I paid for a golf betting subscription once, Bradley Todd, and one of the problems was that he would bet a lot of players eight ways. DraftKings doesn’t offer all of those markets, so it was never really apples to apples. Regardless, I never made money with him.
Then I found a few free guys on Twitter and started throwing some money at their picks. They were fine. Nothing special. Probably about what you’d expect from people giving away golf picks on Twitter.
Eventually, I mostly stopped listening and started taking random shots myself. Here’s what I’ve produced over the last three months:
8/20 – Wyndham Clark – 30-1 – $120 (I bet him a few times at lower odds)
8/20 – Wyndham Clark 1st Round Leader – 27-1 – $20 (Split 5 ways)
8/13 – Scottie Scheffler – 6-1 – $35 (mid Tournament – won by 9)
8/13 – Jake Knapp 1st Round Leader – 53-1 – $20 (Split 5 ways)
8/6 – Michael Brennan – 72-1 – $20
7/30 – Xander Schauffele – 16-1 – 2nd – $178
I’m including this one because it was Adam’s pick and he was leading on 14. Tough loss but great pick.
7/16 – Du Plessis, Smith, McIlroy, Spaun – 50-1 – $25 (I’ve gotten into matchup betting and this was a nice hit)
7/2 – Chris Gotterup – 8-1 – $35 (mid-tournament bet)
6/24 – Viktor Hovland – 40-1 & 22-1 – $45 (should have loss to Scheffler in playoff)
6/18 – Wyndham Clark – 45-1 & 15-1 – $45 (Let Burns get close after huge lead)
5/21 – Wyndham Clark – 48-1 – $25 (Dominated final round)
That’s five pre-tournament outright winners in three months. Prior to that? Shit.
A lot of it was identifying Wyndham Clark as a golfer who was simply better than the odds were giving him credit for. I’ve said this a million times, but I’d rather bet on the golfer who’s already proven he can win than the guy who’s suddenly playing great golf and standing under the bright lights for the first time.
Golf tournaments are fucking hard to win. Some guys have it and some guys don’t.
I’ll be betting Chris Gotterup plenty next season for the same reason. Meanwhile, bigger names like Ludvig Åberg, Xander Schauffele, Tommy Fleetwood, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns aren’t exactly stacking trophies.
The other thing that’s happened is that I haven’t had to redeposit into my account since May 16. That’s more than three months, and I’ve still got about $2,000 sitting in there. I’m up roughly $300 gambling for the year.
Of course, I’m also down about $1,500 in DFS, which is a convenient statistic to leave out if I’m trying to make myself sound like I know what I’m doing. I paid $300 for the Solver to give you an idea why I feel compelled to keep donating to DFS tournaments. I’ll do the same for football.
I suppose the point of this post is that I’m becoming increasingly convinced the tipsters aren’t that good. Maybe some are. But if you know golf, pay attention and get a little lucky, you’re probably capable of doing just as well as most of them.
That’s not to say I’m a good gambler. I’ve accumulated plenty of evidence over the years proving otherwise.
But apparently I can hold my own. And every once in a while, I can get lucky.
There’s one golf tournament left. If I can hit that one and bring a nice fat bankroll into football season, you can be damn sure I’ll immediately take everything I’ve learned about responsible bankroll management and start betting Lions futures.
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