We’re using the advanced FRACAS model to project the winner for the Tour Championship.
The Tour Championship marks the end of the 2020-2021 wraparound season, which saw a resurgence of aging golfers highlighted by Phil Mickelson’s improbable victory at the PGA Championship and Stewart Cink finishing with two wins.
We also witnessed the return to some semblance of form for Jordan Spieth, major level dominance from young-gun Collin Morikawa, breakthrough wins for now-top-level-talents Sam Burns and Abraham Ancer, Harris English proving 2020 was no fluke, Tony Finau victorious for the first time in almost 2,000 days, and Louis Oosthuizen having one of the greatest winless seasons in recent memory.
With $15 million on the line, the Tour Championship begins with staggered scoring. Players who finished higher in the FedEx Cup points start with what is essentially a handicap.
Patrick Cantlay rode an unbelievably hot putter to a win last week at the BMW, comes in leading the FedEx Cup points, and will start the tournament at 10-under par.
The Tour Championship is hosted by East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a 7,346-yard par 70 designed by Tom Bendelow. The course will play a little under par, with an average amount of scoring variance. That being said, the historical variance is dampened somewhat by only featuring 30 players every time the course is played, and there are a lot of holes where golfers can rack up birdies in a hurry.
There are also a similar number of holes where golfers can lose strokes in bunches.
The FRACAS Picks
With the staggered scoring, win percentages will look a little weird, so we’ll give you modeled win percentages both with and without starting scores.
With starting scores, we can see the advantage of the handicap. Patrick Cantlay is given almost a one in three chance to take home the $15 million dollars. Granted, Cantlay is also coming in with great form, and has been a tremendous golfer for almost the entire season. In fact, this is also the only value we see in any of the markets this week.
The consensus odds have Cantlay at about 4-1, so we’re more than eight percentage points different from where the market is at. It’s one of the strongest values we’ve seen all year.
Without starting scores, it’s a bit different of a story. Jon Rahm has more than double the chances of having the lowest stroke-play scoring of the tournament.
He cooled off over the weekend at the BMW, but he remains FRACAS’ top golfer in the world.
Design by Matt Sisneros.