Between Monday's Course Preview piece (found right here on RotoBaller), and last night's podcast (currently posted on our X page), we've given all of you every possible trend, key stat, and player take needed to make the most educated betting decisions possible this week at Silverado Country Club. This Wednesday article will now serve as a final bow to wrap up a jam-packed week of PGA content at Flag Hunting. No fluff, no rants or superfluous soliloquies, just the entirety of our 2024 Procore Championship outright betting card.
The six names on this betting card are aimed at returning about six times our investment. Because of the inflated odds associated with the outright market, it becomes even more imperative to remain disciplined when setting your unit allocations from this article's picks. Golf outright betting is a notoriously fickle beast, and multiple month-long droughts are very much within the range of outcomes. However, at these prices, one single hit can pay off many weeks of poor decision-making.
In the three-year history at Flag Hunting, we've been fortunate enough to cash a total of 26 outright winners (a 20.4% hit rate) for a profit of nearly 17,000 (betting roughly $350 per week) and an aggregate ROI of 37.1%. The volatility of the sport means I can't promise you a winner in any given tournament. But if you're willing to bet methodically and stick with the process, outright golf betting has the potential to be one of the most profitable (and enjoyable) betting sweats in the business. But I suppose I'd better keep my word about the necessary rants, so with no further ado, here's every bet I've made for the 2024 Procore Championship!
Although he came into the year on the back of titles at two of the Tour's most demanding venues (Quail Hollow and LACC), Wyndham Clark's 2024 has been largely highlighted by a repeated proficiency on the schedule's more intimate stops. From Pebble Beach to Harbour Town, River Highlands and Southwind, Wyndham has repeatedly raised his baseline when fairways begin to narrow, and when wedge play becomes the most coveted tool in a player's arsenal.
In fact, the argument can be easily made that Wyndham has turned himself into the best wedge player on the planet -- particularly from <100 yards. He ranks in the 98th percentile in both Strokes Gained/shot and Proximity to the hole over the last 12 months (a mark only surpassed by Scottie Scheffler in that time), and his Good Shot Percentage (categorized by an approach that finishes within five feet of the hole from <100 yards), sits at a whopping 23.3% -- beating the second-best mark in this category by 5.4%.
Wyndham's elite length will afford him many opportunities to flip wedges into these greens, and with the flat stick, he also boasts an incredible track record on West Coast poa annua: ranking 11th in this field in Strokes Gained: Putting over his last 36 rounds, and recording the fourth-best putting week of his entire career on these very greens two years ago (+7.7).
He may not be a Californian by birthright, but a win at Silverado would fit very nicely next to his two previous victories in the Golden State (LACC & Pebble Beach). The 16-1 boost currently available on 365 was the price I dreamed of on Monday morning, but I'd have no trouble dipping as low as 12-1 on this week's leading man.
Although Wyndham makes a great case for himself as the best wedge player from inside 100 yards, there is no other player on Tour that can argue against Tom Hoge as the class of the golfing world our other key wedge range. Hoge has been the PGA Tour frontrunner from 100-150 yards (a range that accounts for over 35% of Silverado's approach distribution), in each of the last two PGA Tour seasons, but over the last 12 months, the TCU-alum has really formed a hammer-lock in the advanced metrics.
Hoge leads the entire PGA Tour in Proximity to the Hole from 100-150 yards (17.4 ft.), and absolutely laps his contemporaries from a Strokes Gained Perspective. Over a 353-shot sample, Hoge has gained an average of 0.112 strokes per shot from this range -- a mark that bests the #2 player in this range (Lucas Glover), by the same margin as Glover is currently beating the #20 ranked player in this statistic (Hideki Matsuyama; +0.042).
If you've followed golf statistics for any amount of time, however, it won't surprise you to see Hoge written up for his approach play. But the case to be made for him this week extends far past his pedigree with the second shot. Hoge has gained strokes off-the-tee in five of his last six starts at Silverado CC, and sneakily, he's built a borderline elite profile as a poa annua putter.
Over his last 36 rounds, Tom ranks 10th in this field in putting on the four California poa courses, and his best result of the 2024 season to date (T3 at the Travelers Championship), came on a similarly wedge-intensive venue with bentgrass/poa annua greens. Already a champion at nearby Pebble Beach, and coming off of a year with three top-12 finishes in California alone, Silverado feels like the perfect venue for one of the game's premier ball-strikers to capture his second top-level trophy.
Like what you read today? You can show your support for Ian by using the promo code BALLER when purchasing a PGA Premium Pass. You get 10% off and full access to all of our Premium PGA articles, Spencer's data models, DFS tools, and Lineup Optimizer! You also get exclusive access to weekly betting picks from Spencer Aguiar, one of the top betting minds in the industry!
