Volatility is the name of the game in golf, and picking winners isn't easy. With fields of 150-plus golfers sometimes being separated by how a putt or two falls each week, predicting golf can be absurdly tough.
We'll never be able to capture everything that goes into a golfer's expectations for a week, but we can try to account for that by simulating out the weekend and seeing what happens.
The Process
Over the years, I have made plenty of tweaks to my original golf model, which uses a combination of the OWGR's field strength numbers and datagolf's field strength numbers to adjust each golfer's score relative to the field (on the PGA Tour, the European Tour, and the Korn Ferry Tour).
The ultimate goal is to place a score from the Waste Management Open, the BMW International Open, and the Knoxville Open on level playing fields. This adjusted strokes metric lets me see how golfers are performing across all tours. From there, a golfer's adjusted stroke data is combined with their round-to-round variance to see how the field is likely to perform when playing out the event thousands of times.
In addition to that long-term adjusted form, I factor in course-level adjustments for course fit.
I run a second model that uses more granular strokes gained data, which allows me to adjust for course fit very easily. The results are averaged out.
I let the data do the talking and don't make many tweaks if any. Golfers with a small sample get regressed to a low-end PGA Tour player to round out their samples. Data points are weighted more heavily toward recent performance.
Here are the most likely winners for The Genesis Invitational, according to the models.
| Golfer | Simulated Win% | Simulated Top-10% | Simulated Made Cut% | FanDuel Sportsbook Win Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dustin Johnson | 12.1% | 49.8% | 90.6% | +550 |
| Xander Schauffele | 7.5% | 43.8% | 89.8% | +1500 |
| Justin Thomas | 7.5% | 42.0% | 88.7% | +1300 |
| Jon Rahm | 6.3% | 40.0% | 89.4% | +1100 |
| Bryson DeChambeau | 6.0% | 39.2% | 87.8% | +1800 |
| Patrick Cantlay | 4.5% | 32.2% | 84.3% | +1500 |
| Rory McIlroy | 4.3% | 28.6% | 81.2% | +1300 |
| Tony Finau | 2.6% | 24.5% | 81.9% | +2800 |
| Russell Henley | 2.0% | 20.9% | 78.4% | +8500 |
| Collin Morikawa | 1.8% | 19.0% | 76.7% | +3800 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | 1.6% | 16.7% | 73.3% | +4300 |
| Viktor Hovland | 1.6% | 18.4% | 78.2% | +3400 |
| Brooks Koepka | 1.5% | 14.6% | 71.5% | +2400 |
| Scottie Scheffler | 1.5% | 16.2% | 73.0% | +4600 |
| Joaquin Niemann | 1.5% | 17.8% | 75.5% | +4000 |
| Adam Scott | 1.4% | 14.9% | 71.8% | +3300 |
| Matthew Fitzpatrick | 1.4% | 17.2% | 74.8% | +8000 |
| Si Woo Kim | 1.2% | 12.4% | 67.0% | +10000 |
| Matthew Wolff | 1.1% | 11.4% | 64.6% | +8000 |
| Sam Burns | 1.0% | 12.6% | 67.9% | +11000 |
| Jason Kokrak | 1.0% | 11.2% | 67.1% | +11000 |
| Brendon Todd | 1.0% | 12.3% | 68.4% | +14000 |
| Jordan Spieth | 1.0% | 9.6% | 63.6% | +3400 |
| Abraham Ancer | 0.9% | 13.4% | 72.7% | +7500 |
| Bubba Watson | 0.9% | 11.7% | 69.0% | +4300 |
| Cameron Davis | 0.9% | 11.8% | 68.7% | +8000 |
| Will Zalatoris | 0.9% | 13.7% | 74.3% | +7000 |
| Kevin Na | 0.8% | 10.9% | 65.4% | +7500 |
| Cameron Smith | 0.8% | 10.6% | 66.6% | +8000 |
| Carlos Ortiz | 0.8% | 9.7% | 67.5% | +6500 |
| Kevin Streelman | 0.7% | 9.5% | 65.1% | +16000 |
| Talor Gooch | 0.7% | 10.1% | 65.1% | +17000 |
| Lanto Griffin | 0.7% | 10.5% | 66.9% | +13000 |
| Max Homa | 0.6% | 7.9% | 59.7% | +4700 |
| Harold Varner III | 0.6% | 8.9% | 63.1% | +19000 |
| Gary Woodland | 0.6% | 8.2% | 62.4% | +13000 |
| Charley Hoffman | 0.5% | 8.7% | 62.9% | +14000 |
| Brian Harman | 0.5% | 8.9% | 68.6% | +16000 |
| Cameron Tringale | 0.5% | 10.4% | 70.4% | +7500 |
| Sergio Garcia | 0.5% | 8.8% | 67.6% | +6500 |
| Joel Dahmen | 0.5% | 7.2% | 58.0% | +23000 |
| Corey Conners | 0.5% | 9.6% | 67.5% | +11000 |
| Matt Kuchar | 0.5% | 8.3% | 63.6% | +16000 |
| Rickie Fowler | 0.5% | 6.9% | 59.9% | +13000 |
Dustin Johnson has been great here but has just one win, so +550 odds are pretty tough to get behind. The models like him to win more often than anyone else, but it's not enough to bet him at +550.
The value at the top of the board is on Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, and Daniel Berger again. I've already bet DeChambeau. He's an 83rd-percentile poa putter over the past 100 rounds relative to this field, and there are no real flaws in his data. Schauffele's stats put him on par with the elite, easily, but he's had some awful luck with converting wins. Part of that is on him, but it's also some tough breaks.
There's not a ton of value elsewhere, and winners here are usually the elite guys: Adam Scott, J.B. Holmes, Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson are the past five winners.
My outrights include DeChambeau, Collin Morikawa, and Matthew Wolff. I also have top-10s on Sam Burns and Cameron Tringale and a top-20 on Joel Dahmen so far.