Nico Echavaria seems to have been a bit of a random winner at the ZOZO Championship, but he actually has really found something with his irons lately, gaining six strokes on approach at the Black Desert Championship two starts before gaining over eight strokes with his approach play when he won in Japan. Outside of that, it's been a lack luster season from the winner of the Puerto Rico Open. Both his tour wins have come outside of the states now and dare we say it, but is he the new Tony Finau?
This week we head to a Mexican resort at Al Cardanol at Diamante, where hitting 80% of the fairways will leave you at the bottom half of the field in driving accuracy. As a result of the "glorified par 3" layout, green in regulation rates will also be through the roof, rendering around the green play and driving ability rather useless this week. We will be focusing on golfers who can hit their irons well and make putts! Erik Van Rooyen did both well when he won here last year.
For those of you who are new to the article, Breaking $100 is a comprehensive PGA betting guide on how to squeeze every cent out of your $100. We will be breaking $100 into a betting card of outrights, first-round leaders, placings, and a "farewell fiver," all in an attempt to turn a structured betting strategy into a profitable and entertaining Sunday sweat. $100 is easily divided or multiplied, so please only bet amounts that you can afford to lose. You can find me on X an unhealthy amount of the time @TheModelManiac if you have any questions, compliments, or insults for me.
Featured Promo: Get any full-season Props Premium Pass for 10% off using code BALLER. Win more with our two new Props Optimizer tools -- one for PrizePicks Props, and one for Sportsbook Betting Props. Find optimal prop bets and get our recommended picks daily! Go Premium, Win More!
Weekly Betting Tip
I started this article to keep you up to speed with my bets each week and also to help us grow as golf bettors. So, I will be sharing a random betting tip each week that may apply to casual bettors or people who take gambling on golf a little more seriously.
We will keep it simple this week and piggyback off of last week's betting tip about finding the best odds at different sports books by encouraging you to place your bets at books with the best odds that ALSO have the option to cash out. If you find a great number early in the morning and place that bet at a particular book that allows you to cash out, by the time all the other books release their odds you have the option to potentially move that bet to a book that has an even better number, simply by cashing out the original bet and placing the same bet at a better number elsewhere.
This way you have what you think is the best number locked in early, but still have the flexibility to capitalize on other books hanging a juicy one out there!
Outrights $10
The odds in all markets are significantly shorter this week as we have a smaller field that is top heavy with talent. But we feel like we found some solid numbers on the two golfers we are going to be picking to win this week.
Max Greyserman +2800 $2.10 X2 (3 places each way @ Bet365)
If you never got in on the Max Greyserman outright bet (there is a boosted +2000 out there on Bet365), I would have bet his Top 5 at +300, did I not grab his +2800 with three places each way! He has three 2nd place finishes in his last five starts and his putter is averaging +2.12 strokes PER ROUND in his last 10 rounds and +1.65 in his last 20. We NEED putters this week and he is just cooking with gas right now on that front.
His last 25 of 27 rounds are averaging +0.7 on approach, if your remove the -7.7 and -4.7 he lost at the FedEx (R1) and BMW (R1). He had some really weird outliers there that drop his average by half a stroke to +0.2, but he has gained in five of his last six rounds so that momentum on the iron side of things is moving nicely. Off the tee, expect him to be towards the top of the pack when it comes to accuracy (15th), so he should have hardly any concerns finding these massively wide fairways. He is not the worst ARG (33rd) in this field, but it's his worst of the four key categories, but we should expect hardly any missed greens this week, leaving that part of the game in the dust. Irons and putts will win this event!
Ben Griffin +2500 $2.42 ("without" market @ FD)
Just like Greyserman, Griffin's ARG game is the worst of the four key strokes gained areas (35th), but the rest of his game is ideal for this venue. Sitting in 23rd Off The Tee, his inaccuracies should be severely nullified here, allowing him to hit approach shots from the fairway more often than he is accustomed to. His iron play is what he really leans on to score, ranking 11th in that department entering the week which should set up ample birdie looks.
