Introducing Fairway Phantom & the New Orb PGA: Your Gateway to Golf

We are thrilled to announce that the Orb is expanding! We are entering into the crazy world of Golf and, in doing so, welcoming a new member to the Orb team. Although NFL picks modeling will still be my main focus, Andy and I are looking to add new sports and content to the page. We want to create a more year-round product for you and not be solely reliant on the NFL season. We are still based on analytics, but creating a model or finding a new team member with an existing one can be challenging and time-consuming. As we branch out, we may start with content writers who are passionate about their respective sports and look to later invest in a model once we see a strong following. So without further ado, please join us in welcoming Fairway Phantom to the Orb! When we decided on golf, I immediately told Andy that I knew the right guy for the job. The Phantom is a golf nut who is always watching and wants to talk about the most recent headlines from across the game. He is also known to put down a wager or two on tournaments. Because it is the Masters I threw together some analysis that you can find at the bottom of the blog, but unlike our NFL algorithm, any picks you see on one of his blogs will come right from Fairway Phantom himself, with all the golf logic behind why he likes the pick. And now over to Fairway:

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First off, it's a pleasure to join the Orb team to bring some insights into the world of pro golf! While there are thousands of ways to bet on this sport, especially during major tournaments, I hope I can shed some light on interesting story lines and trends to pay attention to as you put your slips in. With that out of the way, let's get into it!

Hello friends and welcome to Masters week! The boys are buzzin’ down in Augusta, and whether you're on-site, at Thursday brunch, or glued to your second screen, there's plenty of reasons to tune in. It all kicks off Thursday morning at 8:00 ET with our Honorary Starters so make sure you get your slips in beforehand to lock in the best odds. Once the balls start flying, anyone you will actually want to bet will lose value the whole way.

Let’s start by taking a look back to Sunday and our last guy to earn his way in. Akshay Bhatia, the 22 year old American, held on to go wire-to-wire over an insane run from Denny McCarthy that pushed the Valero Texas Open to a playoff. McCarthy threw up 7 birdies in a row to finish before he threw up on himself to give the tournament away on the first playoff hole. A true chunk that will haunt him for a while, led to a bit of an anticlimactic ending that was more fitting of my game after a New England winter.

Back to Bhatia, he has been the brightest new guy on tour this year but experience generally trumps talent at The Masters. On top of him claiming that he popped his shoulder out on 18 while celebrating, Augusta National is not a friendly place to first time participants. Only 3 players have ever won their first time out and the last was Fuzzy Loeller in 1979. Doesn’t mean he can’t make a run, but I wouldn’t be tossing too much cash at the hot hand to win this week! This doesn't mean all newbies aren’t worth a look, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Unlike the other 3 majors, we do get some advantage from the fact that The Masters is held at the same track every year. Players who have had success here typically build on their performances in follow up visits so let's take a look at a few that I’ll be watching.

• Scottie Scheffler (+450) - The clear #1 in the world will be in contention again this week. In his 4 previous starts at Augusta he's finished T19 (2020), T18 (2021), 1st (2022), T10 (2023). In his 15 major starts, he has been in the top-10 in 9, top-5 in 5 and only missed 1 cut (2022 PGA Championship). One hell of a run! Not a sexy pick at +450 but don’t be shocked if he takes it home for the second time. 

• Xander Schauffele (+1400) - This guy is dying for a breakthrough performance. In his 5 starts at Augusta he’s T2 (2019), T17 (2020) T3 (2021), CUT (2022) and T10 (2023). In his 26 major starts, he has 11 top-10s, 6 top-5s and a pair of 2nds and 3rds. +140 for a Top-10 finish this week is well within his ability right now, the question just comes down to if he can finish. Also, it’d be a shocker if he ended up outside the Top 20 so that may be a good one to tack on one of the specials the sportsbooks have out there.

• Patrick Reed (+8000) - Reed probably the most unlikeable guy in the field for a million reasons but that doesn't mean he's not an absolute menace at Augusta National. Since claiming his green jacket with a win in 2018, he's finished in the top-10 in 3 of 5 starts with a T4 in 2023. The lines on this guy are juicy! At +1200 to Top-5, +500 to Top-10, and +190 to Top-20, I will be looking to stick a little on each of these and see if the head beats the heart this week.

