2022 Valspar Betting & DFS Preview
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Okay. Welcome in. My name is Andy Lack, Inside Golf Podcast, Valspar Championship, betting and DFS preview. I'm recording this on Sunday morning. So before round two of the players has even been completed and that's really going to prevent my ability from being able to do like a really good early lean segment.

But I figured it's probably just better to get the podcast out, stay on schedule. I'm sure there are many, myself included, that are just ready to move on from this tournament. It has been a grind. I think a lot of the talking points have just been really worn out at this point. I don't really care to talk about the weather anymore.

I do have some guys in the mix, so that's fine. But I'm kind of all out on takes for this tournament. And there's still so much golf left to be played. Like usually on this pod, I'll talk a little bit about the tournament because there's only 18 holes left. But as I record this, there are some guys on the course that are still like 27 holes into this tournament. So I'd rather just spend the time talking about the Valspar tournament

But before we get into the Valspar story,

This podcast is presented by RickRunGood.com. Incredible first week doing content on the site. I'm extremely grateful for all the people that reached out to say that they really enjoyed the Monday article and the Wednesday article. So just a quick refresher. Every Monday is on RickRunGood.com. I will be doing an in-depth course breakdown. Honestly, a lot more extensive course.

even than this podcast, which is kind of nice because it actually frees me up a little bit on this show now where I don't feel like I need to jam a million kind of super in the weed statistical nuggets into the show because I have that other platform now. And then on Wednesdays, I do a full final DFS breakdown where I share essentially my entire player pool with

All of my thoughts on ownership, a chalk report, pivots, my core, my thoughts on the weather, which I was one of those people that did stack the weather waves. And I stand by that decision. Yes, I stacked about 70% of my lineups for what turned out to be the wrong side of the draw. So I quite literally have some two of sixes and one of sixes. But

My AM PM lineups, although there were fewer of them really have a shot. So again, like that was a calculated risk and it put me in a situation where, you know, even with maybe 50% of my entire player pool missing the cut, I'm still in a spot where I've got some really good lineups. And to me, like I'd rather play DFS aggressively. I'd rather have, you know,

bad weeks where the bad weeks are really bad, but the good weeks are really good. Like that's kind of just what's worked for me. Um, there are a million ways to do it, but that's how I've been able to find success. So I really think you'll enjoy that Wednesday article. It's a way for me to consider all the factors, um,

At the latest point in the week, kind of synthesize all of them together, stuff that I'm not able to do on this show, I'm not able to do on my Tuesday morning show, or we're really able to talk about too much on The Scramble either. So...

Check both of those out on rickrungood.com-andy. You can either go to rickrungood.com-andy and that will take you right to the landing page. Or you can just type in Andy in the coupon code where you sign up. But I would highly encourage you to do so. You get access to an incredible community in the Slack channel. A lot of really smart DFS players in there that...

really care about finding edges. And you can reach me in there at any time for questions as a much better place to reach me than my Twitter DMs, plus all of the tools, all of the written content. It is a, it's a no brainer if you are into this stuff and want to try making money on it long term.

One more thing before we get into the Valspar. I want to talk about this new app that I've been working with called Juice Reel. So the founder reached out to me, really smart dude. I was really impressed by where his head was at and his idea for this app. And basically...

What juice real does is anywhere you bet, whether it's draft Kings, fan duel, Caesars, Barstool, whatever, even, even offshores, you can sync to all of your bets and your bet history automatically loads into this app in seconds. So you can keep track of, um,

all your bets in one place without having to manually type them into spreadsheets like I've been doing for years. I imagine this would be super helpful for the 80% of Twitter that puts out a full card before the tournament starts and then adds half the field live after round one. I can imagine that can get pretty confusing, but you can sync all of your bets, all of them in one place without

Keep track of everything. It even gets better. You can get all of your analytics too. So you can see kind of your historical profits and losses, how you've done on straight bets versus parlays and teasers. Even like

Even like what your worst teams or players are. So if you want to actually find out how much money you've lost betting on Xander Shoffley, you can do that. If you want to find out like, hey, are these parlays that I keep doing? Are they actually working? Spoiler alert, they're not. Like you can actually find that out. You can actually figure out without having to do all of the number crunching manually. Like, okay, okay.

this strategy is actually working for me. This one really isn't. And I have always been such a big proponent of accountability, right? I record everything. That's why I still post all of my units and yearly total and ROI on Twitter every single week because...

