Putting Your Feet Up at The Beach
Well, what is there to say about the AT&T Pebble Beach? Quite frankly, nothing as both of our selections withdrew a day before the competition began. So, hopefully, we can rise from the ashes like a Phoenix (see what I did there?) and find this week’s winner.
Our attention turns to the WM Phoenix Open this week. We will begin, as always, by taking a look at the history of the tournament as we start to build this week’s BeerLife profile.
The History
The Waste Management Phoenix Open became a PGA Tour event in 1932, known as the Arizona Open. The event was not initially held at TPC Scottsdale, which took over as host in 1987. Like many other PGA Tour events, it began as a state open championship. The tournament has become the best-attended event on the PGA Tour calendar throughout its stay at TPC Scottsdale.
The Waste Management Phoenix Open is a four-day tournament with a qualifying field that is cut. For the final two rounds of the tournament, the field of 132 players is trimmed to the top 65 players and ties. At the end of the 72-hole event, the player with the lowest score wins. With three wins each, Arnold Palmer, Gene Littler, Mark Calcavecchia, and Phil Mickelson are tied for the most wins in the tournament’s history.
Let’s turn our attention to the form of the previous five winners, analyze their rounds and see if we can find some crucial links to begin our BeerLife profile.
Past Results
2021 Brooks Koepka – 265 – Form CUT/CUT/CUT/CUT
2020 Webb Simpson – 267 – Form 3/10/2/7
2019 Rickie Fowler – 267 – Form 66/5/16/4
2018 Gary Woodland – 266 – Form 12/7/4/34
2017 Hideki Matsuyama – 267 – Form 33/27/2/1
The Course
TPC Scottsdale has two golf courses, both created in collaboration by Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish. In 1986, the PGA Tour commissioner directed the two architects to design another golf resort for the TPC network that looked and felt like TPC Sawgrass. The Champions Course and the Stadium Course were created due to this initiative. The tournament will be held on the Stadium Course for all four rounds. This is welcome news for gamblers who have been plagued by multi-course formats for the past two weeks.
There are a lot of Par 4s that look the same. Almost all of them play straight ahead, with a bunker near the landing zone on the fairway. Off the tee, there aren’t many choices to make. Everything is right in front of the player’s eyes.
As you would expect for a tournament being played in the desert, the weather looks glorious. However, there could be some wind to contend with each day except for Friday when it appears to die down.
The Field
The tournament will be the fifth of the season and is expected to be one of the most entertaining. Brooks Koepka is the defending champion of the tournament. Brooks won the tournament in 2021 with a score of 19 under par total. Koepka will be in the field to defend his title and attempt to win the event for the third time.
The tournament will include some of the biggest names in golf. There are 18 of the top 30 golfers in the Official World Golf Rankings competing in this event. The field includes World Number One Jon Rahm, World Number Three Patrick Cantlay, and World Number Five Victor Hovland.
Key Stats
We run each player in the field through our BeerLife profile analysis to develop our selections. This is what we are looking for this week:
Super Hero’s – Three of the last five winners have all done well at the Hero World Challenge. They placed tenth, fifth, and first.
Hero World Challenge 2022
- Victor Hovland
- Scottie Scheffler
- Sam Burns
- Patrick Reed
- Justin Thomas
- Collin Morikawa
Super Saturday Stars – Looking at the rounds of the last five winners, it’s clear they have made their moves on day three and put themselves into a winning position.
Round 3 Scoring Average
- Collin Morikawa
- Lucas Herbert
- Jon Rahm
- Cameron Smith
- Tyrrell Hatton
- Danny Willett
- Justin Thomas
- Ian Poulter
- Louis Oosthuizen
- Webb Simpson
Long & Straight – Looking at the previous five winners and analyzing the strengths of their game, you can concur that they can hit the ball a long way, and they are relatively straight.
SG: Off-The-Tee
- Austin Eckroat
- Jon Rahm
- Jhonattan Vegas
- Cameron Champ
- Ryan Palmer
Attacking Approaches – 62% of approach shots in 2021 came between 125-200 yards. Furthermore, there is only one par three over 200 yards.
Approaches From 125-150 Yards
- Kevin Na
- Justin Thomas
- Been Crane
Approaches From 150-175 Yards
- Collin Morikawa
- Justin Thomas
- Kevin Na
Approaches From 175-200 Yards
- Austin Eckroat
- Francisco Molinari
- Rickie Fowler
Draft Picks
After looking at the above data and running the field through our Beerlife profile builder, we have selected the following picks.
Must-Have Players – These are the players you need to have in your lineup regardless of the price.
| Justin Thomas |
| Odds To Win +1000 |
| DraftKings $11,000 |
| Fan Duel $11,900 |
| I suspect many professional DFS experts will be tipping up JT this week as he seems so obvious! I can’t remember the last time I fancied a player to win a golf tournament as much as I do Justin Thomas here. He seems to have every attribute you need to win here. He meets the profile of the previous winners, and pretty much everything he touches turns to gold this season. He has played five tournaments this season and has three top-five finishes. His form figures here recently read 13/3/3/17. Even past winners would struggle to compete with figures like that. Thomas has the best Birdie average on Tour this season and the best Sand Save percentage, which always comes in handy when playing in the desert. This season, Justin has the fourth-best scoring average and the best par four scoring average. This is significant as many of the par four’s here look very similar. In addition, he has made 12 consecutive cuts which is the second-longest streak on Tour, which is something I always look for when picking a fantasy golfer. |
Longshots – These guys should give a good account of themselves and are of great value.
| Austin Eckroat |
| Odds To Win +25000 |
| DraftKings $6,200 |
| FanDuel $7,400 |
| From tee to green, Eckroat has the game to do well here this week, and as such, I can’t quite believe his odds are so generous. Last week, he started encouraging at Pebble Beach but failed to maintain that form and tailed off. However, Pebble Beach is a unique tournament that draws a lot of attention, which the young 23-year-old would not have been used to. However, the experience will have done him a world of good, and I see him building on that this week. Last season he had a 12th placed finish at Mayakoba, and he came 16th at the 3M Open, so he does have the pedigree to compete at this level. |
Hey Guys
My name is Dean, AKA The Stat Man. I am a Sports Betting Analyst who uses math, algorithms, probability and logic to create my posts. I specialize in many sports, with Golf being the primary focus. You can find a lot of my work on various websites but the best content is found here on Beer Life.
I live in the UK, on the outskirts of London but my background and heritage is Irish. I'm an avid Manchester United fan who sees following them as a religion. Sport is pretty much my life, as I live and breathe it daily. If there is something I don't know it's probably not worth knowing as I have over 20 years industry experience and insight.
I would love to hear from my followers so drop me a message on the comments section and I will be sure to respond.
As always, believe in the power of statistics!
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