Flag Hunting: PGA Betting Picks - 2024 PLAYERS Championship

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 y'all every possible trend, key stat, and player take needed to make the most educated betting decisions possible this week at TPC Sawgrass. 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 PLAYERS Championship outright betting card.

The six names on this betting card are aimed at returning ~6.5 times our investment (including potential in-tournament adds). 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 two-year history at Flag Hunting, we've been fortunate enough to cash a total of 22 outright winners (a 21.1% hit rate) for a profit of over $15,000 (betting roughly $350 per week) and an aggregate ROI of 40.4%. 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, the outright golf betting market 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 PLAYERS Championship!

PLAYERS Championship Betting Card

Sam Burns (40-1)

Sam Burns is in this thing!

Birdie on 6 gets him to -14 and +850 to win⛳️ pic.twitter.com/fjx9JKFjSi

— Golfbet (@Golfbet) February 11, 2024

With the marked improvements he's made with his ball-striking and a recent run of form that saw him record four consecutive top 10s on the West Coast, I didn't foresee one bad round at Bay Hill being enough to plummet Sam Burns' outright number into the 40s this week at Sawgrass.

That's exactly what books are offering across market on the five-time Tour winner, however, as Sam returns to a layout (and more importantly a putting surface), that has netted him some of the best results he's seen in his pro career. Burns' biggest individual win to date came last year at the WGC-Match Play, another Pete Dye design with similarly overseeded Bermuda greens, and two of his victories have come a few hours down the road at Innisbrook -- which shares Sawgrass's club-down, positional philosophy off of the tee, as well as a similar agronomy on the greens.

Burns has also fared well on the closest comparable we have to Sawgrass within the TPC Network: TPC Scottsdale. He's finished third and sixth there in each of the last two seasons, and many parallels can be drawn between the two venues with their punitive approach to wayward tee shots, their heavy emphasis on middle iron play, and, again, their bermudagrass putting surfaces seasonally overseeded with Poa Trivialis.

Burns had a rough go of things on Sunday in Orlando, as a final round 78 pushed him 22 spots down the leaderboard to settle in a tie for 30th. In Rounds 1-3, however, he gained strokes in each of the two ball-striking categories. He put himself squarely in the mix heading into the final round at a venue he's never been able to consistently figure out. Sawgrass's moderate scoring conditions should be much more conducive to the venues we've seen Burns thrive on in years past, and let's not forget that he entered the final round of 2022's PLAYERS Championship just one shot off the 54-hole lead.

For a player who ranks inside the top 15 in Total Driving and Weighted Proximity to this point in 2024, and possesses one of the biggest advantages in the sport on these green complexes, 40-1 feels like a massive overreaction based on a singular bad day around a brutally tough track. It's taken me a few more checkpoints than most to recognize Sam as a threat to enter the top 10 conversation, but at this spot on the odds board, I don't think you even need to be particularly high on him to take a stand this week.

Will Zalatoris (40-1)

Although Will couldn't quite get us across the finish line at Bay Hill, my main takeaway after following him for nearly two full rounds was that we could officially say goodbye to any 35-1 outright prices from now on. That prediction proved incorrect within 36 hours of me leaving Orlando, as BookMaker dropped a 40-1 on Will yesterday morning.

For the life of me, I cannot fathom why the market continues to value struggling entities like Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, and Viktor Hovland this far above a player of Zalatoris's caliber -- who's currently on a run of form that rivals his peak stretch in the summer of 2022. In three starts at Torrey Pines, Riviera, and Bay Hill, Zalatoris has recorded finishes of fourth, second, and 13th, and gained an average of 1.52 strokes per round between his driving and iron play.

More pertinently for this week is the fact that Will has become just as much of an accuracy maven off of the tee as anything: ranking second in last week's field in Fairways Hit (71.4%). His recent change back to a 44.5-inch driver from the 46" shaft he used in 2022 has made him a much more reliable entity off of the tee. Given the potency of his iron play, this newfound bump in driving accuracy is a much more complimentary skill than the extra distance he picked up two years back.