I just want to be honest about it. And I bet a lot of people that maybe look like they're good at gambling because they're taking victory laps a lot of the time on Twitter. Well, maybe that's because they're ruthlessly overexposed every single week. Who can say? They'll never tell you. But if you actually try and care about trying to really figure this stuff out and become a better bettor,

I found this app to be incredibly valuable and incredibly aligned with a lot of the stuff I preach on the podcast. It can also crowdsource insight. It syncs all of the other... I thought this was really cool too. It syncs all the other users. So for like an NFL game, for example, or even like a golf matchup, you can see what side the best performing users are on.

And you could see what side the worst performing users are on. So it actually takes like the public betting...

charts one step further where you can actually get to see like, okay, this is the side that the right people are on or the people that at least have been winning are on. This is the side that the wrong people are on. And it's also a great place to line shop. It shows you how lines vary across different books. There's arbitrage opportunities where sometimes the lines at different sports books will vary and sometimes

you can find instances where you can bet certain amounts on the same bet at different books to guarantee profit. And then I think, honestly, I think the coolest thing that I liked the most was the live value tracker, where once you place a bet,

and the game is underway, you can actually watch the value of your bet fluctuate with every play. It's like real-time stock portfolio-esque feature where...

You can't really get that anywhere else. And again, it's incredibly useful for figuring out if it's the right time to hedge. The whole app is basically just designed to give you a million different tools to help you as a better and make you more informed and smarter. It's really cool. I'm really proud to partner with them. And it's completely and entirely free.

100% free. So check out juicereal.com, Juicereal and the app store. I'm usually pretty picky about these partnerships. I'm never going to promote something that I don't really use. I just think people can see right through that and it comes off as inauthentic, but this is

This is one that I thought was incredibly smart and really aligned with the stuff I talk about so much. So download Juicereal on the App Store and boom, all of these insights into your betting habits and how to become a better bettor. Okay, let's dive into the Valspar. The Valspar Championship.

founded in 2000 as a Tampa Bay classic. And it was originally an alternate event in the fall. First, it played opposite the President's Cup. Then it played opposite a WGC. It was actually part of the fall swing from 2003 to 2006. But from 2007 on, it has been played in March. And it has always been held at the Copperhead course at the Innisbrook Resort. And

This is really the best field I remember seeing for this tournament in quite some time. Now, TBD, again, I'm recording this on Sunday morning before round two of the players has even been completed, but Sam Burns will return to defend his title as of this moment. He will also be joined by Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Colin Morikawa, Xander Shoffley, Justin Thomas, Victor Hovland, Louis Oosthuizen,

Abraham answer, Paul Casey, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrell Hatton, Shane Lowry, and walking Neiman amongst others. Those are probably the biggest names. And as I record this on Sunday morning, uh,

All of those players have yet to withdraw. I am sure that some of them do withdraw. The only one that I can say with certainty is that Xander will play. I do have that sourced. He will be at the Valspar. As far as everyone else, I have zero idea. The match plays next week.

And they're all going to play the match match play. And then two weeks after that, you have the players. So this are sorry, the masters. We just had the players. So this would definitely be a natural rest week. Right. We shall see. Xander is the only one that I can confirm will be there.

All right. Former winners. Sam Burns won last year, 17 under. He was 70 to one over Keegan Bradley. 2020 got canceled due to COVID. And then 2018 and 2019, you've got Paul Casey back to back eight under 10 under he's 25 to one both times.

2017, Adam Hadwin, 14 under. 2016, Carl Schwartzel, 7 under. 2015, Jordan Spieth, 10 under. 2014, John Senden, 7 under. 2013, Kevin Strillman, 10 under. 2012, Luke Donald, 13 under. 2011, Gary Woodland, 15 under.

