with this number? I think it's the back-to-back miscuts that he's provided at this tournament.
30:04I've talked about the rollover predictability that we see year in and year out.
30:09So for a golfer like Gerard to not necessarily have anything on his resume that's made the cut and shown any true form is concerning a little bit.
30:18And there are underlying metrics here that kind of show why that could be the case.
30:23He's 93rd in strokes gained around the green, which you got to scramble here a little bit.
30:28And it doesn't get any better on Bermuda surfaces where he remains 93rd.
30:32The putter is one of the strengths for him.
30:35Usually he's been the number one player over his last 24 rounds, which is where some of this upside has come from.
30:42He has struggled historically on Bermuda putting surfaces over the sample size that I use, which was an 18-month sample size.
30:4890th in my model. So that's that negative trajectory that I was talking about of a player that did not fit the
30:55Lucas Glover sort of mold or Cameron Young mold where you get this uptick in putting on Bermuda.
31:01He's also 97th when you get this difficult three-putt avoidance courses.
31:04So for me with Gerard in this spot, I am willing to bank on what the form is and that he's a
31:11different golfer today than he was a year ago or three years ago.
31:15I do believe, though, that there is a lot more volatility to this wager than meets the eye.
31:21So anything that I am doing with Gerard this week is purely being baked in for upside.
31:26I've avoided any of the safety markets with him for that reason that some of those red flags do pop up.
31:33But to your point, Michael, I thought over 30-1 as an open was very generous given what we've gotten from him recently.
31:40Speaking of that 30-1 range, 35-1, Ben Griffin. You look at the last five years at this event.
31:45He has a fourth place finish, a tie for seventh, a tie for 11th.
31:50He also has eight top 30s and six top 15s in 10 career starts across Donald Ross venues.
31:55So if you're looking for that familiarity and kind of the course fit, you could do a lot worse than him at this number.
32:03This is almost the anti-Ryan Gerard take that we just talked about.
32:07Somebody with immaculate course history who comes into this event with a miscut 59th in his last two appearances.
32:13I'm willing to overlook whatever happened at the Rocket.
32:15He should have made the cut there. Really poor Friday ended up making him miss the weekend.
32:21Sometimes it's as simple as one bad round of golf.
32:24When you have to go low in these tournaments, you end up not getting to play four rounds of golf.
32:30My model is not one that necessarily overly loves Griffin week in and week out.
32:35So when I saw him grade as a top four win equity candidate on the board for me, I thought that was
32:42a really interesting return to kind of look further into.
32:45That's going to be spawned on and spurned on by like the third place rank from way to strokes gain total.
32:52He's fourth at comp courses, which is going to look at a lot of what we've seen recently at this venue or at Bermuda courses.
32:59And he's a really good player when you put them on easy scoring venues in general.
33:04So I like this pick a lot. I think the upside here for Griffin because of the miscut that we just got
33:11is allowing a lot more potential to seek through the cracks than we would have gotten if Griffin would have technically provided a top 10 finish.
33:19Because I think if he would have done that last week, we're probably looking at him opening at 20 to 1.
33:26And instead, he opens at 30 to 1 coming off of that miscut.
33:30So just a spot where I'm trying to buy low on a golfer that I think is better than this profile.
33:37We talked already about Lee Hodges, but just, you know, for the official number 150 to 1, I put something out there.
33:44We talk, you know, a little bit jokingly about some of these big swings kind of making up for some close calls, some bad luck.
33:51All of a sudden, your entire season looks a lot better if you hit something in the triple digits.
33:57If you're interested by triple digits, how about four numbers here?
34:011,600 to 1 for Lee Hodges to go wire to wire in this tournament.
34:05If you like him to win it outright, how crazy is it to say that he starts off hot on Thursday and carries it all the way through?
34:14I think from what we've seen from him historically, if he's going to get the job done, he probably needs to give himself a lead to begin with.
34:23And if it could be a multiple shot lead where he feels comfortable, I don't think it's a crazy look.
34:29Kind of as I talked about with him, he is the biggest win equity upside climber that I have in my sheet.
34:36The other way that I would throw it out there, if you don't believe he's going to actually win, target him as a first round leader bet.
34:44It's a golfer that can get hot really early on Thursday.
34:48Yeah, 100 to 1 is not bad. No, I think that those are really reasonable shots.
34:53And now he doesn't have to worry about the Sunday pressure all of a sudden of having to get the job done.
35:00So I'm going to have a first round leader on him.
35:03Look, there are much worse bets that you can make than a 1600 to 1 wager on a golfer.
35:09That's one of the biggest upside climbers. What I'm going to throw out there is also one of the sharpest movers in the market right now.
35:17And I kind of talked about Koivin being a name that's been bet down.
35:22You can find Hodges as low. It's 80 to 1 at books.
35:25So it's kind of showing where there is sharp money hitting in this location right now on him.
35:31Wouldn't be shocked if we don't find ourselves in a spot where whether he actually goes wire to wire, wouldn't be shocked
35:38to see him top 10 of the leaderboard early on.
35:41Maybe he's the first round leader. And then now all of a sudden you have a real sweat to this.
35:47That'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for joining us here on the Action Network podcast.
35:52Be sure to check out actionnetwork.com and the Action app for all of our great golf and DFS content.
35:58And even better, sign up for Action Pro. Go to actionnetwork.com slash pro to take advantage of all of our offers before
36:05college football and the NFL are here. You can find Spencer on X at T off sports.
36:11He's also on that same handle on our free award winning Action Network app for Spencer Aguiar.
36:16I'm Mike Calabrese. Best of luck betting this weekend.
36:19And we'll see you here next time on the Action Network podcast.
36:22Action Network reminds you, please gamble responsibly. If you or someone you care about has a gambling problem, help is available 24-7 at 1-800-GAMBLER.
36:30Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.
36:34Each week we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.
36:42Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show.
36:48We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big
36:55shots that wouldn't be where they are without us.
36:58Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
37:03On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.
37:08I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.
37:14I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.
37:23I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility.
37:27Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
37:32I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
37:36You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
37:40Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.
37:45You're not hired just to fill time and space.
37:48You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
37:57Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America, plays out in one small town.
38:05Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land.
38:08We need cities on a shining hill. This is Our Town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the
38:15site of a social experiment and fights back. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you?
38:22Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
38:27Do you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast?
38:30We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by.
38:33The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel.
38:37I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today?
38:43I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it.
38:48Oh, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more.
38:52And I guess I can share that, uh... No way.
38:55Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
39:01Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
39:06Bye.
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