Golf is different from any other sport when betting. In every other sport, there are two teams that contest a game and the team that accumulates the most points, runs, goals, etc., is the winner. Golf is a sport where over 120 players contest a tournament. Although the goal is one and the same week in and week out—achieving the lowest cumulative score for four rounds—the circumstances of each tournament are vastly dissimilar.
The goal of this article is to demonstrate how to bet on golf and offer tips on how to approach future golf tournaments. While situations change week to week, the process for choosing a few golfers with the best chance for success remains the same each time. If you are interested in learning about golf betting apps, these apps can help you place bets and keep you up to date on the latest odds and golf trends.
Sharing the Wealth
Betting on golf is more of a statistical proposition, despite all the toil and labor you put into analyzing the stakes of any tournament. With the fields as large as they are (more than 120 players for most tournaments), chances are slim that you will select the tournament winner by betting $100 on a player you so happen to believe in. You need a solid bankroll and ability to spread your capital among several players who you believe have the best chance of seeing a return on investment.
There are several different methods that you can insulate yourself. You could start by choosing the best four or five players in the game and hope that one of the favorites will be able to make it through, providing you with a modest return on investment. Betting on the world's best golfers will always be wrong. But as only one of them can win and their probabilities are actually, really quite tiny, you can get busted pretty quickly if you don't get a winner for a very long period of time.
I would advise you to back winners by selecting one top-class player—your horse—and then two or three mid-priced players (25-40/1), and one or two outsiders, according to how big your bankroll is. That way, you have the board covered, and all you need is one or two mid-priced winners or an outsider to see you through to the end of the golfing season.
Hit Hard on Tournament Matchups
Tournament match-ups are another great way to make money without having to rely on your player surviving longer than all the other 120+ players in the tournament. I know that the majority of golf bettors are wagering to select outright winners, something that you would wager head-to-head matches on other sports, but the truth is you can generate a high rate of winners in matchups and build your bankroll if you research and follow your instincts.
There are just so many things to think about when hunting for a head-to-head winner, but some of the important things that I tend to look at are course history, recent form, and whether or not there will be any weather issues to deal with throughout the tournament. Some players simply play well on certain courses, while others will struggle terribly to adapt their game to the design of a course. Players like Bubba Watson at TPC Highlands (where he has won three times) are a safe bet against players who have struggled at this course in the past.
Get the Correct Value
I wrote an article recently to help bettors with the idea of "expected value." I suggest that you read the article to learn more about how to get value in golf betting. That is, if your golfer has a 10% chance of winning in your estimation and the bookmaker gives you +1200 odds, if you plug that into the expected value equation, you will see that the bookmaker is essentially only paying out as if your golfer is 7.69% likely to win. You know, bookmakers give out more money when the likelihood of something happening is low, and it's here that you'll realize that this is actually a good bet.
It is very critical to discover worth in golf betting because week in and week out, the same individual may have different odds depending on the course they are about to play. Never make a bet on a player if their odds are less than what you rate them, and always get into the game when they are at or higher odds than what you feel that you can safely make a bet on.