And I think the biggest thing that comes to mind here is iron play, right? So just scrolling through that, like any place where Paul Casey is a multiple time winner and you've got Jordan Spieth and Luke Donald, that's probably a course that accentuates iron play over driving. And that is pretty much the case at Innsbruck, like kind of, I mean, we'll talk about it. So let's dive into the actual like specs of the course first. So

It's the Copperhead course at the Innis brick resort in Palm heart of Florida, Palm Harbor, Florida, a little bit outside Tampa. And it was designed by Larry Packard in 1971 with a restoration in 2015 in full disclosure, uh,

I'm not super familiar with a lot of Larry Packard's work. I did some digging to try and figure out what kind of school of architecture did Packard come from? Had I played any of his courses before? And I can report back, I have not. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. I haven't heard of many of the golf courses that he has designed outside of this one. And

I feel like I have a pretty extensive mental database of golf courses. My whole job at, at golf digest was plugging all these, every course in the country into a spreadsheet and going through their ratings. So,

I can't really tell you there's much to find on Larry Packard, but I will say this. Innisbrook is low-key good. I think it's a really underrated golf course. I think it's a really underrated tournament, and I will explain why. Let's get through some of the specs real quick. Par 71, 7,340 yards.

That's on the longer side for par 71s, especially considering the fact that this course is five par threes and four par fives.

And the par fives and the par threes are both on the longer side. So it's one of the few courses on the PGA Tour with five par threes. And all of them are pretty hard, right? It's got the ninth hardest set of par threes on the PGA Tour, the fifth hardest set of par fours on the PGA Tour, and the third hardest set of par fives on the PGA Tour. Water...

comes into play on nine holes. So it's not really a landmines everywhere type course like PGA National or TPC Sawgrass. Innisbrook kind of tests you in a different way. The fairways are Celebration Bermuda grass and they measure 24 yards on average, making them some of the most narrow fairways on the PGA Tour. The only courses that

with narrower fairways are Eastlake, Torrey Pines, Silverado, and Colonial. And the rough is Celebration Bermudagrass with ryegrass three inches. The greens measure 5,822 square feet on average with Tif Eagle Bermudagrass with a Poa Trivialis overseed. They run about 12 on the stem. So

These are the same, or I guess I'll say similar because some are overseeded with POA and some are overseeded with this POA and bent blend. But these are very similar types of overseeded Bermuda greens that we saw last week at Sawgrass. We've seen these

Before at the Voyero Texas Open, we see them at TPC Scottsdale and we see them at PGA West too. So it's another week where I will be looking at players who have performed well on these types of services, these types of golf course. And I have a full breakdown of all the best putters on these overseeded greens in my article on Rick Grunga dot com.

Okay. What matters at Innisbrook? So a couple of things to note first, this is one of the hardest courses on the PGA tour. The only courses that have been regularly harder than Innisbrook on the PGA tour, regular schedule over the past couple of years, PGA national Torrey Pines, Bay Hill Memorial park. Those are the only non majors that have been part harder. And we've had this really nice run of,

of hard golf courses from Torrey to Riviera to PGA National to Bay Hill. And Innisbrook is right up there too. If the wind is blowing, it's a brute. Now, I will say that last year, it played a lot easier because it got a lot of rain prior to the tournament, which Florida has obviously been getting now. So if I had to guess the winning score

would be probably closer to that 17 under that Sam Byrne shot instead of the eight under that Paul Casey shot the two years before. Unless we get a ton of wind, which check back later in the week for my Wednesday article on rickrungood.com, I think it will play probably closer to that 14 to 17 under winning score. So still hard, but probably not six to 10 under par if I had to make a guess.

And then also it's not like a lot of Florida courses. It's tree lines. It's actually on a really nice piece of land. So there are some elevation changes. It's not extremely flat like, like most other Florida golf courses. It's not littered with water everywhere. It actually reminds me a lot more of the golf courses that I played at Duke. Um,

They even have like kind of this pine straw where once you get into the trees and there's definitely water, but the water doesn't really define the course. In fact, Innisbrook, it ranked 37th last year out of 40, 40 courses in penalty strokes. So this isn't really like a lot of the Florida golf courses like that.

TPC Sawgrass or Honda where you've got water on every single hole and there's all this variance. No, this is more of like a Carolina tree-lined technical golf course. And one thing that you will hear often this week

Holes 16 through 18 are the snake pit. All three of those holes feature over an 18% bogey rate and under a 10% birdie rate. It's a tough closing stretch, probably rivals Quail Hollow as one of the tougher closing stretches on the PGA Tour. And lastly, there was this big renovation, or sorry, not a renovation. It was really more of...

It was really more of a restoration than a renovation, which again, different podcast, but it brought back kind of more of the original features of the original design. But I wouldn't really say that much was changed.

