Due to the fact that there are so many variables in golf, the betting strategy that you need to include needs to be thorough. But, you don’t need to be an expert of the game to place bets, as often following simple betting patterns or trends can be as successful as any.
Throughout this article we will be looking at ways in which you can improve your golf betting picks. Some methods will take more time than others, but the more time you can invest into your research the better prepared you will bet.
Course Set Up
The most crucial thing and best place to start with golf betting is determining how the course is going to be set up. For example, you should be looking at the length of the course, the shape of course, weather forecast, tee times for players to see if they are going to be getting the best time to attack the course, parings, average scoring and anything else that you think could affect how people play.
Once you have done all this you can start to narrow down the potential winners for that course. So, if it’s a long course you are looking at ‘bombers’ (players that hit the ball a long way), whereas a shorter, narrower course would suit players that are accurate and hit a lot of fairways off the tee.
By keeping players in a pool that suit some courses better than others, you are going to be able to quickly narrow down your search time, which is vital when comparing some fields that can include as many as 160 players for one event.
Creating Player Pools
Carrying on from the above point, we highly recommend that you create player pools listing their strengths and weaknesses. For example, you could create 4 pools that might include:
- Long Hitters
- Accurate off the tea
- Brilliant iron players
- Brilliant putters
Try and get 5 of the best in each category. Whilst you may have some overlap with a few players, it’s unlikely that many players will fit in as the best in the world to all categories – although McIlroy isn’t too far away!
You can add in players based on stats that are freely available from sites, such as the European Tour and PGA Tour. In fact, the stats these days are massively extensive, so there really is no excuse.
Once you have all your data, you can start to assign pools to courses. You will be able to straight way see which players are going to suit which courses and this will dramatically cut down the number of potential bets for each tournament.
Stables
Many of the professional bettors will have a stable of players that they choose from each week. Again, this kind of ties into the point above, but with this stable they are looking for much more rounded players, who aren’t necessarily the best at anything, but have very few weaknesses in their game.
These players are often going to be bets that aren’t favourites for many or even any events each year. They are going to hover around the 20.00 – 50.00 for pretty much each event, which would suggest that they are going to be there or thereabouts each week – the Steady Eddys of golf, if you will.
These guys come in to their own when betting on markets, such as Each Way betting and Place betting. The favourable odds means that even when you quarter them for Each Way bets or taken into the cut for a place bet, it’s still going to yield anything from 5.00 – 25.00, just for finishing in the top 5 spots.
It’s a method that is tried and tested and is often a place where most professional bettors will say to start for many people just getting in golf betting or who have been struggling. Also, this way if they do manage to bink a win, the payday is going to be considerable.
Utilising the Betting Exchange
If you don’t already have an account with the likes of Betfair, then you really need to get on board. The betting exchange is going to be your best friend when it comes to betting on golf and it’s for one reason – the ability to lay or hedge your bets.
As we have already stated, the odds on golfers to win an event can be very high indeed, but even if a player is leading after the first round, we are still only ¼ of the way through that event and a lot can change.
By using an exchange it means that you can lock in a return on your bets as you watch the prices tumble as they continue to do well. Let’s say, for example, that you backed someone pre-event to win at odds of 50.00 and after 36 holes they were leading the tournament by 1 shot. The odds on them to win now will be much less than the original price, probably nearer 10.00. This gives us massive scope to lay off some of the original liability on this bet.
In fact, this process of betting on golf has become so popular that professional bettors target it to make a living out of. The odds can be so huge compared to likes of soccer of GAA footballmatches, meaning that even small swings can result in big profits to be made when you lay a bet off.
In-Play Betting
In-play betting is another great option that is available to golf betting. The key to being successful with live bets is that you will likely need to be watching the progress for yourself or at least getting live data and reports for how people are playing.
Even though someone is leading an event, it may be that over the last 3 holes they haven’t played all that well, making a horrible bogey, a lucky birdie with a 120 yard hole out and a scrappy 30ft putt to save par. Whilst the scorecard say level par, you know that they are working very hard just to stand still, so it’s likely that at some point their luck will run out.
Live betting allows you to take players whoa re starting to move through the field and back them to win instead. The Saturday’s at golf events are famously called ‘Moving Day’ and this is often the best time to take the guys chasing the leaders to have a chance of winning.
If you combine this with the exchange betting above, then you don’t even need you picks to win. All you need is a good run in, the odds to drop and then to lay them off!