Sony Open 2023: The best bets, DFS plays and more from our new expert, the Golf Lock Guru

As the PGA Tour officially* kicks off at Waialae for the Sony Open, that can only mean one thing. It’s also officially golf gambling season, and I couldn’t be happier.

*if you don’t count the birdie fest, semi-exhibition at Kapalua

Each year I attempt to statistically model every PGA tournament before placing bets and playing PGA Daily Fantasy. Some years have been better than others, but I’d like to think with several years under the belt that I’ve refined things to the point of being, well, not awful at it.

There are many resources on the internet that can help you attempt to do the same, and many of them are great due to the sheer amount of data available from the PGA Tour and Shotlink. For the purposes of these columns, I’ll be primarily using data and the tools from RickRunGood.com.

Since this is Week 1, a little primer on what you can expect here: We’ll try to identify valuable outright bets based on how each golfer should fit each course using strokes gained data at a granular level (including things like strokes gained from specific distances, types of grass, and other various factors that in theory should affect how well a golfer will play each week).

But if you’ve ever picked up a golf club, you know how fickle this sport is. The variance can be wild. That’s what makes gambling on golf so great. Factor in that you can get 96 hours of entertainment from a single outright bet and there is no greater sport in the world to gamble on. 

Additionally, we’ll use this same data to identify the best DFS plays and fades, finding the guys who score tons of points that very few other players may decide to roster. There may even be weeks where someone is a great outright bet but a terrible DFS play due to their popularity. If you see this, do not be alarmed, and do not say I didn’t warn you!

Along the way we’ll let you know when we find some value among prop bets — things like Top 10s, Top 20s, matchups, and even incredibly dumb markets like betting the Top Asian born golfer at Augusta in Round 1. 

All odds via DraftKings Sportsbook