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 very easily adjust for course fit. 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 men's Olympics, according to the models.
| Golfer | FanDuel Salary | Win% | Top-10% | FanDuel Sportsbook Win Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xander Schauffele | $11,800 | 9.9% | 55.0% | +900 |
| Collin Morikawa | $12,000 | 8.9% | 53.1% | +700 |
| Viktor Hovland | $11,400 | 8.3% | 50.7% | +1100 |
| Paul Casey | $11,000 | 6.6% | 43.9% | +1400 |
| Justin Thomas | $11,600 | 5.9% | 43.9% | +1000 |
| Patrick Reed | $11,100 | 5.8% | 40.8% | +1400 |
| Abraham Ancer | $10,700 | 4.9% | 39.2% | +2000 |
| Corey Conners | $10,200 | 4.5% | 38.3% | +2700 |
| Cameron Smith | $10,500 | 4.2% | 34.7% | +2000 |
| Rory McIlroy | $11,500 | 4.1% | 36.0% | +1200 |
| Joaquin Niemann | $10,300 | 3.9% | 35.2% | +2000 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | $11,300 | 3.3% | 32.9% | +1100 |
| Sungjae Im | $10,000 | 2.4% | 27.1% | +2200 |
| Christiaan Bezuidenhout | $9,700 | 2.4% | 25.5% | +3700 |
| Shane Lowry | $10,600 | 2.2% | 27.5% | +2000 |
| Alex Noren | $9,200 | 1.8% | 22.2% | +5000 |
| Siwoo Kim | $9,000 | 1.7% | 23.2% | +4200 |
| Carlos Ortiz | $8,400 | 1.7% | 21.9% | +6000 |
| Tommy Fleetwood | $9,900 | 1.7% | 21.7% | +2900 |
| Marc Leishman | $9,800 | 1.4% | 18.6% | +3100 |
| Jhonattan Vegas | $8,500 | 1.2% | 19.8% | +5000 |
| Guido Migliozzi | $8,900 | 1.1% | 17.5% | +4500 |
| Sebastian Munoz | $8,200 | 1.0% | 16.3% | +6500 |
| Antoine Rozner | $8,100 | 0.9% | 16.5% | +9000 |
| Guillermo Mito Pereira | $7,800 | 0.8% | 15.4% | +8000 |
| Thomas Pieters | $8,700 | 0.8% | 15.5% | +5000 |
| Garrick Higgo | $9,300 | 0.8% | 14.1% | +4100 |
| Matthias Schwab | $8,000 | 0.7% | 12.3% | +10000 |
| Mackenzie Hughes | $8,600 | 0.7% | 14.7% | +6000 |
| C.T. Pan | $7,700 | 0.6% | 12.3% | +13000 |
| Sepp Straka | $7,500 | 0.5% | 10.7% | +21000 |
| Yuan Carl Yechun | $7,400 | 0.5% | 6.4% | +21000 |
| Kalle Samooja | $7,300 | 0.5% | 9.4% | +21000 |
| Thomas Detry | $8,300 | 0.4% | 10.4% | +6500 |
| Rasmus Hojgaard | $7,900 | 0.3% | 7.5% | +13000 |
| Henrik Norlander | $7,800 | 0.3% | 9.1% | +10000 |
| Jazz Janewattananond | $7,700 | 0.3% | 7.4% | +12000 |
| Fabrizio Zanotti | $7,000 | 0.3% | 6.5% | +21000 |
| Anirban Lahiri | $7,600 | 0.3% | 8.1% | +21000 |
| Joachim B. Hansen | $7,100 | 0.3% | 6.7% | +27000 |
| Adri Arnaus | $7,600 | 0.3% | 5.9% | +18000 |
| Ryan Fox | $8,000 | 0.3% | 7.9% | +10000 |
| Rory Sabbatini | $7,500 | 0.3% | 6.0% | +15000 |
| Adrian Meronk | $7,200 | 0.2% | 6.8% | +27000 |
| Wu Ashun | $7,000 | 0.2% | 4.4% | +32000 |
| Maximilian Kieffer | $7,300 | 0.2% | 4.5% | +27000 |
| Rafael Campos | $7,000 | 0.1% | 4.2% | +42000 |
| Scott Vincent | $7,100 | 0.1% | 3.1% | +27000 |
| Kristian Krogh Johannessen | $7,000 | 0.1% | 3.9% | +42000 |
| Rikuya Hoshino | $7,900 | 0.1% | 3.9% | +10000 |
| Sami Valimaki | $7,200 | 0.1% | 3.5% | +21000 |
| Hurly Long | $7,000 | 0.1% | 2.1% | +42000 |
| Romain Langasque | $7,400 | 0.0% | 3.0% | +21000 |
| Renato Paratore | $7,000 | 0.0% | 1.9% | +21000 |
| Jorge Campillo | $7,300 | 0.0% | 2.7% | +27000 |
| Ondrej Lieser | $7,000 | 0.0% | 1.2% | +42000 |
| Udayan Mane | $7,000 | 0.0% | 0.6% | +50000 |
| Juvic Pagunsan | $7,000 | 0.0% | 0.6% | +42000 |
| Gunn Charoenkul | $7,000 | 0.0% | 1.0% | +42000 |
| Gavin Green | $7,000 | 0.0% | 0.1% | +32000 |
Among the favorites, the model views Xander Schauffele (+900 on Golf odds) as a slight negative value but a much better one than Collin Morikawa (+700).
Viktor Hovland (+1100) and Paul Casey (+1400) are fair values, and Abraham Ancer (+2000) is a slightly positive value himself.
The heaviest value option on the board is Corey Conners (+2700), whose odds should be +2100, according to his simulation odds.
Other golfers with longer odds who rate out well include Carlos Ortiz (+6000) and Alexander Noren (+5000).
I'm finding myself pulled toward Patrick Reed (+1400) despite his underperformance in the win simulation model simply because of his success representing the United States and in smaller field events. He does have some travel concerns, for what it's worth.
Reed, Conners, Oritz, and Mito Pereira (+8000) will all be on my card this week.