This week on tour we get the Baycurrent Classic, a new name and new course on the PGA Tour rotation. And although it might not be the biggest event on the schedule, we have golf to watch and bet on so you already know we’ll be trying to take advantage.
Here in this preview we’ll be getting you ready for all of your betting exposure, with a full deep dive of the course, Yokohama CC, as well as course conditions for Round #1. After we get a sense of the setup, we’ll then transition into a game plan for Thursday and a free play for the first day of action. After last week’s full cash, let’s keep the momentum going and add on top of it. Without further adieu, let’s hop on in!
Sanderson Farms Championship Prop recap:
Last week’s prop slip went 2-0 for a full 3x cash!
Rasmus Hojgaard Under 8 Fairways
- With a field average at about 7.4/round, our under was extreme value as Rasmus is a well below average accuracy player. He started 3 out of 4 but quickly stumbled towards the middle of his round to cash us out.
J.T. Poston Over 4.5 Birdies or Better
- While it was more of a sweat than I would have liked, JT came through for us as well. It took a bomb birdie putt on one of his last holes to cash us out but he had tons of opportunities throughout the round. His putter was just average but even then we were able to cash this out showing the solid value on this projection.
Season-Long Hit rate: 44-28-2 year-to-date (61.1% hit rate)
For the year that 2-0 put us back over a 60% hit rate for the season and now at about 20 units of profit for those that have tailed. Not too shabby for a free blog post!
Tournament details:
Field size – 78 players
Cut – No cut
Returning Champ – Nico Echavarria (-20)
Past Champs – Morikawa, Bradley, Matsuyama, Cantlay, Woods
Purse – $8 million
Course Details:
Par – 71
Length – 7,315 yards
Avg Green Size – around 5,500 sq. ft/green
Green type – Bentgrass
Designer – Takeo Aiyama
Rough – 2-3” Zoysia
Because this is a brand new course, we don’t have the usual analytics to work with on the Betthenumber site. As such extensive research has been done into the venue to get an idea of how it’ll play this year.
How to model at the 2025 Baycurrent Classic:
In order to model at the 2025 Baycurrent Classic and find the top players of the week, I’m using 8 “key stats” in my modeling. Those stats are listed below, as well as the top 5 players overall when combining everything together.
“Regular” SG Form: OTT, APP, ARG + PUTT
- Form is always important for a SG model, but especially at a brand new course that we don’t have a ton of data on. It’s not an oversimplification to attack the golfers playing the best right now.
Driving Accuracy
- With the big penalties for misses off the tee, focusing on the more precise players in this field could prove fruitful by the end of the week.
Approach 150-225 Yards
- If we want to narrow down our iron form to a specific section of the bag, the 150-225 range seems primed to stand out with the plethora of mid length par 3s and longer par 4s on site.
Scrambling
- The green surrounds look tricky at Yokohama CC and misses with your irons look like they’ll be appropriately punished this week. Making sure we take players with at least a solid short game is advisable.
Putting – Bentgrass
- We have Bent greens in Yokohama so focusing our putting research on that specific surface is a good idea.
When we put it all together, my top 5 for the week are Patrick Fishburn, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Andrew Putnam, Takumi Kanaya and Garrick Higgo. A good mix of form horses and course fits, exactly what we want to see on a week like this.
Round 1 Game Plan
Now that we’ve got the course and modeling down, let’s turn to the prop side and try to find some value for Round 1. First, let’s check the weather and see what sort of conditions players will be facing Thursday.
Thursday’s weather forecast: (HRRR model via windy.com)
The weather looks absolutely brutal for Thursday. Winds are expected to be whipping in the 25-30 mph range and rain could be a factor during play as well. In fact the forecast looks so terrible that they might not even be able to play through it. As such I’m personally keeping my exposure a bit lighter for Round 1 as any sort of delay would completely flip conditions on their head. Friday looks much calmer which would become an issue if we hammered fades and a delay occurred. But if they play through this mess scores will be over par on average, and birdies will be tough to come by. Something even to over par for a scoring average would be reasonable to expect.
Round 1 Free Play:
Our Free Play for Round 1 pays 2.7x on Underdog if we end up going 2-0. There’s some correlation on these hence the slightly lower payout, but the value is there on both leans and with conditions looking tough I’m okay with that sort of correlation.
Wyndham Clark + Garrick Higgo Over 69.5 Strokes
- Both of these players spray it a bit off the tee which could be problematic at a course like this that has so many spots of bother. And in the high winds that would only become even more of a factor. They are both -145 for their over on DK so there’s a bit of line value on these, but I think the course could be pretty brutal if they have to play in the wind. It’s already tight and seems tricky to begin with, but in 30 mph winds it looks borderline unfair with even slight misses on these fairways leading to re-teeing at times. As such we took two inaccurate drivers for these fades as they are the most prone to those sort of big numbers. The back nine at this course looks brutally difficult and in the wind I imagine it will play +1 or harder. The front side is easier with two par 5s and a drivable par 4, but even then I expect the course to play around even par or harder tomorrow in the winds, meaning these two would have to gain at a minimum 2 strokes to the field to cover, and more likely closer to 3 to go under – too much of an ask on 50-50 props like these.
That’s all for this week’s blog. Best of luck with all of your exposure, and let’s have a week!
On top of the free articles every week, make sure to tune into my YT channel – GSLUKEDFS, for all of the shows throughout the weekend! (Rounds 2-4)