Um, it's not a situation like we've seen recently with TPC sawgrass and Bay Hill where I've said, okay, be careful looking at course history before these years. Um, because it's a bit of a different course now and looking at all of the stuff prior and post the restoration, not really much has changed here. In my opinion, it's the same agronomy, same kind of character and nature, um,

So that's about it. I mean, let's run through some quotes and then we'll get through some of the stats that I want to talk about. Paul Casey talks about how it can be really tricky to figure out the wins here and how you will rarely face the same direction of win twice, which really just makes me think like, okay,

patience, plotter, technical types. There's not a ton of benefit to being super aggressive here. The way I talked about was say TBC Scottsdale. Innisbrook is more of a, you know, just hang in there, keep the ball in play off the tee, take advantage of the par fives, mitigate disaster on the harder par fours and par threes.

And Carl Schwartzel actually talks about how this course, you do need a little experience to play well here. It's a shot maker's course. You've got to shape the ball off the tee both ways. Again, shout out Larry Packard. When I went through hole by hole, you really do kind of have to work the ball both ways. It doesn't really predominantly fade a draw or fade. There's a nice variance in terms of the hole design. You're pretty much going to be using your whole back here. You can hit a

a bunch of different clubs off the tee. There are a lot of different ways that you can play some of these holes. And for many of those reasons, you know, it's no surprise that Spieth has won here. Spieth talks about how it requires all sorts of shots, right? Punch shots, launching it in the air, discipline on the greens. I love it. I think it's a very underrated golf course, in my opinion. Here's one last one from Kevin Strillman.

And I quote, I love it here because of shot playability. You hit everything from four iron to driver off the tees. You can shape them in both directions. You have par fives that you can go for and some that you can lay back. There's no let up, but it's very fair at the same time. So yeah, I think the main thing here is that this is a

It's a technical golf course where you can't really bomb and gouge it. You have to hit a lot of different clubs off the tee, but you have to execute. It's death by a thousand paper cuts, right? It's not like Honda where you're going to make a bunch of huge numbers. But at the same time, if you're not on, it will expose you really quickly. So let's run through some of the stack categories that I think are really important.

Off the tee, this course is pretty brutal off the tee. Every single year from 2015 on, Innisbrook has ranked inside the top 10 in most difficult off the tee compared to other PGA Tour courses. This basically means that drives at Innisbrook were hit to worse locations than other PGA Tour courses on average. So

Again, this is a whole other podcast, but strokes gained is a zero sum game. So when it, when I say it's, when I say it's harder to gain strokes off the tee at Innisbrook, I'm really talking about measuring Innisbrook to other courses. I'm not talking about measuring Innisbrook's golfers to other golfers. So for example, the inverse of Innisbrook would be Kapalua where the average strokes gain value for off the tee is easiest because

everyone is hitting 400 yard drives to massive fairways where Innersbrook is on the complete other end of the spectrum, where it's just a lot harder to gain strokes off the tee per shot relative to other courses. If that makes sense. Um, driving distance here is, is the third lowest on tour behind only pebble beach and Harbor town. So this is definitely a less than driver course. And again,

Despite the fact that many players are hitting less than driver off the tee, driving accuracy still ranks slightly below tour average here. Also, combine that with the fact that these fairways are super narrow. So a lot of the time when you miss the fairway, you aren't really getting much rollout.

So one other thing that I found interesting, the standard deviation, though, of average score on a whole, whether you hit or miss the fairway, is not very large compared to PGA Tour courses. So the penalty for missing the fairway statistically hasn't proven to be that huge.

Paul Casey and Carl Schwartzel both won here, hitting under 50% of their fairways. Spieth, Senden, and Woodland all ranked outside the top 50 in driving accuracy the years that they won. And so I think where I land on off the tee is that

It's a very narrow course and because it's tight and tree-lined, you're going to see a lot of players hit less than driver. But unless you are super wild in the trees, you're actually okay if you're just in the rough off the fairway. There isn't a massive penalty for missing the fairway and you can still play well here missing a ton of fairways. So

I really want to just identify players that keep the ball and play off the tee and can put themselves in position to hit greens and regulation. So similar to TPC Sawgrass, I'll be relying pretty heavily on good drives gained again.

