golf picks for january

[dankhank]

a new season has started for the pga tour - and i am going to try betting on it again. last year was pretty much breakeven for me in official and unofficial picks. golf is the only sport where i am comfortable with my body of knowledge to originate picks myself and share them with other people.

that being said, i still have a lot to learn, and to be honest, i don't really watch that much golf on tv anymore. i might change that this year, depending on how serious i get. i spend $100/year to access tour-tips.com results database and weekly picks.

one problem with golf is not many books offer good golf odds, so in many cases you are going head to head with pinnacle to beat it. that being said, here are two pinny openers i just saw that i played for the sony hawaii open:

singh -112 over furyk - 1.12 units to win 1
green +103 over allenby - .97 to win 1

singh was around -140 to beat furyk last week, and then he won the tourney. vijay has much better course form than furyk here (former winner), and should benefit from them shortening the rough more. don't get this line. green an up and coming player, whereas allenby's career may be on the decline - this is one of my favorite subsets.

posted picks 2005:
22-27 -4.20 matchups
4-5 +9.89 props

[Troll_Inc]

What sort of thigns do you look for when betting golf?

Seems to me that golf results are going to be highly correlated to past results at a certain tournament (course type), and how well a player is currently playing. This of course is in addition to how good a player actually is as indicated by their stats.

Stats: I think I'd have to give a slight edge to RA. He's a slightly better player than NG.
This might be an interesting stat comparision link for heads up golf betting...it isn't working for me though.

Allenby's stats

Nathan Green's stats

Course: I don't know anything about the course, but looks like NG did well there last year finishing 5th or so? RA didn't compete.

How well they are playing. Doesn't look like either of them played last week?

[dankhank]

they both played three australian tour events in december and green did much better in all of them, including a win.

i look at a player's recent form, i try to guess whether they are slightly underrated or overrated by the betting public, i think about their form on similar courses to that week's track, i remember how lesser known players do under pressure. i think the public sometimes takes longer to notice up and coming players than sharps do - like ogilvy was a guy i checkmarked a couple years ago with his sweet swing.

just any pieces of info that i know, but might not be in the line fully. a lot of times you pick up little things watching golf on the weekends or the golf channel... this is where i'm worried about falling behind.

i study results a lot. i don't look at player stats that much, except to check what i think about a course matching a player. like today i noticed that vijay's driving accuracy stats were better in 2006 than i thought (middle-ish of pack), so i didn't factor that into my capping as much versus furyk, since i know the hawaii course has pretty tight fairways.