In addition, Zalatoris' putter continues to fire at an above-average rate on the PGA Tour, as the 1.3 strokes he gained on Bay Hill's greens marks the fourth straight week in his comeback tour for which he's putted above field average. In two healthy starts around TPC Sawgrass in 2021 and '22, Will gained 7.3 and 6.8 strokes with his ball striking. If his current trajectory continues, I see no reason why this PLAYERS Championship can't provide another key stepping stone toward establishing his spot back among the elite names in professional golf.

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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod

2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 Units

Total Winnings: +311.229 Units

Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

Hideki Matsuyama (45-1)

Yet another name that books don't seem to be buying the recent form on, Hideki Matsuyama followed up his marvelous win at Riviera with another contending effort around Bay Hill. If anything, his 12th-place result does a disservice to just how relevant Matsuyama was throughout last week's tournament, as Hideki ended each of the first three rounds inside of the top four on the leaderboard.

This quality result in Orlando marks the fourth top-25 finish Matsuyama has put together over his last five starts. The 4.5 strokes he gained with his ball-striking was the best mark we've seen out of Hideki in 2024, and now we arrive at a venue at which Matsuyama has seen an abundance of past success.

In over eight starts here at TPC Sawgrass since 2014, Matsuyama has recorded six finishes of 23rd or better (including three top 10s). He's lost strokes off of the tee just twice, gained at least two strokes to the field on approach on seven of eight occasions, and even recorded the second-best putting week of his entire career here back in 2016 (+6.5).

Of course, all of these highlights don't even include the course record-tying 63 he shot here in round one of 2020's rendition, earning Matsuyama the first-round lead before COVID shut the tournament down the next morning.

At 45-1, this is yet another instance of a golfer in good form, with great course history, who should be coming into this week with a ton of confidence off of a quality finish, yet has been discounted 10+ points on outright oddsboards. Given their recent stretches of play, I see no reason why Burns, Zalatoris, or Matsuyama should sit a full tier behind the likes of  Morikawa, Max Homa, or Hovland, but I'll gladly scoop up the opportunity to add all three to the betting card at a sizeable discount.

Brian Harman (66-1)

🚨🎯 Brian Harman has taken a commanding 5 shot lead after converting a dart at the 12th. #TheOpen

pic.twitter.com/13vcDBMLzE

— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) July 22, 2023

Although our 2023 Open Champion couldn't quite reverse his historic struggles on the West Coast, a 12th-place finish at last week's Arnold Palmer Invitational should sign to all comers that Brian Harman is ready to build on his illustrious trophy cabinet.

Harman recorded his best career finish around Bay Hill's 7,460-yard layout this past week, but maybe more impressively, he attained that finishing position without the aid of his best historic weapon. Harman lost a total of 2.1 strokes with his putter over four days in Orlando -- a roughly 3.5-stroke regression from his career-long Bermuda baselines. To compensate for this rare cold stretch on the greens, Harman finished fourth in the field on Approach (+5.6 Strokes Gained), and as always, barely put a foot wrong off of the tee: ranking third in Good Drive Percentage.

This precision-based approach off of the tee has served the UGA alum quite well over the course of his career at TPC Sawgrass, as Harman has gained strokes off of the tee in eight consecutive PLAYERS Championship starts (ranking 2nd in Total Driving in that time), and recorded three finishes of eighth or better since 2015. He's also found some of his best historic putting success on these overseeded green complexes, ranking third in this field in SG: Putting at the likes of PGA West, Innisbrook, TPC Scottsdale, and right here in Ponte Vedra.

Unlike the innate disadvantages his lack of length would have garnered him at venues like Bay Hill or Riviera over the last few weeks, the positional routing of TPC Sawgrass should be a very comfortable setup for the ever-reliable Harman. Keep in mind that throughout his storied history around Sawgrass, Harman has never once gained more than 2.5 strokes on Approach. If the iron play shows any sort of carryover from last week, the 70/1 pricetags I currently see on the market make for one of the best values on the odds board.