If we oversimplify the approach + putting criteria, Griffin grades out as the sixth best option in the field which should provide the additional momentum he gained with an 11th place finish at the Black Desert Championship.
The wide open fairways between volcanic rock in Utah make that course a great comp course option for multiple reasons outside of the similarities and easy nature of the course. They played there just three starts ago, so it is a very recent result and the field that played there consists of a lot of the same golfers who are teeing it up again this week. Most other comp courses like Kapalua and Augusta have not been played by any of these types of golfers who are fighting to stay inside the top 125 of the FedEx Cup.
Trying to find comp course with easy to hit fairways that 💩 THIS 💩 field has played at pic.twitter.com/kwR0ZGynC2
— Byron Lindeque (@TheModelManiac) November 4, 2024
Matti Schmid +3000 $2.02 @ Bet365
Schmid finished fifth at the Blacke Desert Classic, third at the Shriners and 16th at the Sanderson Farms, which are his last three starts. If he continues his trend of improving from 5th to 3rd to .... FIRST, we have a winner at +3000. The Black Desert finish is exciting given how similar we expect the course to play this week as mentioned above. He is in fantastic form and is one of the better putters amongst the top end players in this field. His ball striking, particularly off the tee has made an incredible turnaround the last three starts, which explains his sudden appearance at the top end of the leaderboard. Schmid has lost -0.24 strokes around the green per round, which will likely not haunt him as much here, allowing the rest of his game to guide him to the promised land this week.
Rico Hoey +4500 $1.35 @ Bet365
"How much do you want to bet that Uncle Rico (Hoey) can drive his golf ball over them mountains?" He has been driving the ball well, hitting his irons well and putting a lot better in his last three starts. The putter eluded him in Japan, but we are hoping for some Mexican magic to return with the flat stick. We have three finishes of T21, T3 and T22 entering the week and if he can keep his foot on the gas, he has a mighty fine chance of return back from over them mountains with some hardware!
Placements $85
For those of you new to this article, this is really where we make our money! Betting roughly $85 a week on placements this year, we are up over $200 this year so far. Hopefully we can continue to keep that momentum going to finish out the year while adding a few outrights onto the profit side of things too! Below is how we came to the bets we are placing in the placement market.
Here is how we are allocating our funds for this segment.
- Matti Schmid T5 +500 $3.88
- Rico Hoey T5 +700 $2.75
- JJ Spaun T10 +240 $8.05
- Hayden Springer T10 +700 $2.76
- Tom Hoge T20 +130 $14.86
- Keith Mitchell T20 +110 $17.56
- Lucas Glover T20 +110 $35.13 (two units on Glove, who is playing incredible golf right now)
The Farewell Fiver $5
This is just a little $5 fun round one 3-ball round robin to make sure that if we get four of the legs right, we still make some $$$ on the week. All five returns $107.21.
Good luck this week, and as always, may the odds be ever in your favor!!!
Win More With RotoBaller
Win more with expert tools and advice from proven winners! RotoBaller's PGA Premium Packages feature several savvy analysts and proven winners for DFS and betting.
Our very own Joe Nicely took down a big DraftKings DFS tournament for the Travelers Championship. And as an encore, RotoBaller subscriber @tenndolly2 won $100K on FanDuel with the help of Joe and the rest of our Premium PGA team:
If you read my articles @RotoBaller or listen to @TheTurnGolfPod I’ve been telling y’all it was #WinningSeason when golf came back! Shoutout to the entire @RotoBallerPGA squad and all you guys that support my work for all the ❤️ pic.twitter.com/07a4ynvbSU
— Joe Nicely (@JoeNicely) June 28, 2020
Between all the incredible Premium PGA DFS and Betting content and tools we put out each week, and our Premium Slack Community where we chat with our subscribers before lineups lock, RotoBaller PGA subscribers are armed with the tools, analysis, and advice to win more.Congrats @tenndolly2 ???
— RotoBaller PGA (@RotoBallerPGA) August 10, 2020
Thanks for being a @RotoBaller PGA DFS Premium subscriber & checking out all the amazing golf content that @JoeNicely produces every week! https://t.co/tHKZVsPbbt