Um, approach. So Innisbrook has been the ninth hardest course to gain strokes per approach shot based on the PGA tour baseline. So probably that probably has to do a lot with the small greens. Innisbrook annually ranks inside the top 10 in hardest greens to hit greens and regulation percentage, uh,

is 62%, which ranked ninth last year in hardest greens to hit. The two years before, when it was a little bit harder, the years that Casey won, it ranked inside the top five. So small greens,

Very difficult to hit. And it does not help that 23% of approach shots come from over 200 yards. And 24% come from between 175 to 200. So a lot of mid-to-long irons here. And again,

That's not necessarily because this course has a ton of long par fours, but you've got the four par fives and the fact that all the par threes measure between 195 and 235. And the fact that because of all the trees, you can't really bomb away with driver. So you're still going to have a lot of mid to long irons in your hands a lot of the time.

I think if I was to encapsulate in one sentence what makes this course so difficult, it's probably because...

It's the rare mix of a course that simultaneously takes driver out of your hands, yet is still long enough where you're going to have to hit a bunch of long irons. So driving distance is far below tour average, but over half of all approach shots came from above 175 yards. And you don't really get a lot of courses like that where...

you kind of have to club down off the tee, but then you're left with longer approaches. And that's kind of what makes it in his brick. So cool. Like I,

You can hit driver here and leave yourself with a shorter approach, but you better be accurate. Or you could focus on keeping the ball in play off the tee, clubbing down off the tee, but you're going to pay the price on the second shot, right? Because now you're leaving yourself with a longer approach shot. And players will be making those decisions all week. Around the green. So around the green, honestly...

From all the stuff I've gathered, seems pretty manageable here. Like last year, Innis Brooks ranked 32nd out of 40 courses in getting up and down from the fairway. It ranked 26th out of 40 courses in getting up and down from the rough. And it ranked 22nd out of 40 courses in getting up and down from bunkers. That is not to say that short game does not matter here. In fact, you are going to have to rely on your short game a lot here because

which is always the case on a course with a low greens and regulation percentage. But the actual degree of difficulty around these greens in terms of the actual shots you have to hit has not proven to be that tough. So I have about an average weight on around the green, which falls right on with the strokes game correlation that I was looking at. Because as I mentioned earlier,

Degree of difficulty around the greens here, maybe not that high, but you're still going to have to rely on your short game a lot. And then putting. So 30, 38% of strokes gained here came putting, which is above tour average. And this has been the 10th hardest course to gain strokes per putt.

based on the PGA tour baseline. It generally ranks on the harder side in terms of putting inside 15 feet, but nothing crazy. And you don't, you don't really have to do a ton of lag putting here either because these greens are pretty small. Here's a quote from

that I liked from Jordan Spieth. These greens aren't very severe here. They can be quick in certain places where they can put pins, but they're not going to be greens where you really, really have to worry too much about your speed control. You can be aggressive putting here, which is nice. So I don't necessarily think it's a

a hard course to putt on, but you absolutely do have to putt here. And I will be weighing putting more heavily this week than I have the past couple of weeks with TPC Sawgrass and Bay Hill. Yes, Innisbrook is a complete tee to green test, but winners have also ranked fifth in putting average compared to 34th in total driving in greens and regulation. So

Yeah, it's not a putting contest, but compared to courses that we've seen recently, like Torrey Pines and Bay Hill and Riviera and TBC Sawgrass, I would say there's definitively more of an emphasis on putting here. Like Sam Burns won gaining over nine strokes putting last year. It was not by any means an elite T degree performance for him. Tringali finished third, gaining 6.4 strokes putting. Answer finished fifth, gaining nine strokes putting. And

17 of the top 18 players gained strokes putting last year. So Burns was third in putting when he won. Casey was fifth in putting when he won. The year before, Casey was seventh in putting when he won. Hadwin was second. Schwartzel was second. Senden was 12th. Strelman was fourth. Donald was sixth. Woodland was fifth. Furyk was third. So every single guy that's won here in the last decade has been inside the top 12 in putting.

