The PGA Tour’s Florida swing has concluded and players now head to Austin Country Club for this week’s WGC Dell Technologies Match Play event.
The only non-stroke play PGA To🦋ur event brings together 64 players who are grouped into 16 groups of four before a single-elimination bracket crowns the champion.
Jon Rahm (+1400) enters as the favorite to win in𝓡 the Lone Star state while Justin Thomas (+1600) and Viktor Hovland (+1800) closely follow.
But rather than focus on the outright market, I’m choosing to focus on the group futures for this event. Based on my model projections, I’ve identified three targets for those markets. All odds come courtesy of BetMGM and are reflective at time of writing.
Modeling Strategy
Before I ♎dive into my best group futures bets, a quick word on my modeling strategy for this event.
I used five statistical factors to project each player’s performance while also using two situational categories to further narrow the results. The five statistical categories are as follows — strokes-gained: approach, strokes-gained: tee-to-green, strokes-gained: putting, birdies or better gained and good drives gained.
Once I sorted players based on those five stats, I refined the results to include the last 36 rounds with two situational factoꦅrs added. Those two refinements were performance on Bermuda greens and perꦑformance on Pete Dye designs.
Best Bet #1 – Jon Rahm to win Group 1 (+140)
Some may call this a square play, but my model mak♛e𒆙s the reigning U.S. Open champions far and away the best player in this group.
Over the last 36 rounds, Rahm projects out as the seventh-best player in this field, lar🌞gely due in part to ranking out sixth in good drives gained. Plus, even though he ranks out 17th in the field in strokes-gained: approach, a large chunk of that ranking can be attributed to his performance at the PLAYERS, where he lost 6.6 strokes to the field on approach.
But before that event, Rahm averag💜ed +3.92 strokes on approach in his previous five outings.
Plus, the gap between Rahm and his three group competitors is quite sizable in his model. The realistic challenger (Patrick Reed) sits 30th overall in my model while Cameron Young and Sebastian Mun✅oz sit 58th and 51st, respectively, in the field of 64.
There’s always the threat of Reed finding a hot putter and snatching this group, but I believe Rahm’s price should be closer to +120. As a result, I’m happy to take the implied probability edge and back the favorite to advance.
Best Bet #2 – Patrick Cantlay to win Group 4 (+180)
Let’s hope a week off was the perfect antidote for Cantlay’s missed cut at TPC Sawgrass and he restores his recent form this week.
Fellow Group 4 competitors Keith Mitchel and Seamus Power arrive in Austin 55th and 49th in my model, respectively, along with little match play experience to their names. That leaves Sungjae Im as, in my opinion, the sole challenger to Cantlay’s group victory.
Much like Rahm’s group, the path to Cantlay losing this group is Im igniting his putter and winning a putting contest. Im enters this event having lost strokes on approach in three straight and five of his last seven. Further, he has lost strokes tee-to-green in three of his last four.
On the flip-side, Cantlay gained strokes tee-to-green in nine straight events before a disappointing performance in that category at The Players Championship. Further, my model rates him no worse than 12th in the field in the three most important categories — SG: Approach, Birdie or Better Gained and SG: T2G.
Lastly, I believe it’s worth noting Cantlay is coming off a 3-0-1 performance at the Ryder Cup this past fall, a performance that should give him an extra leg up in this group.
Best Bet #3 – Dustin Johnson to win Group 8 (+190)
Surely this bet will turn out to be too goo🥂d to be true as my mod𒁃eling makes DJ far and away the best player in this group.
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The 2020 Masters wi🔯nner enters this event eighth overall in my model, largely due in part to his performance in the Birdies or better gained category. Over the last 36 rounds, Johnson is first overall in that category and has a 45-spot advantage in that category over his next nearest group competitor.
His three group competitors — Max Homa, Mackenzie Hughes and Matthew Wolff — all rank out pretty low in the SG: T2G category with all three ranking in the bottom 15 places of that metric.
Overall, Johnson, a former winner at this event, sits 8th in my model. The next nearest group competitor (Homa) comes in at 50th. Like Cantlay, too, Johnson is coming off a superb 5-0-0 performance at the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, another Dye desi🌠gn.
For all those reasons, I believe Johnson should be closer to +115 to win this group, so I’m happy to take a shot at +190.