5 Ways To Maximize Your Odds At Golf Betting

You can bet on just about anything nowadays. From the winners of the Oscars or sports to things like the Royal baby’s first words, or the year when we will prove extraterrestrial life. Truth is, betting isn’t going away anytime soon, and if you you’re looking to place a bet, you should know that golf …

You can bet on just about anything nowadays. From the winners of the Oscars or sports to things like the Royal baby’s first words, or the year when we will prove extraterrestrial life. Truth is, betting isn’t going away anytime soon, and if you you’re looking to place a bet, you should know that golf betting is becoming more and more popular, and while its not quite as mainstream as betting on the Superbowl, the odds can very much be in your favour.  Here’s our list of golf betting tips that we’d recommend following if you were ever looking to make a bet on the game.

1) Know Who’s Actually Playing

Players commit to tournaments then bail all the time, which makes betting on the eventual winner or placers well ahead of the tournament date a dumb idea. Wait until close to the tournament date to make your bet, as this basically guarantees you a chance to win some money. Also, there are often late qualifiers or last minute qualifiers for bigger tournaments – especially Majors. So don’t make your choices too early, you might be missing out on a potential winner. Furthermore, take the time to really get to know the playing roster for the tournament.  How many top 10 players are playing? How many top 25? Is the field particularly strong or weak? By answering these questions you can get a sense of how the field should stack up based on their current rankings.

2) Know Your Players

Its not enough to simply look at the current rankings and make your picks for the tournament. You really need to analyze and know your players and their competition. How have they been playing lately? What are their current strengths? What are their weaknesses? Do they prefer a fade or a draw? Are they long-ball hitters or shorter, but more accurate off the tee? How are they from the rough? Have they been injured or complaining of injuries recently? The PGA Tour website has a great resources of player stats available (link here) that can really help you identify each players strengths and weaknesses out on the course.  You can then use this data and combine it with our next tip to really begin narrowing down on specific players.

3) Know The Course & Tournament

Each tournament roster is different, but the course and the style of tournament often has history that can be predictable. Some courses are built for target golf, some courses are built for length, others have tough greens, others rely on an extremely effective short game. Analyze the course layout, check to see how many holes are doglegs in your preferred players favour, check distances to hazards from tees. Most hole layouts are available online for all to see. It doesn’t take a genius to get a sense if a golf course is a good fit for a particular playing style. The tournament itself is also important as they often gain reputations. You can usually get a sense of how a tournament committee will setup a course based on how it has been done in the past.  Some tournaments are notorious for fast greens, narrow fairways, thick rough or penalizing bunkers. You can use this information to get a better sense of how each player will fare out on the course.

Another factor to consider is a players’ historical play on a particular course – do they often play well at tournaments played at this course or not? This data is a quick Google search away, simply type in the players name and a course name and press enter.

4) Do Your Research

There’s ton of information online available for all to see on betting on particular golfers and tournaments.  If you’re new to it, it doesn’t hurt to review the blogs, like Betbright’s PGA Tour preview series or similar ones by doing a simple Google search.  There’s many great ones to choose from.  Take this information with a grain of salt, but use it, combined with your own research to help make your educated bets on tournaments. If you’re really serious there are also a few sites designed specifically to help you make better bets, but they are paid services. Tour-tips.com is an example.

5) Consider Last Minute Factors

One other little tidbit of info thats great to know is if your player is playing in the pro-am before the tournament, or if they played the week prior.  You’d be surprised to find out that players who often get a practice round in before the tournament, or a weekend off to relax are quite often eventual winners.

Another commonly underestimated factor is weather. Although its tough enough to predict a winner of a tournament, let alone the weather as well… you can usually get a sense of what the weather will look like over the course of a tournament. The weather quite often plays a role over the course of the day, so pay attention to also when your player’s tee-times are in relation to the weather.

Remember, depending on the betting website, you can bet before a round is played, while it is being played or in between rounds of a tournament. All are potential bets for you to make some money. Use this to your advantage. Knowing historical stroke average on stretches of holes can often help you with mid-round bets for example. First and second round play is often a sign of what to expect in the third and fourth rounds. So don’t limit your bets to simply be pre-tournament.

Good luck!