So like the last couple of times that we've

had this overseeded Bermuda, I'm still going to look at putting on those same golf courses. It's really helped before. And I think it matters. So I've got a 10% weight on like regular long-term putting and a 10% weight on a combo of all of those overseeded Bermuda courses, which is a little bit more than I usually do. And I dive into that more in depth in the Monday article.

scoring stats. Okay. So anytime we get a course with four par fives, I will be looking at par five scoring. These are some of the harder par fives on tour. And top 10 finishers have on average still gained far more strokes on the par fives relative to the field than they have on the par threes and par fours. All of these par fives have below a 1.5% Eagle rate. And the fifth hole

which is over 600 yards, is a pretty difficult par five. But the four par fives are still the only four holes on the course that have historically played under par. So scoring on these par fives is still pretty essential. And then this is a, it's a difficult enough course where I still found a nice correlation with bogey avoidance. I know people

are going to be very tempted to look at par three scoring here because there are five par threes. I'm never going to do that. I do not really believe in par three scoring, par four scoring, or whole yardage range stats like this.

par four scoring 400 to 450 yards. I do not believe that those are in any way useful or predictive statistics. Ask any PGA tour pro on the range what they need to work on and not one of them is going to say, you know what I really need to work on? My scoring on medium length par fours. Like, come on.

It's not a real stat. What they'll say is, no, I need to work on my long iron play or my wedge play or even my accuracy with my three wood or two iron off the sea. It's

It's just a useless stat. And there's too many factors such as elevation and hole design and strategy and winds and altitude and context of how you're playing that hole based on your position on the leaderboard for us to actually be able to

to garner anything ever legitimate from that, even over a large sample size. I don't get why people get hung up on those types of stats. And even par three scoring, I don't think is useful at all. Like there's far, there's way too many variables and no PGA Tour pro is looking at that. Just look at iron play.

Like par five, par five is the only one where I do actually believe that playing par fives is an actual skill that we can correlate. And there's more thought and strategy required and less randomness with players who take advantage of par fives over a large period of time because we're

par fives do is they actually identify a commonality in a skill set, which is some combination of drag

driving distance, long iron play and short game. And that is generally a skill set required on par fives across basically all types of courses. Whereas par three scoring is not consistent between short iron play, mid iron play and long iron play. You'd be better suited at just looking at approach, right? Like why would you want to use the

the 99 yard seventh hole at Pebble Beach to help you figure out if something someone is going to do well on a 235 yard par three. Obviously the proximity stuff is a little bit flawed too, but at least with strokes gain approach, you're getting the real weight based on the different shots and the degree of difficulty of the shots. Whereas there's no way to actually measure that with par three scoring and with par four scoring, uh,

you're there's so many different yardages incorporating there's even more variables right so i'm not sure if i did the best job of explaining that but moral of the story i'm keeping it simple and just looking at bogey voids and par 5 scoring here look if those stats work for you by all means keep using them i always encourage everyone to do what makes them happy and what works for them i i

I, for me, I've found things to work in a different way and found success looking at other certain things, but everyone just do what they want. It's my opinion solely. Um, I can only speak for myself. All right. So comp courses and course history, uh, Innisbrook was on the lower ends in terms of how much course history matters. Um,

I do think there is some nuance involved with this course, but Sungjae almost won on his debut. Stenson almost won on his debut. Casey had been terrible in four starts here before he won. KJ Choi won on his debut. Gary Woodland won on his debut. Kevin Strillman, Sam Burns, Sean O'Hare all won within their fourth appearance at the course. So yes, there is some nuance involved, but

I'm not docking you too much if you haven't played here before or haven't played that well here before. Instead, I would prefer to look at some comp courses that I really like. So I actually...

I really like Eastlake and TPC Southwind, actually. All three of these courses, they're essentially the same length, but they also feature narrow fairways, sticky Bermuda rough. They're on the more difficult end of the spectrum in terms of scoring conditions. You have to hit a lot of mid to long iron. So Eastlake and Southwind are actually probably my two favorites. And then the other three that I think are pretty good are Sea Islands,

TPC Sawgrass and Harbortown. Sea Island, especially the seaside course, can get sneaky difficult when it's windy. And it's got similar agronomy with the fairways and rough. And it's also got that Carolina feel to it as well. So same with Harbortown too, right? Like it's tree lined, less than driver course, narrow tactical, takes driver out of your hands, and you don't necessarily need to hit fairways

But it's more about positioning yourself in the right places on the right sides of the hole off the tee because most of the holes are dog legs and tree lines. And then sawgrass too. Very similar agronomy with the overseeded greens, all about positioning yourself off the tee. Have to score on the par fives, avoiding trouble, right? Technical, have to execute. So I'm actually really looking at

how players have performed on those five courses. I think there's a lot of similarities in play with all of those. All right, let's get to the model. So I plugged all this stuff in together and for the full statistical breakdown, plus many other nuggets, check out my write-up on rickrungood.com. But here's who it shot out. Number one, Louis Eustacean.