He's had a tumultuous run since winning Rookie of the Year honors in 2023, but after missing six of 11 cuts and recording no finishes better than 33rd from March-June, Eric Cole seems to have regained the form that made him one of the players of the Fall Swing 12 months ago.
Cole ended the PGA Tour season with seven consecutive made cuts, three top-seven finishes, and the vintage approach/short game combination that allowed him to burst onto the scene as a 35-year-old Tour rookie last season.
Over his last 24 rounds, Cole ranks 7th in Opportunities Gained, 11th in Birdie or Better Percentage, 1st in Par 5 scoring, and inside the top 20 in both Strokes Gained: Approach and SG: Putting. He proved last year he's more than capable of making a charge around Silverado's benign layout: finishing in solo-fourth while recording his best iron week of his PGA Tour career (+6.2).
12 months later, we're getting a 15-point discount on the betting board, despite the fact that his world ranking has risen from 69th to 52nd in that time. I don't see the Palm Beach-native as a drastically different player that we saw accrue four top-four finishes in five starts last Fall, and if books continue to value him as the slumping sophomore we saw in an isolated summer stretch, I envision Eric Cole being a consistent entity on future outright betting cards.
It's been nearly five years since Brendon Todd captured back-to-back Swing Season events in Bermuda and Mayakoba (which inevitably catapulted him to a ninth-place finish in the Regular season standings), but based on recent results, it seems the Atlanta-native is rounding into a vein of form that could produce a similarly magical Fall in 2024.
Todd ended his 2023-24 campaign on a run of five straight made cuts, three finishes inside the top 25, and maybe the hottest stretch of putting on the entire PGA Tour. From John Deere to St. Jude, Todd recorded four consecutive starts gaining at least 4.5 shots on the greens, and at this very tournament last season, the three-time Tour winner logged his best putting performance since the Wells Fargo in 2019 (+9.3).
Todd's combination of elite putting (5th in this field on poa annua since 2019), driving accuracy (7th in Fairway Percentage on the entire PGA Tour), and wedge play (4th in the field in Proximity <150 yards over the last 12 months), makes him a dream fit around a short course like Silverado. He's finished sixth and ninth here in the last two seasons, and at 45-1, all the recent signs are there for yet another run at a fourth PGA Tour title.
If we were handing out an "Eric Cole Award" for the 2024 PGA Tour season, you wouldn't have to look much further than 34-year-old Chan Kim. After a prolific nine-year professional stint playing primarily on the Asian/Japan Golf Tour , Kim debuted on the big stage after capturing two of the final five events in the 2023 Korn Ferry Season.
His maiden PGA voyage has produced a very solid results sheet: logging seven finishes of 14th or better and ending the year inside the top 100 of the regular season standings. Over his last five starts especially, the Korean-American has established himself as one of the Tour's most ascendant commodities: logging three finishes inside the top twelve, while gaining an average of 5.4 shots per tournament from tee-to-green.
Chan's long-term profile lines up very well with the test he'll be facing at Silverado this week, as his ranks 10th on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained on Approach Shots from 100-150 yards, 4th in this field Gaining Strokes in "Easier Scoring Conditions," and 7th in Total Ball-Striking. I see him as every bit of a threat as the other in-form names currently populating the 30-40/1 range on this betting board. Let's keep the peddle down at this depressed prices before the general public learns of this potential breakout star of this Fall campaign.
As a Filipino desperate for the return of a sports star post-Manny Pacquiao, I've been as invested as anyone in Manila-native Rico Hoey's maiden season on the PGA Tour. What I've witnessed is the emergence of of of the world's most underrated ball-striking profiles, who over the last few months, has made drastic steps in the part of the game that has caused him his greatest historic headaches.
Hailing from the University of Southern Cal -- Hoey quickly became known as one of the top drivers of the ball in the amateur ranks, even earning the nickname "WGD," or "World's Greatest Driver," from his college teammates. Eight years after his graduation, it's become clear they weren't overstating his acumen with the big stick, as Rico ranks inside the top 12 on the PGA Tour in both Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Total Driving.
His approach play hasn't been far behind as of late, as Hoey as gained an average of 1.8 shots per tournament with his iron play. Most notably, Rico recorded the best approach week of his PGA Tour career at the Rocket Mortgage Classic (+4.7), on a golf course in Detroit GC that features a similarly skewed distribution of approaches coming from inside of 150 yards.
Now returning back to his home state of California, Rico is also riding the best stretch of putting we've seen in his professional career: gaining an average of 2.3 strokes per start in his last five events, and ranking 30th in this field in putting over his last 24 rounds. He's recently gained 5.7 strokes on the bent/poa annua greens of Detroit GC, and paces the field in Par 5 scoring. Homeland bias aside, I feel 80-1 is a bridge too far in this field for a player carrying this sort of recent form. In a field with just three names in the OWGR Top 25, Rico's extremely live to not only capture the Philippines' first PGA Tour title, but also tighten California's historic grip on this Championship.