Out of all the guys making their debut at Augusta National this week, the one I’m keeping my eye on is Wyndham Clark. He has shot up to #4 in the World Golf Rankings since his U.S. Open win last year at L.A. Country Club and his solid start to the 2024 season. A win at Pebble Beach, 2nd at The Arnie, and a heartbreaking lip out on the 72nd for 2nd at the Players last month have given us all a good idea of this man’s potential. At +4000 to win and +750 to Top-5, this is the debutant I will be looking to take a swing on. 

Oh and if that’s not enough ammo to get you on the Wyndham Clark and Xander Schauffele train, check out what the Orb Wizard whipped up at the end!

Before we finish up I did want to quickly hit on a few LIV guys that will be in the field and may not be getting as much attention given their comical coverage on The CW. 

• Brooks Kopeka (+2000) - He’s been admittedly bad in his last 2 starts but those weren't majors. He’s always a threat in the big ones and will be worth a few bucks till he proves otherwise.

• Joaquin Niemann (+2800) - The Chilean has been on fire since going to LIV. In 5 events since the start of February, he has 2 wins, a T4 and a T9. While he hasn’t  finished above T16 in his 3 starts at The Masters, he’s also never been walking around with this kind of game. Expect him to be in contention come Sunday.

• Bryson Dechambeau (+3500) - When this guy’s on, he’s near unbeatable. You don't card a 58 final round last August by accident. Bryson has been in the top-10 in each of his last 4 starts and always walks around like he’s got something to prove, so don’t expect this week to be any different. 

Regardless of how you fill out your slips this week, enjoy the spectacle of it all. On Sunday afternoon, you will get to see a man accomplish a childhood dream that took him a lifetime to accomplish. Get out the pimento cheese sandwiches and mint juleps boys, it’s Masters week! 

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It wouldn’t be an Orb newsletter without some data. I didn’t build a predictive model but created a dataset on past Masters winners to see if there were any trend commonalities in how players were playing heading into Augusta. I gathered data across different scoring metrics for any winners with available information dating back to Phil Mickelson’s win in 2010. Some years and winners were not included due to a lack of PGA data on the player heading into the Masters. I also removed Dustin Johnson’s data from 2020 as Covid delayed the Masters into the fall and created an irregularity in the dataset. Essentially this allowed me to see where winners ranked in various categories as of the last tournament before the Masters. From here, I could write a simple SQL query that filtered for players in the field now that rank on par with, or better than previous winners for each statistic. For any college basketball fans, this is my attempt at creating a “KenPom” type filter for who could win this year based on the metrics of previous winners. Here are the criteria to win the Masters according to PGA data from my research. Going into their respective wins, all winners ranked:

• Top 55 or better in Scoring Average

• Top 56 or better in Birdie Average

• Top 45 or better in Shots Gained: Total Average

• Top 81 or better in Shots Gained: Approach to Green Average

• Top 193 or better in Shots Gained: Putting Average

• Top 92 or better in Average Driving Distance

• Top 141 or better in Greens in Regulation

The 2024 Masters is probably the worst year to do this analysis because it is based only on PGA players. There is no way to compare these numbers against LIV players, and as we see more and more of the top players in the world are starting to join LIV. So it is less useful data than it would have been before the creation of the Saudi League. Nevertheless, I ran this query against all PGA players as of the most recent data available heading into Augusta and only 15 PGA players meet this criteria to win:

• Scottie Scheffler, +450

• Rory McIlroy, +1100

• Xander Schauffele +1400

• Hideki Matsuyama, +2000

• Ludvig Aberg, +3300

• Tony Finau, +4000

• Wyndham Clark, +4000

• Cameron Young, +5500

• Sahith Theegala, +5500

• Sam Burns, +8000

• Akshay Bhatia, +10000

• Byeong Hun An, +11000

• Stephan Jaeger, +17000

• Erik van Rooyen, +22000

• Keith Mitchell, No Line

To take it one step further, if we remove the top two outliers from each scoring category, the only two players who still meet the filter criteria are Xander Schauffele and Wyndham Clark. All this data collection could be for nothing when any other player in the field puts on the green jacket Sunday but it was a fun thought experiment and I’ll be curious to see how the list of players above perform. Happy Masters week to all who celebrate!

- Team Orb Analytics

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