Long-time followers of my writing and podcasts are aware that golf betting is a fundamental part of my work. Outside of the NFL, the PGA Tour is the only true market I believe that I have a legitimate edge in. The size of that edge varies from week to week, depending on the golf course and tournament, yet it’s a passion that I take very seriously. To quote perpetual Ryder Cup snub, Kevin Kisner, “This ain’t no hobby.” It’s a key source of supplemental income for me, and an effort I expect to continue to capitalize on.
I should caveat all of this with the key point that there is no one size fits all for golf betting. I’ve seen tons of different strategies and approaches work. I would never preach that my style is superior to others. I can only share what has worked for me. Speaking of which, golf betting is an extremely volatile endeavor, especially for those that focus the majority of their attention on outright wagers. This is not a format where you are going to win every week, or even every month. I would not recommend completely rejigging your methods if you do not see results within the first couple of weeks. I’ve been the beneficiary of some wild hot streaks, but I’ve also lost for months on end. Here are my yearly totals since I started tracking:
- 2023-2024: +31.34U
- 2022-2023: -20.91U
- 2021-2022: +14.21U
- 2020-2021: +17.59U
As you can see, I lost for an entire year straight in 2022. There were some high points during that season, but I ultimately caught the wrong side of a couple 50/50 calls, and ended up fairly significantly in the red. After such a porous year, one would think that I would go completely back to the drawing board ahead of 2023 and re-tool my process. Yet the truth is, I changed absolutely nothing between 2022 and 2023. Even in a losing year, I was still pleased with my process, and I knew that if I stayed the course, it was only a matter of time before the breaks would start falling in my favor. Patience was key, and I have now experienced over a 220% return on my investment golf betting this Fall. That’s a higher ROI than what Netflix investors earned in 2010!
After my 2022 year, I could have easily panicked and overreacted, focusing on different sub-markets, and completely re-working how I built models. I knew however that I had experienced considerable success over a two year sample size, and that one year of losing, where I still had outrights consistently in the mix nearly every week, should not deter me from my path of focus. I knew the results would come. I did not expect them to come so quickly and powerfully out of the gates this Fall swing, but far be it from me to complain.
I preface all of this to say, stay patient. Spend time formulating your plan and strategy, but don’t feel the need to tweak every time you experience a losing week. Golf is inherently the most variance filled sport to bet on, and especially if your focus is solely outrights, it’s important to be prepared to lose multiple weeks in a row. The way that I bet outrights is fairly simple. Each week, I risk a total of one unit to always win over seven units on each golfer. This essentially means that to break even, I would need to hit an outright once every seven weeks, a pace I feel very comfortable with.
Since I have completely front-loaded my success this season, I could lose for the next 31 weeks and still ensure a winning year. I cannot emphasize this enough: the dumbest choice you can make after hitting an outright is to increase your unit size and give too much of it back the following week. Golf is far too volatile. Stay disciplined and don’t get overly reactive to either winning spells or losing spells.
Back to the formula of risking one to win over seven. This is very similar to what I see many other successful bettors utilize. There are still a few uninformed keyboard warriors that seem awfully confused when they see an outright card that deploys 10 golfers at 80/1, to which I would say, this requires the most basic understanding of grade school math to understand. Let’s break it down, assuming our unit size is a standard $100.
- Golfer #1 (80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #2 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #3 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #4 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #5 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #6 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #7 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #8 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #9 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
- Golfer #10 80/1) (0.1U to win 8) (Risk $10, Win $800)
If every single one of my golfers lose, I will sacrifice a total of $100 (1 unit.) If one of my golfers win however, I would win $710 dollars ($800 for the win, minus the $90 on the other nine losers.) My hard and fast rule is that every week betting outrights, I will never invest more than one unit, and if I have the winner, I will always profit over seven units. How we get there is completely irrelevant. Now let’s compare this to betting a single golfer at 8/1, risking the same amount (1 unit, or $100.)
- Golfer #1 (8/1) (1U to win 8) (Risk $100, Win $800)
If my golfer loses, I sacrifice a total of $100, the same amount that I would sacrifice betting 10 golfers at 80/1. If my golfer wins, I win $800. How many golfers you decide to bet is irrelevant, so long as you stick to this hard and fast rule. For example, if you see a bettor deploy 20 players at 160/1, your alarm bells should not go off. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that approach, but it fits within my limits of responsibility. It’s actually a more obliging approach than a card that features two golfers: one at 8/1 and one at 160/1. I would not beat yourself up if you over-expose yourself from time to time, but I’d still make a concerted effort to stay disciplined. The more that you risk in one week, the more pressure that you put on yourself to win at a higher rate in the following weeks. There are (give or take) 40 golf events a season, so following my strategy, if I hit six outrights per year over the course of 40 events, I know that I’ll always end up in the green. Truth be told, if you stick to this game plan, you really don’t have to win all that often to make a large profit year after year.
I know it may be tempting once we get to Masters week to bet Rahm, Scheffler, or Rory at eight or nine to one, as well as a player in the 20s, 30s, or 40s. I see cards like that all the time. The issue with that approach is that you are severely limiting your profitability even if you do win. I’ve seen many folks significantly increase their exposure at major championships, and decrease their exposure at smaller events. While I understand this in theory, the edge that bettors have at majors (particularly the Masters) is far smaller than at lesser known tournaments. The market simply has more information on how to correctly price the Masters moreso than any other tournament in the world. It’s the event that takes the most action, and there is the most widely available information on this golf course. As a result, the lines are some of the sharpest we will see all year. The idea of making this event your highest exposure week is completely non-sensical to me if you are attempting to win long-term and do this seriously. In fairness, most are not trying to do this seriously, to which I would say, fire away then responsibly!
Yet the most sustainable and profitable method with proven results (for me) has been to approach all tournaments with the same risk and reward level: risk one to win more than seven. Just because I had an awesome Fall swing, I have no plans to increase my unit size just because I have more money in the bank. I wouldn’t decrease my unit size on a cold streak either. To quote the great Andrew Kevin Walker script from David Fincher’s, The Killer, “Stick to the plan. Anticipate, don’t improve. Never yield an advantage.” I do not mean to juxtapose outright golf betting with the same intensity of contract killing, yet if you’ve ever been forced to sweat Russell Henley in contention, the implication may resonate.