Wyndham Clark (60-1)

I've decided to group together the last two names on the betting card since, unlike the previous four, they all fit a certain profile for success around TPC Sawgrass. Wyndham Clark and Sahith Theegala's inclusion speaks to more of a macro-stance I'm taking as books continue to price two of 2024's biggest risers at ridiculous outright numbers.

Starting with Clark, who became the number five golfer on the planet following a runner-up finish at Bay Hill last week but cannot seem to garner oddsmakers' respect no matter how many top finishes he piles up on marquee leaderboards. He impressed me a ton with his overall driving acumen last week, as the former Oregon Duck ranked fourth on the week in SG: Off-the-Tee at a golf course where he had historically recorded some pretty putrid driving splits.

Wyndham surprisingly recorded one of his best driving weeks of 2023 right here last season, as he exceeded the field average in both driving distance (289.9), and driving accuracy (62.5%), to rate out as the fourth-best total driver in the field. Of course, like Burns and Harman, Clark's putter can get as hot as anyone on Tour, and Wyndham has routinely raised his approach baselines as the Tour has arrived at these increasingly demanding ball-striking venues:

• +9.7 Stroke Gained on Approach over his last two starts at Bay Hill
• +3.2 last year at Muirfield Village
• +5.9 last year at Innisbrook
• +8.9 last year at Quail Hollow
• +8.8 over two years at TPC Scottsdale

*each of these five venues ranks inside the top 15 on Tour in terms of SG: Approach difficulty

Couple these statistical trends with a player who has continually proven he's up to the moment on some of this sport's biggest stages, and it's hard to argue that anyone comes into this week with a higher ceiling. I'm not sure how large of a sample size it's going to require before books price Wyndham alongside his peers in the Official World Golf Rankings, but until then, I'll be more than happy to scoop him up at these disrespectful prices.

Sahith Theegala (70-1)

Similar to Wyndham (just without the end product), Theegala has become one of my biggest "Stock-Up" candidates through the first two and a half months of 2024. The blue-chip product out of Pepperdine has always possessed a propensity for popping up on the leaderboards of golf's biggest events, but his fatal flaw off of the tee kept Theegala from establishing himself as a consistent entity every week.

Over the last six months, however, it would seem as if Sahith has turned that weakness into one of the more reliable shots in his toolkit, as he's gained strokes off of the tee in 10 of 11 starts since last August. These performances haven't exactly come on the Tour's soft underbelly of driving courses either, as his three best driving performances in that stretch have come at the vaunted links of Torrey Pines (+3.4), TPC Scottsdale (2.6), and Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill (+3.9).

If these new driving baselines are a thing to count on going forward, we could be looking at a player with every ingredient necessary for a breakout campaign. Theegala already possesses one of the game's premier short games (ranking fifth in this field over his last 50 rounds when combining SG: Around the Greens and Putting), and like Clark, has showcased a stellar ability to raise his approach splits at some of the Tour's most demanding venues (Riviera, Muirfield Village, Torrey Pines, LACC, etc.).

The Sawgrass history does leave a bit to be desired, but you could have brought up very similar concerns about the last two PLAYERS Champions prior to their triumphs (Scottie Scheffler and Cam Smith combined for just one finish better than 55th in eight starts leading up to their respective victories). Plus, Theegala has fared very well on a selection of key comp. courses:

• Runner-up at the 2022 Travelers
• 3rd and 5th in two of his last three starts at TPC Scottdale
• 5th at last year's RBC Heritage
• T6 at Bay Hill last week

Based on his current run of form, and the marked improvement in one of his key areas of concern, I don't think it's outlandish to call Sahith a top-15 player on the planet already. He's come close to his breakout victory on three separate occasions through 2024, and at 70-1, I'm more than willing to follow the breadcrumbs toward his inevitable ascension.

Best of luck, guys, and happy hunting!

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