Introduction
As a game of pure skill that gets played by individual players, bettors often feel safe when they bet on golf. All of the same pitfalls are still there, of course, but it’s much easier to keep track of individual players and the weather over entire teams. Here we’ve included some tips and tricks that you should know when betting on golf.
Sportsbooks out there spend a lot of time and effort on determining the best golf player to bet on. When you think you can place a wager and make some money from it, you should check out sportsbooks to see where the odds lie.
Understanding Golf Bets
You need to understand golf bets before you start throwing your money around. Fortunately, they aren’t so different from the other kind of bets you’d typically make, such as choosing a player that you think will win a season-long playing event. In those cases, you’ll see the list of participating players who have their betting lines next to their names. These tell you the expected odds of them winning, to which the prices and payouts for each wager have been adjusted. Easy, right? Well, when there are 156 players in one tournament, picking the 1 winner out of a crowd gets challenging.
The odds are typically given with figures preceded by a minus or a plus sign. -50 would mean that $50 must be put forward to win $100 if it pays off. +50 means that you wager $100 and get $50 if it pays off. Sometimes they’re given as a fraction, too, and you can convert this system into a fraction by sliding the decimal place two spaces to the left. For example, a +2000 player has 20/1 odds.
A lot of golf bettors stay away from a straight tournament winner bet because of the long odds and the much higher likelihood of losing your hard-earned cash. Instead, there are three other bets you can take in the form of top-20, 2-ball, or 3-ball bets. What are these?
A top-20 bet is where you at least expect the golfer to place within the top 20s of the tournament. This is a much easier bet to make, especially when you’re betting on the greats. The only problem with the consistently good players is that the sportsbooks will change their odds and make the bets less profitable than if you bet on an underdog player who’s had a streak of good performance lately. The payouts aren’t as much as correctly predicting the winner but there is still value that can be found.
The ball wagers are specific to single rounds in the tournament. A 2-ball wager is where you back a golfer in a head-to-head. A 3-ball is where you back the golfer against both players in their group. This cuts down your pool of players to research.
Understanding Course Differences
A unique thing about golf is that every course is supposed to be different. Games aren’t played on similar waxed ball court floors or in stadiums and golfing is just as much about contending with the environment than the other players of the tournament. If you know anything about golf, you may know that longer courses are best tackled by smacking the ball as far across it as possible while shorter courses require tighter accuracy.
This means that players with the better long game are going to do better on longer courses while short courses level the playing field with their tight fairways that test putt accuracy. Fortunately, professional sports organizations often publish stats about players and how well they work with the long or short game. Research and know the top golf finishers in the pro golfing scene.
Also, you may want to become knowledgeable about course histories. This is a disputed topic that states certain players have a legacy of doing good (or bad) on certain courses. There’s probably some truth on both sides though how much you believe is up to you. If you find yourself betting on one of those instances, it’s up to you whether you believe in superstition or whether it’s just a pattern that can break.
Common Beginner Mistakes
When trying to beat the betting market, it’s best to pick a strategy and stick to it at all costs. Find your strengths and decide which of the above betting methods works out best for you, then do the player research that’s required. There are many sites, apps, and other tools that can help you out with that, and most of them are free.
Don’t outright bet every week, that’s a surefire way to lose money. Making an indulgent, against-the-odds bet once every few months is fine if you can afford it. Pay attention to putting, it’s an underrated and volatile metric on a golfer’s skillset.