Number one in the model at the Valspar. He was also number one in the Honda model. You know, harder course, right? A little more technical, driving accuracy, mid to long iron play, putting on overseeded Bermuda. Louis number one. Justin Thomas is number two.

Webb Simpson, number three, I think even though his recent form has not been as good, his history on corollary courses is really helping him here. Victor Hovland, number four, who, you know, I think can play well anywhere here and it doesn't really matter what you plug in. Hovland probably going to be close to the top. Sam Burns, number five, makes a lot of sense. He won here last year. Colin, number six, again, makes a lot of sense. Uh,

Love me some Colin here. Number seven, Mito again, uh, who really bums me out this week at, at the players. But, um,

He continues to rate out very well for me. Number eight, Xander. Number nine, Shane Lowry. 10, Paul Casey. 11, Jason Kocrak. 12, Joaquin Neiman. 13, Adam Hadwin. 14, Dustin Johnson. 15, Tyrell Hatton. 16, Christian Bazadenhout. 17, Alex Noren. 18, Pat Perez. 19, Jonathan Vegas. 20, Matt Fitzpatrick. So not a lot of huge surprises, right? Like

I'd probably say Adam Hadwin is probably in a lower tier of players than, uh,

lot of the rest of these guys, but it makes sense that he would rate out so highly here because he's won at this course before and he has been so incredible putting on these overseeded Bermuda greens. And it's actually playing pretty good golf right now. And as it played well on a lot of the similar courses as well. But like I said, there's way too much of the players that still needs to happen for me to make any definitive broad sweeping statements about the players that

that I would like to bet. Yes, I have my eye on Louie. If Webb shows me something, I think you can, I'm keeping my eye on Webb at the players. He didn't have a good round one. I think he's, you know, around even par in his round two.

If Webb shows me something, I would be kind of interested in him here. And then, you know, I think some of the guys that got out of here early got out of here on Sunday. Like Xander's going to miss the cut. Colin's going to miss the cut. Yeah.

I think that might be able to help some guys a little bit. Brooks Koepka as well will be able to miss the cut. Fitzpatrick. So we'll see. Check back in later in the week. So currently, schedule-wise, we're still scheduled to do the scramble on Tuesday morning. I don't know if that will end up being like a...

I don't know if they're going to finish this tournament on Monday. I'll presume that they are. But scrambles Tuesdays and Fridays with Rick, my Monday article, which I've pretty much already written, which basically is just breaking down the course. I'm still going to post that at the same time tomorrow because, you know, we have all that information on the Valspar. Nothing's actually going to change in terms of the course.

My betting show that I do with a guest this week, first time guest, by the way, that I'm very excited to talk to. Not going to spoil that one just yet. I'm not sure when we're going to be able to do that one. We may have to push it back a day because I would hope that this tournament finishes on Monday. And usually I record on Monday night.

And they're not going to put out odds until Tuesday morning. Right. So there's a chance that we'll probably have to record that Tuesday night and it'll maybe come out Wednesday morning or maybe we can record Tuesday afternoon if his schedule permits and come out Wednesday morning. This is all also assuming that the tournament finishes on Monday.

Right. So we'll have to see, but check back in later in the week. I will be in touch about all of that stuff, probably on Twitter and scramble Tuesdays and Fridays. The prize picks run is nuts. It is nuts. And I, I, I don't know when they're going to start changing these lines, but you can really use math to your advantage here. It's just a math problem and take advantage of lines that are,

Aren't good. So I would encourage everyone to check out the scramble on Tuesdays and Fridays. We give all of our prize picks picks on that promo code Rick for a 100 first deposit match, $100 first deposit match Monday article on Rick run good.com Wednesday article on Rick run good.com.

Tuesday is probably Wednesday this week and Saturday morning odds checker articles and check back in later this week on Twitter. You can follow me on Twitter. ADP lacks sports for more of my Valspar stuff on this podcast feed and best of luck enjoying the rest of the players.

Good luck with your bats. And we'll catch you next time. Cheers. Drinking and driving is a decision that could change your whole world. Things will never be the same if you ever get a DUI. Because legal fees and time in court are just the beginning. Getting into a crash is another way that your world can be turned upside down. Your vehicle may not be the only thing that gets damaged in that crash. You can face a life altering injury or

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