Golf is one of the biggest sports in the world, but it is also considered one of the most unpredictable. That means that golf predictions can be a challenge compared to something like a selection on a three-way match outright from a football match.
The reason for that is that golf tournaments feature more than 100 players, and golfers have to perform consistently across four days of action. It’s no good if a player has a stellar opening 18 holes and then crumbles away over the next three days and quickly tumbles down the leaderboard.
A golf outright market will feature long prices, even on the favourites, be it at £5 betting sites or those requiring larger deposits. That is due to golf being a game of fine margins with a huge amount of players and variables such as weather, course conditions and who is playing at an event. But is there a way to make accurate golf predictions?
Researching
Research drives up the accuracy of golf predictions compared to just randomly selecting a player from the head of the market, which is unlikely to return a high accuracy. As
experts of ClubSport, who focus on sports predictions and analysing top betting sites, would confirm, digging through golf stats has to be done.
Relaxed Accuracy is the Key
Accuracy of golf betting predictions doesn’t mean trying to pick one player out of 156 players to win the Open Championship, for example. Naturally, there is a large portion within that number who are just not going to be in the frame, based on world rankings or perhaps amateur status.
It doesn’t mean that a player ranked outside the top 100 won’t win, but their chances are greatly diminished and reflected in the bookie odds. So that can immediately cut down the field, but there are better markets in golf betting than just the tournament outright.
Place Finishes
This is one of the best areas to go for golf betting. You don’t need the pinpoint accuracy of picking the tournament winner. After researching stats, instead of backing a selection like Rory McIlroy to win outright, look at options for a Top 5 or Top 10 finish instead if you expect him to be in the frame.
That adds far more flexibility to the selection for a small sacrifice of odds. If he wins, it would mean that your prediction was very strong, but you just covered the bases. Given that Place Finish bets in golf also include tied finishes, there is a lot of coverage in this option.
Head-To-Head Matchups
Another great approach to accurate predictions in golf is to slice the tournament up into head-to-head duels. It could be something like Tommy Fleetwood vs Viktor Hovland at the Scottish Open.
That’s a straight two-way market, selecting which of the two will finish with a better score in the tournament or a particular round. Taking this option a little further, there are 3-ball options to consider as well.
Players typically go off in groups of three in the early rounds of tournaments, and this provides a great betting angle. Much like the head-to-head match-up, the player you project to have the best score out of a playing group can be backed. This just makes golf predictions more manageable than picking from a group of more than 100.
Other Options
Fortunately, golf betting comes with a lot of variety, from selecting the top player by nationality to round betting and individual over/under scores. This is great for punters because it gives options to focus on.
Try to stick to one or two markets so you can become familiar with expected odds, and understand the risk levels involved in them. Then utilise the wealth of statistics out there, to gain insights into the specific areas that will help with a particular market.
Narrowing the Options
Accurate predictions on golf are all about narrowing down the options, as there is little point in looking at the highly volatile big picture of a tournament. A player leading at the end of the First Round, for example, is still a highly unpredictable outright winner compared to a football team that’s 2-0 up at the half-time break.
Accurate golf predictions can be made, but as with all types of betting, you are not going to be right 100% of the time. Don’t expect that, expect to gradually increase your percentage of hits through markets that offer more coverage.
A better winning percentage of bets at smaller odds is the right approach, rather than crossing your fingers that a random 200/1 shot is going to win a major.